We now have the first hard data from regions that achieved “herd immunity” the hard way – that is, by having Corona burn through most of the population.
70% of blood donors from Castiglione d’Adda, in the 50,000 population region of Lodi, the epicenter of Italy’s outbreak, tested positive for SARS-2 antibodies.
There’s just one very minor problem*:
ROME — One of the latest deaths in Italy’s coronavirus crisis is the father of a young man known as Italy’s Patient No. 1.
Italian state TV said the father was one of 62 deaths so far in the outbreak that have occurred in Castiglione d’Adda, one of 10 Lombard towns which were the first to be put on lockdown in northern Italy.
According to Wikipedia, the population of Castiglione d’Adda is 4,659. This makes for a mortality rate of 1.3% and that’s based on numbers from March 21!
And no, it’s not full of old geezers either. Median age is 46.2 years. The figure for Italy as a whole is 44.9 years.
For comparison, the Italian crude death rate is 10.7/1,000. That’s the annual figure. Crudely projecting onto Castiglione d’Adda, that’s about 50 expected deaths per year. That’s what COVID-19 accomplished in just a month – an effective doubling of the yearly mortality rate.
By extension, these figures would translate into 327 million * 1.3% total mortality = 4.35 million EXCESS deaths in the US in one year (well more than a doubling of its usual rate!).
And that’s leaving aside for now that some Corona-related deaths in Castiglione d’Adda have yet to occur!
- I have also seen figures in the range of 40-45 deaths Castiglione d’Adda. This is not as bad, but still wouldn’t change anything on the order of magnitudes – not that we can get any more precise than that, anyway.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
My glass-half-full take: as far as “apocalypses” go, that’s really not that bad.
I don’t disagree.
I just wanted to do a refresh to my phone, computers and TV before shit hitting the fan. Well, I took to long.
I was cheering for the collapse but now I just 1 more year to buy stuff. =(
AK, did you follow up on the 5x higher mortality stories? Is it possible that Castiglione d’Adda had more deaths not classified as covid on top of the 61?
(62, 4,659) => Town Death Rate=1.33075%
(70%, 62, 4,659)=> Disease Mortality Rate=1.90108%
So your extrapolation to America by calculating “327 million * 70% infection rate * 1.3%:” is not correct because in effect you multiply by 0.7 twice.
327 million * 1.33075% = 4.35 million or
327 million * 70% infection rate * 1.90108% = 4.35 million
4.35 million EXCESS death for the US
BTW, you note is good and useful to use with the skeptics and hoaxers.
AK: Thanks. Of course, wrote this in morning while still groggy.
Why do people continue to take Italy as the base case rather than outlier?
Yeah, no. “Median age 46” is pretty much the mathematical definition of “full of old geezers”.
COVID is scary because it is novel, not because it is particularly deadly.
What makes you think Italy is such the outlier as UK has even the worse trajectory of epidemic at the moment with nearly 700 deaths a day while being nowhere near the peak, while Italy had nearly 900 deaths a day at the peak?
ICUs, even in London, are half empty.
Any hard data with the source to back it up?
And if it is truthful, then for how long will they stay that way?:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUtjhcHXgAMBzg1?format=jpg&name=large
The other problem wih herd immunity (or perhaps related to the high mortality): the more the virus replicates, the faster it evolves. Herd immunity let the human immune system develop tools against the virus but it also let the virus increase its replication thereby increasing its mutation rate, which could be very bad for humans.
Misleading graph. Most deaths due to flu happen because of opportunistic pneumonia and they are a separate category in CDC statistics.
The worst seasonal flu week was the 2nd week of 2018 with slightly more than a thousand flu & pneumonia deaths a day in the US, 200 of them attributed to influenza and 800 to pneumonia. There probably were some people who died due to chronic disease complications on top of that. That’s still less than Corona peak will be and likely way less than what it could be if people kept acting like it’s just a flu, but not quite to the degree the picture suggests.
I don’t think the NHS are big on releasing stats like that. The Guardian, were ICU beds running out, would be the first to shout.
Still, if you can believe the figures, the UK now has more deaths than Iran, supposedly a basket-case of shrine-lickers with (thanks to sanctions) shortages of drugs and equipment.
The NHS has set up big-time for a pandemic (now-dormant sports stadia and conference centres are being requisitioned everywhere, local GP practices have reorganised), yet there are still staff without protective clothing (they’re saying the NHS has the stuff and are blaming ‘distribution’, I assume they’re lying, if not they’re grossly incompetent), and testing is effectively non-existent, so loads of staff are off because they have a cough.
Meanwhile cancer patients aren’t being treated, while oncologists, dermatologists, all varieties of consultant are being drafted into general hospital work (partly because of the staff shortage due to lack of testing).
And right at the bottom are the poor bloody HCA’s (healthcare assistants) and the non-NHS care home assistants, who IMHO should be at the front of the queue along with the CV19 front-liners, because one person infected could wipe out a care home full of elderly people, as happened in Washington State.
An HCA in London has just been resigned after being told that she couldn’t wear a (self-purchased) medical mask at work. The hospital doesn’t give masks to HCAs.
In yesterdays live Guardian blog, it was reported that two nurses had died of CV19, and two healthcare assistants. The nurses were named and mourned, the HCAs not.
I don’t understand your point. Already over a thousand people die every day in Covid-19, and the US is still far from the peak, so what do you mean when you say that the peak Covid-19 won’t reach the thousand daily deaths over a one-week period? Or was your number a typo? (I don’t know, I haven’t looked up the flu numbers much.)
But let’s just assume peak Covid-19 won’t be as bad as peak flu in the worst year. You do realize that we had a full lockdown and thus a fraction of cases we’d have had without a lockdown? So it still doesn’t mean your point is good.
The other reason such comparison are apples to arranges is because in the case of flu of 2018 daily deaths were widely distributed over the whole country and there are not significant hot spots. No countermeasures were taken to slow down the flu. Yesterday the NY state with population of 6% accounted for 38% of all deaths in the US. The covid was slowed down significantly and to some extent the hot spots were isolated. If there was not countermeasures taken and the covid was allowed to spread like the flu of 2018 we would have many many more cases of deaths than the worst week of 2018 flu. This would be exacerbated by the overwhelmed medial system everywhere. Right now NYC is stripping the Upstate NY hospitals from equipment. If the covid was as uniformly distributed as flu 2018 with the NYC intensity no allocation of resources between regions would be possible.
And if the official stats are to be believed, Italy now has nearly four times as many COVID-19 deaths as the People’s Republic of China–a country 25 times the size of Italy!
My quick take: either Italy has the world’s worst doctors, or else it has the world’s worst statisticians. Your choice!
(And don’t bother telling me about all those smoke stacks in Lombardy; China is also extremely industrial and isn’t known for its air quality either. And while Italians may be somewhat older than the median, I’m sure that’s true of the Chinese, too, since they’ve had a one-child policy for over 50 years. No: there is definitely something wrong with the stats coming from Italy.)
That’s counter-factual, non-falsifiable reasoning. Of course the lockdown enthusiasts are going to claim credit if 99% of the population survives the lockdown. And if the death toll appears to be higher than expected, as in Italy, they’ll probably claim it’s because they didn’t quarantine enough!
No, no, no. The only relevant way to determine whether a herd-immunity approach would or would not have worked, is to compare lockdown countries with a non-lockdown control group. Hence, my interest in countries like Sweden.
Great, Anatoly. Now, give us a status update on Sweden or Belarus.
1) Are you denying here that lockdowns reduce transmission of infectious diseases? Y/N
2) Are you saying that a reduced R0 rate would not result in a reduced final rate of infection? Y/N
3) Do you think that the epidemic would stay confined to current hotspots if we didn’t have a lockdown? Y/N
Sweden is moving towards a lockdown, sadly.
Castiglione d’Adda (46.2) is a nursing home in comparison to world median age of 30.4. USA median age is 38.2. Certainly a crest in mortality is a consequence, but nobody considering with some decent measure of humanity the course of herd immunity – set against the prospect of lengthy life-stifling lockdowns – has in mind a laissez faire approach to it. I have to admit, though, I sure don’t want to get it. Even if it’s unlikely to kill you it can make you miserable for several days. A near-term safe and effective treatment for those having a tough time with it would make all the difference.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says
https://rep.repubblica.it/pwa/locali/2020/04/03/news/milano_la_ricerca_dell_universita_statale_i_contagi_reali_in_italia_potrebbero_essere_5_milioni_-253027121/?ref=RHPPTP-BH-I253056306-C12-P3-S5.4-T1
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/03/covid-19s-death-toll-appears-higher-than-official-figures-suggest
Well, Russia’s median age is roughly 40, so it’s not an extreme value. Yes, in Russia mortality would be somewhat lower due to the lower median age.
Ok hoaxer.
The worst case scenario is that previous infection with SARS2 does not confer long term immunity to subsequent infection. As of now there is no firm data that confirms contracting the disease provides immunity, while there is some evidence that people can in fact become reinfected. The original SARS was stamped out before reinfection could be observed, but if SARS2 behaves similarly to less lethal coronavirus variants like those responsible for the common cold, we could be in for a long term nightmare.
I volunteer LondonBob for human experimentation immediately so we can get to the bottom of this. Fortunately there is no way he can die from just a flu, so if he does not make it through the trial we can chalk it up to preexisting conditions that would have got him sooner or later and not to anything we might have done.
Given that the vast majority of deaths attributed to COVID-19 involved significant serious co-morbidities, you really can’t draw the conclusion that these are excess deaths.
Italy’s population skews significantly older than the world population, and Castiglione d’Adda skews even older.
I dunno, I’m sure NHS is up to botching his care.
I gave blood (a POWER RED donation) on the sixth of March.
A few days ago the Red Cross blood donation app informed me that my blood had been delivered, unsurprisingly, to a hospital in New York City.
I donated blood on March 18, but I receive no information about it, so no idea what has happened to it.
Yours is the behavior of a complete prick.
At no point has LondonBob ever called this a “hoax.”
All of the exaggerated dickbag troll behavior is coming from the side of the lockdown advocates.
Sadly most of the vulnerable elderly in Russia already died in the 1990.s.
This won’t help you, but Americans can benefit from this: https://www.redcrossblood.org/blood-donor-app.html
I strongly encourage every one of you who is able to donate blood. Social distancing protocols are being followed at blood drives now and the nurses are masked and gloved.
It only takes an hour out of your day and directly contributes to saving lives.
In this crisis every man must do his duty.
The Defence of the Realm Act should be invoked to deal with you
“The only relevant way to determine whether a herd-immunity approach would or would not have worked, is to compare lockdown countries with a non-lockdown control group.”
What extraneous variables AND confounding variables would you have to account for in that study? Please elaborate.
https://youtu.be/Z68MRjRpwdo
Good to have you back Thor !!
Some of it. Some from the other side.
Or higher due to a large percentage of people with poor health (mainly due to drinking)
True, alcoholism is an important risk factor.
I am monitoring the death rate for Wales. It has to be Wales as I have no source for deaths in the Aneuren Bevan University Health Board where the hot spot/early infection is located. No uptick yet. In fact the death reate in 2018 was much higher due to flu.
However, it takes 25 days to die from Covid-19. The first observed community transmission in Wales was 10 March. Add 25 days and we reach the 4 April. So I expect a notable increase in teh weekly death rate starting when this week’s numbers are called.
There is no evidence for a higher mortality rate earlier this year. It is almost identical to 2019. So no unnoticed infection was occuring. That greatly erodes the hypothesis that Wuhan flu was out and about in December and January. Chinese New Year is the dissemination point as always seemed likely. No hidden mechanisms.
Yes. A child born in 1941 and subject to maximum wartime deprivation short of death would now be 79. An excess of such men are dead.
Isn’t it at least slightly possible that the Chinese numbers may not be entirely accurate either?
These costs, of course, have to be weighed against their opposite, the total shutdown, which will include repercussions for years to come:
-suicides from depression and job loss despair
-heart disease, alcoholism and other ailments from stresses of economic devastation.
-deaths of the elderly from isolation and depression during lockdown
-millions of dead in gulag of totalitarian society created by lockdown.
-extra deaths created by isolating with the sick, increasing infection rate.
-all these costs repeated each season for years on end as virus returns.
And, not to forget, mass homocides caused by lockdown creating a collapsing society not unlike яussia circa 1990:
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/russia-homicide-rate-1875-2018-compared.png
Plus deaths from the COVID itself may not be less overall, as reducing the peak but widening it does not change the integral under the curve.
The “international media” seems to have decided that Britain will be the scapegoat for the Coronavirus. For the past few weeks attention has been steered heavily away from China and onto Britain being the problem.
I strongly suspect this has a lot to do with many foreign countries despising Britain for voting to leave the EU. There is a concerted international effort going on to damage Britain’s economy and reputation.
Conservative mischling British writer, Peter Hitchens, has been denying this recently.
In recent years the highest number of excess deaths (in Europe) seems to have been the 2014/15 winter season:
Any predictions as to what the corresponding figure (excess EU deaths for 65+) will be for the 2019/20 winter season?
Use the BLOCKQUOTE tag you fucking cretin.
I think Italy simply got overwhelmed. And Chinese were able to mobilize, and were successful.
There is a lot of anti Chinese propaganda in US right now, how their hospitals are falling apart, how their masks are defective etc. And I’m sure it is true but Western propagandists miss the point. It doesn’t matter if Chinese hospital falls apart after two weeks in operation. What matters is that they built it in a week to handle overflow of patients during the worst of the epidemic, and it did the job. After the worst is over, it doesn’t matter if it is still standing, it is no longer needed.
Same with supplies and such. I’m sure there was a million defective masks or whatever, but its out of 500 million or so that they made , so again, its not really critical. Mobilization does not need to be perfect, it just needs to be massive. And Chinese being totalitarian know how to do massive.
It makes little sense to me how the virus spread so severely in Italy before Wuhan/Hubei was locked down but apparently didn’t spread severely to Beijing, Shanghai and other major Chinese cities.
Surely people from Wuhan don’t just fly to Europe and never travel anywhere else within China? I would have thought if enough people were able to travel from Wuhan to Italy to cause such a severe outbreak, then other major cities in China would be similarly severely affected but they weren’t.
Just out of curiosity, how does he think infectious respiratory diseases get transmitted?
Apparently Invermectin has proved very effective against this virus in lab conditions.
https://futurism.com/anti-parasitic-drug-kills-coronavirus-cell-cultures-48-hours
Though at present there is not enough hard evidence for its effectiveness in patients suffering from coronavirus.
In China there was a lockdown in each major city (and basically all provinces) coupled with a super aggressive testing regime. Of course the infection arrived in those provinces, but it was nipped in the bud.
By the way it’s possible that it arrived in Italy from Germany, at least it’s the same strain as the one which infected a dozen people in Bavaria in January. The Germans located each of the contacts of the infected, but it’s possible that one accidental contact somehow ended up infecting someone in Italy.
Compared to Italy or Spain? If the virus really spreads to a large proportion of the population, then I feel intuitively mortality could be higher in Russia/Ukraine – as there are so many people with undiagnosed damaged lungs from air pollution, the largest HIV population outside Africa (although a lot of people on antiretrovirals, so this might have less impact), and less healthy generally old people than in Italy and Spain.
Undiagnosed asthma and lung problems is a very significant problem, in many cities. On the other hand, the number of people with Type 2 diabetes in Russia is quite low (a lot better than in countries like the USA). Type 2 diabetes levels in Russia are equivalent of Western Europe.
In terms of Type 1 diabetes, I’m not sure I can find anything (I have multiple relatives with Type 1 diabetes, so I intuitively imagine it might be quite common genetically/environmentally – but looking online it doesn’t seem especially common).
Levels of people smoking in Russia is falling very fast though. I actually feel more people smoke in Spain than in Russia (at least if you include cannabis cigarettes, as you smell that in almost every street in Spain).
Despite favourable (for the virus) climatic conditions for the next month, I don’t think coronavirus will spread as much in Russia in the next month, compared to North Western Europe last month – due to better behaviour of Russian people during epidemics, relative to North Western Europe.
In North Western Europe, the behaviour of the public has been disobedient of directives for how people should behave during the epidemic.
Situations you can see in supermarkets (in North Western Europe) are a real disaster. Lots of people are touching things in supermarkets (including products), without wearing gloves. People talking to each other and talking to staff, people queuing for checkouts close together ignoring instructions to stand apart, and most people are without masks, let alone goggles. Small proportion of people wearing paper masks.
And this behaviour includes a lot of nerdy looking demographics, who are probably professors, engineers, scientists, i.e. people who should understand the germ theory of disease. Moreover, there are old people with grey hair behaving like this – without masks and goggles.
I hope you are wearing your masks religiously.
Apropos of nothing else, the following anecdote, common across America but especially in states with this insipid “essential business” distinction, illustrates the problem with this half-baked “lock down.”
An acquaintance went to the local Wal-Mart to pick up supplies for his daughter, who is sewing cloth masks ala the Czechs.
He was wearing a mask and (I think) gloves. Virtually no one else there had any kind of PPE; no gloves, no masks, nothing. There were hundreds of people there, and a “six foot” distance was impossible to keep at all times.
Meanwhile, they tell me that my local family-owned barber shop can’t stay open even if they were to, say, take one customer at a time, enforce various health measures (masks on barber, perhaps, lots of sanitizing of surfaces, etc).
This isn’t proper mitigation nor is it proper suppression. Above all else, where are the masks?
At least Putin claims he’s gonna tax the rich to pay for Russia’s efforts.
In America, we won’t tax (((the rich))), nor are we forcing or even encouraging people to use PPE.
So we send them to the “essential” globohomo big box flu hot spots while screwing everyone else.
Something this contrived and arbitrary clearly came out of the brain of a feminist woman, like the crazy female governor of Michigan, the feminized boomer fanatic governor of Virginia, or the Jewish transsexual health secretary of Pennsylvania.
The vast majority of bile is coming from the side of those who, like the Anonymous N in question, completely put false words in the mouths of those whom they wish to depict merely as lunatics. LondonBob has never called this a hoax. And anecdotally, I have seen very few people actually saying anything like, “It’s just the flu.” The only one I know personally is a libertarian who, funny enough, has now switched his views entirely.
There are a few on Unz.com who have called it a hoax, but the Londoner isn’t one of them.
Meanwhile, Lukashenko is being treated with mere amusement by the outside world, while the neo-liberal Guardian demands a “lock down” from Sweden.
The Guardian is not “neo-liberal”. “Neo-liberal” in the British media would be something like The Telegraph or the Daily Mail would be a more “populist” version of Neoliberalism.
Guardian journalists range from centre-left to full socialist, the only time they would feign support for Neoliberalism is if it aids their open borders agenda (immigrants do muh jobs native Brits won’t).
Thanks for making Wisconsin look bad. Anyways, why don’t you answer the question rather than engage in ad hominem?
Digital Samizdat said “The only relevant way to determine whether a herd-immunity approach would or would not have worked, is to compare lockdown countries with a non-lockdown control group.”
I asked “What extraneous variables AND confounding variables would you have to account for in that study? Please elaborate.”
Moscow life expectancy and median age is western (I. E. very high). As 75%+ cases in Russia are from Moscow City and region – your point is completely invalid.
I don’t know how true the rumour is of it affecting men more than women. If so Russia has twice as many women over 65 years, than men
Among other regions, you can add Tatarstan and Saint Petersburg into that list of western-level life expectancies. That is about 30 million people.
Now compare how they together are performing in this coronavirus crisis against any country with 30 million – you will find Russia annihilating everybody, in a positive sense.
There is no logical reason, outside of good policy and infrastructure, why Saint Petersburg has such less cases compared to Estonia or any of the Baltics. Kaliningrad has people going everyday into Poland and Lithuania…. but the case numbers are still very low.
I am suspicious of the statistics that say we have a median age of 40. We’ve had a few demographic collapses- but there is a shortage, compared to other age demographics, of 20-30 year olds – by about 6-7 million.
The inverse of your statement may be true – the poorer regions with the lowest life expectancies may be more vulnerable if an explosion in cases happens. Although for your statement to be valid – the kavkaz regions (poor but with extremely high life expectancies) would have to suffer greatly
I don’t know who said it, but way smarter than me, (paraphrase) you’ll wake up one morning and understand yesterday was the day to prepare.
Not connected to your post, but LOL Banderastan/404 has gone through 3 Health Ministers in a month, 4 in 6 months!
They were having problems anyway – but this chaotic freakshow in a pandemic is unacceptable.
Add into that them having one of the most severe measures ( though you will like that), most anti-democratic measures in the world implemented to restrict the virus, done at a very early stage……. but with absolutely zero trust in the figures being put out by the authorities, nor the economy that is ready to take another disaster.
while the neo-liberal Guardian demands a “lock down” from Sweden
Good news today from Sweden: deaths today declined to 15 (they were 69 two days ago), the lowest reported total since 29 March, and new cases also declined significantly. Maybe they will be able to hold out, after all.
Anatoly, do you believe that the US would have been in better shape right now had Hillary Clinton been US President right now as opposed to merely being US President-in-exile?
To all your points: would the secondary effects from implementing the lockdown over a long period of time cause much greater damage than the virus?
Some countries are not performing hip/knee replacement operations or doing endoscopy examinations
– surely delays in joint replacement or spoting something in the endoscopy would shorten more lives than Coronavirus?
But “herd immunity” is not optional. Everyone will be exposed sooner or later unless they live on the moon. Prolonging the spread seems like the best option to save lives, but at what cost? The virus is a bug on the windshield, the world economy imploding is a freight train. If the world doesn’t get over this panic, virus or no virus, the deaths from poverty, neglect, wars, starvation, etc, etc, etc…. will certainly destroy society as we know it. In the end, we should have just ignored the virus for best possible outcome.
I’m going to the supermarket breathing filtered air and separated from the outside world by a thick glass screen – feeling like some deep sea diver of Jules Verne picking seashells from the bottom of the ocean. You can also try to imagine you are doing important things like being astronaut, or NBC warfare special forces soldier. Just it can be difficult to sustain latter illusions, when your mission involved picking up a packet of napolina spaghetti
–
Sadly, how most people are behaving in supposed “lockdown”. Here are photos from the newspaper of the “holiday atmosphere” today.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8186935/Police-tell-holidaymakers-stay-home-Easter-holiday-period.html
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/04/04/12/26803940-8186935-image-a-48_1586001521773.jpg
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/04/04/13/26804682-8186935-image-a-7_1586005115667.jpg
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/04/04/12/26802828-8186935-These_people_were_training_this_morning_at_the_Paddington_Recrea-a-42_1586001356377.jpg
Nice to see you again. How did you enjoy lockdown so far? Listen to any good jazz albums?
Use blockquote, it’s pretty moronic not to do so.
Beyond travesty. Micro-Clio at works.
Apart from the boxing (weird how this has now become a popular hobby among women), none of the other people are at much of a risk of spreading/transmitting the disease.
LOL. How about answering my question?
Yes sadly my Russian uncle, born in 1941 died 3 years ago, he was the last survivor of his school class. The 1990s were abysmal for Russia when GDP dropped to half, with all the resultant human tragedies.
Sadly I feel that the same is due to happen to most of the world with the upcoming economic depression, something westerners cannot even understand. I do not see much good coming and hope I am wrong
Britain today reminds me of the Soviet Union I remember as a child, empty shops, long lines movement restrictions and droning propaganda on state owned tv praising the heroes of the day, “our glorious nhs” which has an appealing death rate from Covid compared to others.
These figures would seem to lend strong support to the Swedish strategy.
Present estimates are that 5 to 10 percent of Swedes have caught the bug so far. And these are not amateurs making these predictions, but people like Tom Britton, a professor in mathematical statistics who has studied epidemics since the 1990s.
Britton, in an interview with Swedish state media the other day, said that he would bet his house on the true figure being between 2.5 and 15 percent. He also expected half of Swedes to be immune before April is out and two-thirds to be immune by the end of May.
If he is right, we should reach herd immunity before summer.
Rather surprisingly, the number of new patients in need of intensive care has remained steady since about March 23, as you can see if you check out the excellent interactive graph here (in Swedish):
https://www.svt.se/datajournalistik/corona-i-intensivvarden/
That page also has various demographic breakdowns. As of 10:30 p.m. today, of the patients in intensive care:
Re: Covid-19 quarantine
Poland will receive a 22 billion euro support package
to help soften the economic impact of the coronavirus
pandemic.
So far Poland has done much better than Germany or
Sweden in terms of the number of deaths per million
population. For Poland this number is 2.0
Apples and oranges. Sweden hasn’t been put on lockdown.
Glvoes are far mor important than masks.
Russia is merely late. the Moscow cluster will follow the normal Euro-American trajectory. Distance and limited levels of intercity travel may save other Russian cities.
I’m not going to answer any of your questions until you use blockquote like a civilized commenter.
To be sickly enough to be killed by COVID -19, you would have been lucky not to have been already killed by respiratory complications from endemic influenza. Italian villages have a higher proportion of unrepentant heavy core smokers who are old than just about anywhere Due to an unusually mild winter (Italian houses are not easy to heat), death rates had been low over the flu season, leaving more elderly and debilitated Italians around to die of COVID-19 infection at the begining of last month .
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-31/italy-s-mild-flu-season-may-solve-mystery-of-coronavirus-deaths
https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iVtbKUnx60yQ/v0/800x-1.png
By March 17 COVID-19 deaths had reached the levels of the previous two flu seasons, yet were below the overall death total from 2016-2017, when influenza A(H3N2) was dominant. As would be expected given A(H3N2)’s known propensity to severely affect older people, two-thirds of intensive care admission were over 65 . European monitoring of excess mortality found excess all-cause mortality among those over 65 years in the first weeks of 2017. The level of excess all-cause mortality was similar to the 2014–2015 winter season, with an estimated 217 000 excess deaths, again in a flu season with dominance of A(H3N2).
Four out of five over eighty year olds do not even have to go to the hospital with COVID-19.
Of course lockdowns will reduce infections–any infection, even the flu. So why don’t we have one every year when the flu’s in town? Because the death-toll is not high enough to justify destroying the economy. But this year, with COVID-19, if the eventual death toll is low, they’ll claim it was because their lockdown was so successful, even if not many people would have died without one. (Without testing a much larger percentage of the population, we’ll still have no real idea exactly how effective it was at containing the spread of the infection itself.)
Do you have a source? I can’t find one.
A scientist could better determine that.
“I’m not going to answer any of your questions until you use blockquote like a civilized commenter.”
I am a commenter and I am civilized. Why are you being obtuse?
“A scientist could better determine that.”
That would help, of course. However, YOU offered a solution based on scientific principles–“The only relevant way to determine whether a herd-immunity approach would or would not have worked, is to compare lockdown countries with a non-lockdown control group.”
Thus, I am asking YOU this particular question, considering there is an implication on your part that you are privy to such matters. So, what extraneous variables AND confounding variables would YOU have to account for in that study? Please elaborate.
You should be dragged out of your house and beaten until your bones break, shot in the gut, rolled up in a carpet, and thrown off a bridge
Fuck you
Thanks. If I understand correctly, the latest number it is now showing (4 April, 14 new intensive-care patients) represents a decline of two-thirds from the peak (42) recorded three days earlier. Is that right?
They seem closer to the norm than Italy’s numbers.
The Guardian has seemingly claimed that ICUs are running out of beds every single month of my entire life. It is not a great news source on this, unless you want ideologically motivated hysteria and pearl clutching.
It is is true that there’s a lot more viral pneumonia and ARDS than normal but it seems that infrastructure is actually coping fine in London; the worst hit spot.
The Nightingale Hospital with 4,000 emergency beds may never be needed.
Scratch the above about the Guardian: even the it can sometimes be honest about this stuff.
It claims ICUs are just 75% full in London and that the disastrous emergency rush they guaranteed would happen last week may slither into view next week.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/03/nightingale-emergency-coronavirus-hospital-london
Note also that the NHS had 4,000 UK-wide intensive case beds at the beginning of march and they were 4/5s full.
In other words, beds in London are substantially less occupied than they were a month ago and there is an emergency extra capacity of 4,000 stood by, unused…which equals the whole UK’s normal proportion.
I need to repeat that: standard ICU beds are less occupied now than they were a month ago in London.
And the government has built the entire UK’s capacity again just for London but it is empty, of course.
Oh well, it’s inevitable that it runs through, sooner or later. Otherwise we all get permanently sealed like little cuckbois, but that’s not something we’ll allow to happen, no?
Well I’m not “privy” to anything you aren’t. It’s not easy even getting reliable news about Sweden’s figures now that they’re defying the trend. (BTW, a big thank you to ‘Swedish Family’ for posting those stats.)
You truly have that Internet Tough Guy routine down pat. Now, about that question that you avoid answering…
China locked down. Italy did not. They said they did, but that isn’t good enough.
According to euromomo, England, Italy, and Spain are now far above average for all-causes mortality. Europe overall is now above average, and 65+ all-causes mortality (Europe-wide) is well above average. https://www.euromomo.eu/. Guess the lags have worked themselves out.
Yes.
Of course, there’s also a large chance that with her, the coronavirus would have been rather decidedly preempted by a world war.
My guess is that Yang or Bloomberg would have done best.
Who cares about Commonwealth countries? Yall are bn and subcons. Britain is not even the most important or the largest country among the Realms of Princess Meghan. You’ll get the Coronachan when India will endeavor to deliver it, no sooner.
Stopping this disease at the border was never going to be allowed. So the people in charge want this to kill as many people as possible, so they can grab the spoils.
Individuals like Bloomberg and Gates (and those above them and behind them) are megalomaniacs who would have no compunction at planning the release and spread of this disease.
I hope Karlin is delighted by the quality of your comment.
I think it is now clear that the attitude to influenza has been insouciant, however there is an inoculation available for influenza and if everyone got it (as the US authority has long recommended) it would surely save enough lives without a lockdown being necessary to cope with influenza epidemic. Unlike measles, for which the inoculations of decades ago are not much different to today’s, influenza mutates very fast so it is difficult to keep up with it, but the inoculation is altered each year and always confers useful protection by including the four main families of strains.
A vaccine is required for COVID-19 to end the lockdown without a politically unjustifiable tranche of COVID-19 deaths, but although the pathogen (SARS-CoV-2) does not mutate as much as the flu virus, a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 is not going to be ready for use for months no matter what resources they throw at it. And so they are talking about an all-ages lockdown continuing for months, which in a modern just-in-time supply chain economy is impossible without irreversible economic damage.
There does not seem to be enough discussion of the aforementioned prospect. It is certainly not a simple decision, but to continue the full lockdown past a month is getting into the realm of where back-to-normal when it comes will actually mean being satisfied with less forever after. Medical services have to be paid for with economic activity and if that ceases the treatment will have to be rationed. This is not COVID-19 hospital overwhelm for a limited time I am talking about, but a depression without precedent in which there will be health care rationing never before seen and continuing for decades.
In Italy half of the COVID-19 deaths had three pre-existing conditions. In three-quarters of the COVID-19 deaths in Italy the deceased was being treated for hypertension. ” One in four men in Glasgow will die before his sixty-fifth birthday by stroke, respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease and cancer. Not looking good for Glasgow , especially as 14% of NHS Scotland staff are currently off work a la rats leaving the ship.
On the other hand, Russia is more a tough pony than thoroughbred; a less advanced economy. Resource extraction has a huge role and that there men die from alcohol poisoning rather than cirrhosis so they top themselves with neat potato spirit while lacking much in the way of pre existing medical conditions. Fewer lame ducks/ low hanging fruit for COVID-19. Russia is well placed to have a early exit from a lockdown, leaving only the elderly in semi-quarantine. For Britain and America herd immunity the hard way has a predictable short term death toll. No one knows how many deaths the absolute lockdown will cause over the succeeding decades (for a several month lockdown would take a generation to recover from, and China would take advantage to grow) .
A undersicussed line of reasoning in my opinion is that the government can conscript young men (conceivably women) into the army and send then off to die abroad in order that national power is maintained. Often it is the most intelligent selfless and valuable men who die without reproducing. Requiring something similar of older people in the twilight of their lives seems hardly less just. Especially as those who would be at most risk of dying at any age are the very same ones who ignored official advice not to smoke and overeat. These are the individuals for who medical treatment is going to be rationed anyway. One way or another
Whether they are or are not, is dependent on questions which an answer is not known yet – how far this virus can spread in the air, and how far people spread droplets (which is not a well studie topic) https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2763852
You think Hilary Clinton would cause a “large chance” (??) of world war – with who? Chance of war between US and Russia has been totally nonexistent or zero since the 1980s. And chance of world war between US and China is probably more likely with Trump, although still extremely unlikely even with Trump and coronavirus.
And other unlikely options of wars between countries like Pakistan and US, or Brazil and US, would not constitute world war in the normal sense.
Depends what you refer to as “mask”, and what you refer to by “important” (for your personal protection?).
A good mask, almost eliminates your personal chance of being infected – so if you refer to a good mask, it is the most important equipment for your personal protection.
On the other hand, a “bad mask” (cloth/paper surgical mask) probably doesn’t directly change your chance of being infected in the threat environment, but infected people wearing it still might reduce of spreading the virus when they cough or sneeze. So people wearing bad masks, might indirectly reduce your chance of being infected.
Gloves are useful as they allow for easy decontamination of hands when leaving the threat environment, and perhaps for psychological reasons might reduce arisk of touching the face, by making wearing people more self-conscious they are in the contaminated zone (on the other hand, any risk of touching the face is eliminated by a good mask).
Here is a true expert slamming the ‘lockdown’ strategy as a delusion and counter-productive. Dr. Knut Wittkowski (PhD, Computer Science, Univ. of Stuttgart, 1985; DSc, Medical Biometry, Univ. of Tübingen, 1993). Thirty years of recognized expertise in epidemiology and biostatistics. The man is no amateur, and also no politician (as you can see from seeing his mannerisms); a hard-science man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGC5sGdz4kg
He was interviewed on, I think, April 2, as they are at one point looking at a screen with observed-data through April 1. Posted to Youtube April 3.
He answers your proposed questio as follows:
[26:40] “We will see maybe a total of fewer cases, that is possible, however we will see more cases among the elderly because we have prevented the schoolchildren from creating herd immunity and so in the end we will see more death.”
(How much social-economic disruption to the ‘Lockdown’-pushers want?)
His background is computer science. Computer science is not a real science. It is a “science” like “political science” or “social science”. Conspiracy theorists have been trying to promote these German coronavirus skeptics who have absolutely no expertise or are outright frauds and fakers under the assumption that Americans won’t know any better because they’re obscure and from a foreign country. You have either fallen for it or are a conspiracy theorist shill yourself.
“Computer Science Is Not a Science”
https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2013/1/158757-computer-science-is-not-a-science/fulltext
Does he address the primary reason to flatten the curve – so that hospitals aren’t overwhelmed and thus so people don’t needlessly die, who otherwise would have been saved had hospitals not been overwhelmed? Herd immunity would indeed seem to be the way to go – if all those hard cases coming at once under such a strategy could be provided with full treatment.
Really? A world war? Trollish much?
Why exactly would Hillary Clinton have risked a world war for a bunch of Syrian camel herders and Islamists? A world war certainly isn’t the US’s style; rather, the US aims to expand its influence slowly and at a low cost to itself–for instance, through revolutions (such as the 2014 Maidan Revolution in Ukraine) or through wars that it believes are quick and easy (such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya–even if not all of them ultimately turned out the way that the US actually expected). I have never actually gotten the impression that war-weary Americans would actually be willing to risk a world war in order to expand their country’s influence, though. Fighting to protect the Baltic countries from a Russian invasion is one thing, but risking a world war over Syria is quite another. Even Hillary Clinton would have been aware of this. After all, she certainly wouldn’t want a world war jeopardizing her reelection chances, now would she? Rather, she’d have simply been content to sit in the Oval Office eating bonbons and farting while Bill would have ran around the place chasing who knows what. Hillary isn’t Hitler; she isn’t interested in making big moves that could turn out bad when her country is much better at achieving slower, more incremental expansions in its influence worldwide over the previous years and decades.
Why Bloomberg?
I pressed “agree” but am unconvinced about the likelihood of world war.
Bloomberg would have been the best at managing this kind of crisis. But because he did what he had to do to keep NYC safe, he couldn’t win the democratic nomination.
Due to him doing stop-and-frisk in NYC?
Also, why exactly would Hillary have started a world war over a bunch of Syrian camel herders and Islamists? I mean, the US has been much more successful at spreading its influence worldwide in ways that are much less costly to it–such as the 2014 Maidan Revolution in Ukraine or the Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya interventions–though the last three interventions here did, in fact, turn out to be rather messy in the end.
No, stop-and-frisk is why he had no chance in winning the Democratic nomination. Although it was probably not his only deal-breaker.
Bloomberg was a very smart, involved and competent manager of New York. As president, he would be bad in many ways (he is radically pro-immigration and anti-gun) but he would do well in a crisis like this.
These are his press releases but the facts aren’t wrong:
https://www.bloomberg.org/press/releases/michael-r-bloomberg-to-help-city-leaders-respond-to-coronavirus-in-the-united-states/
Michael Bloomberg is building on his experience as a crisis manager who has prioritized public health throughout his tenure as mayor of New York City and in his global philanthropic efforts. As mayor, he implemented ambitious public health programs, increasing New Yorkers’ life expectancy by three years – 2.2 years longer than the national average over that time span. In 2006, he unveiled a Pandemic Influenza Plan, which included disease monitoring, building laboratory capacity, delivering vaccines and medicines, and preparing hospitals, mental health providers and city communications for a disease outbreak. He led the city through the constant threat of bioterrorism attacks, the swine flu outbreak in 2009, and the West Nile virus in 2012. While Mike was mayor, the city’s syndromic surveillance system monitored 60,000 health events every day, from ER visits to foodborne illnesses to potential terrorist attacks.
While the blockquote feature does allow for better orientation, I have never heard that it is obligatory or that not using it moronic (eine pure Meinung, nicht wahr?).
“My guess is that Yang or Bloomberg would have done best.”
what is Bloomberg doing RIGHT NOW about it? anything?
he couldn’t be in a more perfect position to do something about it. and he’s doing nothing, as expected.
so tired of these shitbag democrat billionaires who do jack shit for America.
the more people who die in NYC the better.
He has worked in the medical-research field since the 1980s and has a doctorate in Medical Biometry (Univ. of Tübingen, 1993).
Here is his paper:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.28.20036715v1.full.pdf+html
Title: “The first three months of the COVID-19 epidemic: Epidemiological evidence for two separate strains of SARSCoV-2 viruses spreading and implications for prevention strategies. Two epidemics of COVID-19.” KNUT M. WITTKOWSKI
Wittkowski’s partial CV:
The Rockefeller University
Head, Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design, Center for Clinical & Translational Science
1998 – Jun 2018
New York, NY
Senior Research Associate
1998 – Jun 2018
The Rockefeller University Hospital
Biometrician
1998 – Jun 2018
New York, NY
New York Academy of Medicine
Consultant
1997 – 1998
HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies
Associate
1995 – 1998
1980s and early 1990s: “He worked for 15 years with Klaus Dietz, a leading epidemiologist who coined the term ‘reproduction number’, on the Epidemiology of HIV”
If this new virus is like the common cold, then don’t expect to be immune at all.
This is true, what the Americans call ‘computer science’ is just a branch of math that deals with information complexity theory and/or numerical methods.
Also, I don’t think the term ‘computer science’ exists outside the USA; in the rest of the world they’re just called mathematicians.
Witkowski? An old fool. There’s no fool like an old fool.
Where I live in supermarkets the same picture (only with a smaller number of people without masks-about half in masks). Someone follows the rules, someone breaks them.
The situation has changed radically compared to what it was a week ago, but there are still a lot of people who do not understand what is happening
If the achieved degree of isolation of people from each other is enough for one infected person to infect less than one person on average , the epidemic will disappear. If not, the rules will be tightened further
Italy’s numbers reflect a very broad definition of “death by coronavirus”.
I wrote they are moving towards it, not that they are implementing it. But I’d guess they will blink.
https://www.dw.com/en/sweden-mulls-u-turn-on-coronavirus-restrictions/a-53020024
If you ask me, I think there are roughly two possibilities. One is doing nothing, perhaps advising people to do some social distancing, and maybe making masks compulsory, but otherwise nothing. That would result in chaos and ultimately horrible economic disruption as well, but you’d have to follow through.
The other possibility is a total, very strick, highly disruptive lockdown, early on, or at least as early as possible. Basically, Wuhan-style curfew, separation of suspected Covid-19 patients in specially designated quarantines, etc.
The worst of both worlds is the half-measures we see in the western world, lockdown, but not curfew, even car traffic is allowed, people still use mass transit, so you still have the epidemic, but life is also disrupted, and we still don’t know how long it would take. In Wuhan, life could return to normal after two months (because the situation was allowed to get out of control), in Northern Italy, it would take maybe three or four months. “Less disruptive” on paper, but I’d guess a two-month Wuhan-style lockdown is less disruptive than a four- or five-month Milan-style lockdown.
So I’m for the most disruptive lockdown possible, but I’m also for making it as short as possible. I’d like restaurants re-opened as soon as possible, but to open them sooner, you’d need to close everything, really everything physically possible.
The epidemic itself is causing enormous disruption, so disruption there will be, either way.
Do you guys seriously believe that the CCP was not trying to maximize economic output and minimize disruption? The way to do that is a full, very strict, lockdown, to stop the epidemic in its tracks.
As of March 21, the death toll was already 1.3% of the population in the one town where 70% of the population has already been infected, and it’s not like no-one has died there of Covid-19 since, or won’t in the coming weeks. I don’t know what other kinds of evidence you guys would need that it’s not just flu.
“I don’t know what other kinds of evidence you guys would need that it’s not just flu.” – First hand empirical evidence like a serious bout of coronavirus will do.
Whoa, we started out with a purported rationale for the lockdown of flattening (and thus extending) the curve of its spread. Now it has to disappear. If they wanted it to disappear as fast as possible they ought to have held off until the COVID-19 pathogen had silently ripped through much of the population before instituting a lockdown. Then act surprised the epidemic has faded away so fast that they can announce the ending of the lockdown after weeks instead of several months.
Hmmm. Maybe that is what they actually did do; the lockdown is not too late it is just cosmetic and timed for herd immunity to do the heavy lifting, thus enabling the lockdown to be on for the shortest possible time. Meaning the least economic disruption possible while still keeping public confidence?
Guess the lags have worked themselves out.
So now we will have to wait and see if the “excess deaths” get anywhere near the extended “major” peak of 2014/2015 (217,000 excess deaths among 65+ alone), or the nearly comparable major peaks in 2016/17 and 2017/18. For the moment it is still a bare fraction of the “mini” peak of 2018/19.
Still waiting for predictions, especially from those who believe we are dealing with a potential Apocalypse:
Keeping in mind, of course, that in 2014/15 the figure was 217,000.
That’s right. But keep in mind that the figures for the past few days might suffer from underreporting, which is why those bars are gray rather than blue. The figures are real, not estimates, but some regions can be a bit tardy in reporting new cases. (Looking at the graph again, I see that the figure for April 4 has indeed risen from 14 to 17 overnight.)
I leave this for the experts to answer, but as I understand it, the idea is that the coronavirus is more like the flu, for which most people have full or partial immunity a few years after recovery, than a common cold.
You are comparing death rates for whole Italy with Covid, where deaths are concentrated in a region comprising 1/6 of Italian population. Using this methodology, if a bioengineered diseases with 100% mortality would kill everyone in a single village in Italy, but would be succesfully isolated with no deaths outside, you would claim this hypothetical disease is not a problem at all because mortality for whole Italy are lower than in 2017.
It’s not that COvid is some end-of-times disease and that lockdowns are proper answer; I just don’t like flawed arguments.
For Sars, immunity lasted about 2-3 years.
Pretty sure this is just some procedural squabble, and those new guidelines are really rather mild.
you would claim this hypothetical disease is not a problem at all because mortality for whole Italy are lower than in 2017.
So in the case of your hypothetical disease, are you suggesting that all of Italy should be locked down to protect your single village? And how would this help to reduce mortality in this village, exactly?
I just don’t like flawed arguments.
Agreed.
It’s not like death rates are totally uniform within that one region either. Deaths are heavily concentrated even within Lombardy, like Bergamo has a multiple times higher mortality rate than the average of Lombardy.
You answered too quickly without understanding his hypothetical. He said the whole of Italy should be locked down to save the rest of Italy. And then the rest of the world.
They’re above average but very far from unprecedented. Current “peaks” have been exceeded, in all of those cases, multiple times in the last few years.
It’s Britain or the UK, there’s no such thing as “England”. It’s like calling the Netherlands “Holland”, except Holland actually exists as a province, whereas, “England” doesn’t exist in any official capacity.
No. I’m just saying you should not argue “this is not serious, because mortality averaged over whoel Italy now is not larger than in 2017” when deaths are concentrated in one region. I was specifically saying in the second part of my comment that I do not say anything about lockdowns.
Actually, I was not saying anything about whether lockdowns are proper response. In fact, looking at the number of deaths in Sweden/Czechia or UK/Poland, it seems that while lockdowns save some lives, it’s not clear saving few hundred people is worth sacrifising the whole economy.
That is the worry isn’t it? But if you don’t gain immunity by getting the virus then herd immunity is nonsense, and that just can’t be.
Of course it’s also the case that if we don’t get a vaccine in 18 months we’re in trouble, and that just can’t be either.
Faith can move mountains! The power of positive thinking will create herd immunity. And a vaccine. I want to believe!
Of course if only western governments had made a serious effort at containment right at the start (and they had plenty of advance warning) then we wouldn’t have any problem at all. But that would have required competence and guts.
You didn’t talk about the present situation. But in your hypothetical we had a disease with a 100% mortality and Covid-like contagiousness.
Some more medical horror porn about SARS 2.0:
https://twitter.com/KevinMccairn/status/1246347467425058817
BBB -blood brain barrier.
OK, maybe hypothetical was not thought through. My point was only that estimation of seriousness of Covid should not be taken by comparing apples and oranges.
Looking at the new cases data, it seems that lockdown in Italy might ‘vehelped southern and central regions – but since four days, new cases are rising again in northern Italy. I wonder whether this is incubation-related delay, so it’s an “echo”of previous peaks; or maybe artifact of testing infrastructure (ie. labs have limited throughput and they release data once few days); or artifact of testing method (previously they were overwhelmed and could test only most severe/risk patients, now they have larger testing capability and are able to test more people).
Anyways, rising new cases in Lombardia is puzzling.
How severe can the lockdowns get without economic collapse? How long can the lockdowns continue before you get permanent economic ruin and complete social disintegration? Nobody knows but we’re about to find out. Of course when we do find out it will be too late to save anything from the wreckage.
We had to destroy the world to save it.
As they used to say, every discipline with ‘science’ in it, isn’t.
Next up: “software engineer”.
Harsh but not unjust.
I assume it’s so they can beat up their prepubescent children more efficiently.
If that really turns out to be the case then herd immunity starts to look like a very good option to aim for.
Of course that’s assuming that decisions are based on rational forethought rather than emotion, blind panic and political calculations. So far western leaders haven’t shown any signs of rational forethought. And the western media is unlikely to allow politicians to make any decisions based on rationality.
We had to destroy the world to save it.
We can try to look on the bright side:
The needs of people (permanently?) confined in small spaces are actually very limited — food, video games, social networking, virtual reality tourism, etc. Basic food supplies shouldn’t be too difficult to maintain, particularly since caloric requirements will be significantly reduced.
Any manufactured goods required can be produced by China (i.e. no change from status quo).
Chernobyl effect — nature will very quickly begin to reassert itself, to the great benefit of Mother Earth. Already where I live the beach has been recolonized by birds. More generally, see the 2007 book The World Without Us.
Covid-19 is doing Greta’s work, CO2 emissions will plunge and the planet will be saved for future generations to enjoy from within their “safe spaces”.
Look, as I said before, Italy seems to be an outlier here, but who really knows. Reliable statistics are hard to come by, since few if any countries are doing universal testing.
But the bottom line is this: whether the CFR is 1%, 2% or 3% is not really all that important in the greater scheme of things. The fact remains that it isn’t, say, 35% like the Black Death of the middle ages, so there’s no way to justify the complete and total destruction of our economies and political rights which is currently under way.
Civilization will survive COVID-19, but it will not survive a 50% unemployment rate. Do you have any idea how many people will die of suicide or murder under those circumstance? Do have any idea how mass hunger will effect infant mortality? Are you willing to risk all that just to save a handful of people who are probably going to die anyway during the next flu season?
As far as the hospitals-are-being-overwhelmed meme is concerned, I honestly haven’t seen any convincing evidence of that happening anywhere outside of Italy–at least not yet. But what if it did? Well, just get the National Guard (or your equivalent) to throw up of some emergency field hospitals for a while. I’d rather have them doing that than patrolling the streets, as they are apparently now doing in Maryland.
You can watch yesterdays presentation by the government, sun is shining so I have other things to do. Hospitalisations have plateaued in London, Neil Ferguson was forecasting the numbers would be rising exponentially and ICUs being overwhelmed.
Lockdowns have a lag effect, so the fact NY and London are reporting a plateauing and decline of hospitalisations can’t be credited to a lockdown.
https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1246632478456066048?s=20
Do you have data about Lombardy showing the new increases?
You will have mass hunger anyway with uncontrolled epidemics as 70% of middle aged often overweight farmers worldwide will be bedridden for a month during seeding/harvesting seasons with reduced lung function even after potential recovery, which is not guaranteed at all for this age group.
Interesting article from Daily Telegraph (Friday evening) about Swedish approach. Some highlights:
The complete text: http://archive.is/seBhv#selection-1005.0-1005.151
“sit’s not clear saving few hundred people is worth sacrifising the whole economy” – Few hundred? Whole economy? Straw-man times two!
If whole Italy experienced the Lombardy’s (16% population of Italy) mortality there would be 56,000 deaths in Italy by now. 3.8 times more then it is now. 41,000 lives were saved so far.
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Italy#By_region
Ah, so that is the reason of very conveniently reduced Sweden death count lately, they just stopped counting deaths with commorbidities. Really very useful – when you have fucked up completely, just stop counting and give fantasy numbers instead, lol 🙂 Even China should be jealous now.
“The Swedes believe that changing how the figures are reported will cut the number of people dying from coronavirus by as much as four fifths, and slash the death rate to well below 1 per cent”. – Accountants and lawyers to the rescue when your cockamamie plan is about to be exposed for what it was.
The problem with this reasoning is that it’s not clear whether those deaths are not just delayed. Compare Czechia and Sweden: one, very strict lockdown very strict measures. Second: very lax, relying more on voluntary actions. Sweden has more deaths, sure: but the difference until now is in terms on hundreds, not thousands.
Do you have data about Lombardy showing the new increases?
Data from Italian Ministry of Health for Lombardia — total cases (daily increase):
4 Apr 49,118 (1,598)
3 Apri 47,520 (1,455)
2 Apr 46,065 (1,292)
1 Apr 44,773 (1,565)
31 Mar 43,208 (1,047)
30 Mar 42,161 (1,154)
29 Mar 41,007 (1,592)
28 Mar 39,415 (2,117)
btw, even those fantasy numbers are nearly doubling as yesterday Sweden had 15 deaths, today 28, so in reality situation now is deteriorating at breakneck speeds there. Obvious solution to this will be some another accounting BS in order to improve catastrophical mortality.
Damn, I started editing comment, wrote a long reply and editing times passed.
(1) Despite strict lockdown, cases in Lombardy seems on rise again. If data quoted by our host is valid (we must remember sample is not random) that would indicate some regions reached herd immunity (despite lockdowns) and lockdown or not, new cases should fall there soon.
(2) It’s not clear flattening the curve works. 3/4 or more people requiring ventilators die anyway. It’s hard to see how long we must flatten the curve to save enough people, and given rise on new cases in Lombardy despite strict quarantine, it’s hard to see whether strict lockdown can really help eradicate virus spread without china-style welding people into their homes.
(3) Combining (1) and (2) it means that “41 000 saved” does not necessarily means “by the end of the day, 41 000 were saved” only “they are saved for now, but may die anyway within next few months”. Vaccines will not be ready fast enough.
(4) There is also no just binary “lockdown”/”do nothing” alternative, meaning its wrong to say “saved lives” by lockdown wouldn’t be saved by some less extreme measures. Masks for all, mass testing, aggressive contact tracing and directed quarantines might not save as much lives as lockdown, but still could save a lot of lives and be less costly than total lockdown. O reven Hansonian “variolation” idea.
(5) Comparing Sweden and Czechia (lax measures, relying on social distancing and socia discipline/vs strict measures and mass mask wearing) we do not see tens of thousands saved in Czechia. Comparing number of deaths, it’s more like only few hundreds were saved in Czechia by now.
(6) Given the costs in Poland and money which will be dedicated to save the companies and complaining that it’s not enough – or given the all-time-record unemployed registered in USA – the difference between “whole economy” and “a real possibility crashing economy into a largest depression in 100 years” is not that large.
ANd before you will say about accounting, in Poland is quite the same. THey also use creative accounting and not all people “with” coronavirus who die, are counted as victims of coronavirus.
At the present rate of growth the USA is going to hit 100,000 deaths in two weeks. Two more weeks from that would be one million deaths, which fortunately won’t happen because even our stupid leaders aren’t as dangerously stupid as you.
Suicide rates MIGHT go up from boredom, though they could well come down from the sense of shared purpose (suicide rates drop in wartime for instance). Murder is way down because of social isolation. Deaths from accidents are also way down.
There’s not going to be any hunger or starvation. Do you not know that food stamps and food banks are a thing?
Hospitals in New York are so overwhelmed right now that the governor of that state requested one million healthcare workers come to New York. The state is also getting humanitarian assistance from Russia and China (which just sent one thousand ventilators). Additionally President Trump saw fit to send the USNS Comfort, a 1,000 bed navy hospital ship, to the Port of New York and New Jersey.
But sure, let’s reopen the economy because you’re an innumerate moron with no grasp of the situation. Who cares about the vulnerable? They’re old anyway–fuck ’em!
Non-covid hospitalizations are way down in New York owing to the lockdown. There are far fewer traffic accidents, shootings, and stabbings. Almost certainly the same is true in London.
btw, even those fantasy numbers are nearly doubling now as yesterday Sweden had 15 deaths, today 28, so in reality situation now is deteriorating in breakneck speeds there.
A bit of hyperbole here:
Daily deaths in Sweden:
30 Mar 36
31 Mar 34
01 Apr 59
02 Apr 69
03 Apr 50
04 Apr 15
05 Apr 28
British roads are among the safest in the world, if not the safest. I doubt traffic accidents in London contribute much to the overall death rate compared to most other countries. The traffic death rate in the US for instance is significantly higher than the UK, nearly 3 times higher in fact.
Stupid mistake and I couldn’t reply immedietely when I noticed because of 3 comments/hour limit: 2/3 of all patients on ventilators die; 3/4 is for 70+ group
Phillip Owen – the eternal pessimist.
To go from 1000 to 5000 cases, Russia clearly hasn’t been following the same trajectory as Italy, Spain and UK
Saint Petersburg and Kaliningrad both have far less cases than the Baltics individually or cumulatively- both of course have high connectivity with Europe.
Plane connectivity for Kazan and Ekaterinburg with Moscow of course has always been very high, including the month that has just passed – but their numbers are fine.
Moscow could get alot worse, who knows?
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/833776/ras10014.ods
While you are correct, according to HM Government London recorded nearly 26,000 traffic accidents of all kinds in 2018. There were 112,000 traffic accidents in all of England.
I don’t know what fraction of those resulted in hospitalization, but it surely can’t be a trivial number.
And it’s not just traffic accidents. Lockdowns also sharply reduce the number of occupational (e.g. falls) and social accidents.
The lockdown also reduces the transmission of all communicable diseases, not just COVID 19.
Based on this comment coming from Anonymous Coward one can expect widespread immunity by summer.
At least the part about why the virus did not spread severely to Beijing, Shanghai, etc, is answered in this paper, published on March 25th.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/25/science.abb4218.full
Essentially, reiner Tor is right that the outbreak was nipped in the bud outside of Wuhan thanks to travel restrictions.
So we might assume that 02 or 03 Apr is the cutoff date where they stopped reporting deaths with commorbidities and started their reduced fantasies in order to save face, as before that deaths were doubling roughly every 2 days, but now even those reduced deaths without underlying conditions doubled in one day. Meanwhile SARS 2.0 deaths with commorbidities presumably did not stop increasing at all, just are not being reported anymore.
No, we might not. I searched around for Swedish info on recent changes in methodology and found nothing. This is your seeing things.
Well, it’s clear that everyone dies eventually, so are you saying that some percentage of them would die within a few months? How do you know it? Especially since we have no idea about the age and comorbidities of the majority of deaths, at least in Italy. I have already mentioned the hypothesis (just as baseless as yours), that maybe the people dying home are often those whose initial symptoms are mild and are not in a risk group, so they just decide to stay home (as recommended), but then their symptoms suddenly deteriorate. (The other big risk group is very old and weak people, who will just die very suddenly with no-one helping them. Like nursing homes getting suddenly depopulated – I bet you that despite the old age of inhabitants, most of them would’ve lived at least two years.)
Would the economy be booming with an uncontrolled epidemic, and the borders closed? (Other countries will kindly close their borders to countries with out of control epidemics anyway, and even if they don’t, people just stop traveling. Hungary never closed its airports to China, but eventually all flights were discontinued after they became economically unviable. People stopped traveling to and from China.)
Yet we don’t have to close down the economy at all, if people are just protected with PPE, and add some temporary mass regulation of activities – whether shopping or cinema – to include wearing it.
Discourse is currently trapped in a fake dichotomy – shutting down economies for more than a few weeks or months is a disaster, while allowing epidemics uncontrolled is another disaster (both are true, but whether the latter is smaller than the former should be unnecessary discussion, as we didn’t have to choose between them).
We have more than a century ago, developed PPE that allows people complete protection from any such viruses – and nowadays it is convenient and comfortable, and designed for workers in physically complicated industries like construction.
Problem is now just a strange cultural prejudice or lack of intelligence, which is preventing politicians from understanding this, and ordering mass war time level of production of PPE for the civilian population.
What people are now are bizarrely viewing it as an “extreme” solution, is because of a childish reaction to anything that covers the face or “looks funny”, and there is not yet positive peer pressure to wear an adequate respirator countervailing this childish reaction.
The fact politicians still resist this and people still laugh about it in forums like this – when it would be just 5 minutes of inconvenience when you leave the home, instead of the 24/7 inconvenience of shutting down a lot of the economy, – an illustration of the unflattering quote about the race attached popularly to Einstein.
I mean that it’s possible that without lockdown, you would have 56.000 deaths in a month, and with a lockdown but with other, less intrusive measures, you will have say 50.000 deaths over six months (numbers are sucked out of my dirty thumb). Which means that judging how many lives were saved by a lockdown just one or two months into the pandemics might be to early. In the southern and central regions of Italy new cases are practically flatlined (slightly going down recently). Which means that despite lockdown, there are still a lot of undetected spreaders. And it’s enough to have few undisciplined arseholes ignoring the lockdown and it will keep going and going, just waiting for an occassion.
Now, the question is, how long the lockdown would have to last, especially when new cases can be imported from abroad? If you can end it with a month, you are a clear winner, you saved thousands. But what if after two months there is no end in sight, you keep discovering new cases (“sparks” per Steve Sailer analogy), and the moment you relax the lockdown, it starts spreading anew? You will still save lives, I presume, but this time much less – possibly at the cost of mass unemployment, and with small business hit hard.
When will vaccines arrive? In a month? Or in 18 months? If the latter, can you keep a whole economy the same as now in Italy or Poland over 18 months?
I mean, I am introvert and I could live that way, but I understand there are people who can’t.
It’s not that I am willing to sacrifise thousands for an economy; it’s just I’m affraid we will damage an economy, we will destroy hundreds of small famili businesses, sent millions to unemployment and thousands will die anyway.
I have parents in risk groups. I would prefer them to live not just 6 month longer, but sixty years longer, if that would be possible. You think I want them die? You think my heart is not broken when I think about what are the possibilities? But what if all we do is not actually helping them (especially when despite all my screams and calls from TV, they just recklessly going around)?
But… what if can protect those vulnerable by trying some other, less drastic measures: obligatory mask wearing, money invested in mass testing capability instead of in helping ruined small business, separation of the most vulnerable, aggressive contact tracing and quarantining those who have or could have contracted this coronavirus. Such measures probably won’t be as effective as total lockdown, but I bet they would still save a lot of lives compared to scenario “We are doing nothing”. Not to mention the more drastic ideas like variolation and “hero hotels”, proposed by Hanson.
Think about this that way: imagine in 2017 president in USA wakes up and say: OMG, people, every year 20 to 60 thousands people die in USA due to influenza and pneumonia! Let’s do a three months-long lockdown to save those lives! WOuld you support such president?
Lockdown is good for many of our physical health at least.
For me, I normally have to walk on a polluted multilane road to an office every day, and sometimes work overnight a couple days a week to compensate for wasting time. My office converted to remote on 13 March. Since then I have wonderful sleep, work little, eat homemade food, exercise every day. My lungs have never been so happy before – breathing only street air through an ABEK-P3 filter.
On the other hand, this attempt of working remotely is a difficult to manage anything, failure, and that is a common opinion of other people as well.
Sure, although per capita people will be driving far more distances in the US, compared to the UK.
If you looked the figures for death rate per kilometre, the difference in safety between the countries should be a lot smaller.
That colored girl is seriously outmatched.
That German-Irish chick looks like she could probably deliver a punch to knock out most the dudes on this page.
Okay, you do have a point. My take is that instead the lockdown should be way stricter, and with extensive testing and separation (not at home, rather in special hospitals) of those tested positive. Basically what China did in Wuhan. I think we might be able to do it more competently than they did, provided we gathered the necessary will.
Let me add that if we were competent to begin with, we could’ve followed the South Korean approach and wouldn’t have had to shut down our economies at all. That we got there in the first place is a sign of shocking incompetence of our governments.
I also wrote above that the half-measures we are implementing might be the worst of both worlds. So we might be in agreement. I detest the Swedish approach because it’s an admission of incompetence: “we cannot do what the Chinese, South Koreans or Singapore did, instead we’re just throwing up our hands like not even most third world countries are doing, just pray it will be okay.”
4.3 million deaths, but let’s say half would have died anyway, the virus was just the last straw, the other straws helped kill them. So I just cut the death rate from corona virus in half.
This is also the point Dr. Knut Wittkowski made repeatedly in his anti-CoronaPanic interview recorded April 2 and released the next day. He says the data we now have in hand all show that the ‘lockdowns’ came too late to be credited with causing the plateauing of new infections. His opinion with 35 years experience in epidemiology and as the Head of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design, Center for Clinical & Translational Science at Rockefeller University in New York.
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGC5sGdz4kg
Transcript:
https://freebirth.ca/blogs/freebirth/perspectives-on-the-pandemic-with-professor-knut-wittkowski
Protip: it doesn’t work like that on the Internet. Save your juvenile attempts at babby’s first ostracism for the school playground. (You’re gonna have some kids eventually, yeah?)
Nobody gives a shit, your drawing attention to me only makes me more interesting to the internet clown posse.
Hi there! It’s not been too bad- work for me has continued as normal( just one day I worked from home) but with the bonus of no traffic and only being stopped once for checking by the police.
Eating great food – unlike many, we are still buying plenty of unpackaged fresh fruit, vegetables (though shopping with gloves) and meat.
Subconsciously I am still uneasy seeing people wearing masks where they don’t normally do -it makes me either temporarily stopping or do some twitch.
As for music- I listened to Wes Montgomery album that was 65 minutes long….. without doing or thinking about anything else (except maybe breathing, by the process of deduction) – it was that good. Extra merit because none of the songs were any jazz standards that I’ve heard of – but the quality of musicianship is that great, it doesn’t matter.
Oscar Peterson – bossa nova- a pleasure
another Oscar Peterson Trio album- the solo’s are magnificent. He was an abnormal talent.
I thought it would be possible to have time to play the piano but this didn’t happen –
‘Ai drug gitara’ is a folk song by Formin that I was intending to learn this week because hadn’t noticed until just now that it was in one of my piano books) – should have time next week to learn to play it- complete with virtuoso flourishes! Technically, I am garbage level on the piano- but to the non-cultured, they would probably think that I’m a genius because of the OTT speed and heavy touch that I play with – just like all these famous, bad and overrated Chinese and Japanese pianists.
More words you type, more incorrect statements. 🙂
I am saying that there was low hanging fruit for the virus in northern Italy because of a mild winter. Also a lot of elderly heavy smokers and the Begramo team had the biggest match in the city’s history (Champions League) with a third of the city attending it then kissing each other in bars until the early hours. Over the last three months in a Bergamo suburb called Nembro, three-quarters of the population are known to have been infected and 0.8 percent of the population seem to have died a COVID-19 related death (this is including all the excess deaths of those who passed away at home undiagnosed with COVID-19). Did that rapid starburst start to the spread kill anyone that would have survived a slow extended spread? A few perhaps, but not all that many.
The rationale for the lockdown is, or rather originally was, not to stop people getting seriously ill but rather stop them getting seriously ill at one time and thus have all cause deaths skyrocket because treatment had become unobtainable as the medical services and hospitals became clogged up and overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients. No one ever said that with a lockdown said we could go beyond preventing overwhelming of the hospitals and consequent rationing / breach of treatment to stop people from dying of COVID-19 that would die even with the best treatment once they were exposed to the pathogen. But that is what is begining to be implied the lockdown will do. This is the spectre of Dread Risk paralyzing the government and preventing an exit from the lockdown now it’s known that it can be done without overwhelming the hospitals.
For such a hypothetical disease, a total national lockdown would be necessary until the facts had become clear. The Wuhan disease is now known to cause serious hospital-requiring-illness or any kind of treatment requiring illness in a much lower proportion of a population that was thought possible a few weeks ago. The overwhelm scenario is not going to happen in an advanced Western economy. However much this is compared to a war, in war or rearmament there is a massive increase in production and employment; this is the opposite and is like to produce the opposite of a post war boom.
The economy might not start up again if the full lockdown is ended after months , and if that happens everyone apart from the super rich is going to spend decades with much-reduced access to medical treatment, and lives will be shortened . So the lockdown is not really going to save more lives that it is likely to take long term, and should be ended in a few weeks. To do otherwise will risk an economic Chernobyl.
So a friend in Moscow may have had coronavirus (my wife spoke to his wife). High fever, severe conjunctivitis, sore throat, but no breathing problems. Healthy guy, athletic, around 50. They called an ambulance, which in Russia means a physician coming to the house. They told him to come to the local office instead (what about infecting other people there?). The physician there who examined him wore no mask, brushed off the suggestion of doing so, and sent him home. Full recovery at home.
Overall, not a very impressive experience, but it happened two weeks ago, hopefully they have become more careful.
Funny if it turned out to be race realism on the sly. That is, let’s pretend there’s no need to isolate, in anticipation that a greater proportion of Swedes than third worlders will isolate anyway.
Oh I don’t have this album.
Although I have a Oscar Peterson album I recommend, that I was listening to already this month (although it is better for summer) as I had the ripped it as FLAC onto my DAP – “Ben Webster Meets Oscar Peterson”.
It’s really a relaxing, lazy, summer music. I don’t know much about Webster, but his saxophone sounds beautiful in this recording.
Do you have a digital piano or midi controller? I found I have a lot more chance to practice now I have a digital piano/midi – it’s easy to find more time for practice, when you can play a few minutes with headphones late at night.
Agreed. The problem we have is too many people taking extreme positions. And then getting themselves into a state of hysteria that causes them to take even more extreme positions. Rational compromises can be made. You cannot address any problem effectively without making calm rational compromises. Both sides of this argument need to take a few deep breaths and calm down. There is no reason to allow the virus to get out of control and there is no reason to destroy the economy and risk social disintegration either.
There’s also the problem that both sides have taken to caricaturing their opponents’ positions. The truth is that (apart from a tiny lunatic fringe) those who believe the corona virus is a huge problem don’t want to totally and permanently destroy the economy. And (apart from a tiny lunatic fringe) the corona-sceptics don’t want millions of people to die just to save Wall Street.
We also need to stop with the hysteria, the name-calling and the conspiracy theories. On both sides.
This is a manageable crisis if we make calm rational decisions.
We also need to understand that this is Unz Review and by its very nature it attracts a disproportionate quantity of lunatic fringers. Those lunatic fringers (on both sides) are not representative of most of the people on either side of the debate. That’s why Ron, in his infinite wisdom, gave us the Commenters To Ignore button.
That’s a bold assumption. I doubt if we will do anywhere near as well. We don’t have competent leaders, we don’t have competent governments, we don’t have competent bureaucrats. And we have an insane and irresponsible media. The best we can hope for is that maybe we might end up being about 75% as competent as the Chinese.
Yep.
btw, your friends themselves need to be really careful as the worst during this disease often tends to come only 3-4 weeks from initial symptoms.
The virus is a fomite. It lives on surfaces. Touching those surfaces is the main means of transmission, not breathing droplets. There is a concentration of virus in faeces. Washing hands is far more critical than wearing masks.
Overall, I don’t think that having Western incompetence and Chinese competence is as bad for us as many believe. China is not our friend, but this incompetence regarding the virus means a number of things.
The air travel industry is on the brink of collapse. It might never recover, but at any rate, it will take several years to recover. This means that immigration to the West is going to slow down for the immediate future. Just think of how much better shape air travel would be in if the West acted competently!
The world might change permanently in ways difficult to predict yet. Because I personally don’t want a large part of the status quo (Globohomo), this is not necessarily a bad thing. Of course, the world could be worse than it was in 2019, so it’s not necessarily a good thing either. And again, this would not be possible with a competent Western response.
In general, societies historically weren’t decadent for very long time periods precisely because being decadent is costly, especially in times of crisis. This is one crisis where it shows how far we’ve descended. It might be a wakeup call. It might be a push to destroy the old order. It might be just a mild forewarning of much worse to come. Or it might be the gate to hell. Let’s hope for the best (while we increase our powers of autism discussing these issues), we can do nothing more.
I’d rather think it’s just an accidental result of incompetence. Though subconsciously there might be something to it.
Oh, bugger off, Thorfinnsson. In Pennsylvania, the pioneer of the “essential business” distinctins, Lowe’s and Home Depot stores are allowed to remain open while the state’s many independent “garden center” stores are by law forced to remain shut.
This is particularly aggravating for those of us who grow our own vegetables. This crap is transpiring nationwide.
I never felt your Franklin Rooseveltian “shared purpose” until I put my confidence in the hands of Rachel Levine:
https://www.usciences.edu/news/2019/Levine_Headshot.jpg
You’re a smart guy, so quit towing the doomer party line about how everyone else just wants to “let people die for the economy.” The economy is still running, to some degree, it’s just that a bunch of godless Democrats are picking and choosing who gets to be open to play ball. Enough.
Hospitalisations lag, lockdown not having an effect yet.
The lockdown in New York State was ordered on March 20, wasn’t it? So well over two weeks ago, ample time to take effect.
I’m not telling you that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in its infinite wisdom, is governed by wise philosopher-kings who have sagely closed only the businesses that should be closed. Though I would suggest that you can order garden supplies online (and probably buy some at the Home Depot). No doubt the Commonwealth has not interrupted the USPS or the parcel couriers.
What I am telling you that without substantial disruptions we have little hope of reducing R below zero until the virus burns through four-fifths of the population to create herd immunity. These lock-downs can be the difference between, say, a quarter million deaths and five million deaths.
Certainly it would be preferable if travel bans and quarantines had been instituted months ago and comprehensive track, trace, and isolate been put in place. But Western countries no longer have the state capacity for that.
Hospitalizations of COVID-19 cases lag.
Hospitalizations of accidents, assaults, etc. do not.
And as the Magyar Miracle pointed out the lock-down didn’t start yesterday either. With a mean incubation period of 5-6 days we’re well into having an impact on COVID-19 cases as well, even in latecomers like New York.
“We also need to stop with the hysteria, the name-calling and the conspiracy theories. On both sides.”
followed by…
“We don’t have competent leaders, we don’t have competent governments, we don’t have competent bureaucrats. And we have an insane and irresponsible media.”
See: irony.
But you would agree that the “best case scenario” in America of 200000 deaths will in fact be significantly less?
If you scale up Italy’s population to America’s size, they are at 75000 deaths–even Italy is very unlikely to get to 150000.
I see even Trump has gone along with this “200000 deaths” scenario in the last week, despite all his skeptism towards the virus. The net result will be Trump successfully promoting himself as a genius who has saved America – by committing to this “best case figure”, when in reality not even 90000 deaths occur.
Even worse – Implausibly he will successfully make himself the main “voice of Christianity” in America due to the ineptness of 1. The Church 2.the opposition – all because he has been promoting Easter and the possibility of reopening the Easter church services…. but the church authorities in most of the west have shown zero fight in services being cancelled – particularly during the Easter week, the most important week in Christianity
Which is the main form of transmission between those is not known, and currently investigated.
For example – while in the thread zone, your air should filter the virus, and you cannot touch your face (transfer the virus to portals of entry).
The remaining danger is only that you do something stupid during decontamination (or did not use the PPE according to directions).
Things like having a hood and having gloves – are useful with this virus, more because they make a decontamination process easier (you can remove the items when you leave the threat zone).
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0054/5826/4182/products/Moldex_9002-01_9230-01_action-01-0918_800x.jpg?v=1576857188
Scandinavians are also famous for socially distancing, during normal times, when there is no epidemic.
This is how people are supposed to queue for buses in Finland (in normal, pre-epidemic times)
https://www.facebook.com/veryFinnishproblems/photos/a.670924783048112/1415577458582837/
In a recent Chinese study investigating aerosol contamination it was found that the most dangerous areas in fact were PPE changing rooms inside hospitals and entrances to the stores/hospitals, so I guess it is way better to remove outer protective clothing and gas masks while being still outside, if possible:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.08.982637v1.full
I saw in YouTube, how they had worries about this idea in Wuhan – you can see how they were training nurses to be careful about this idea not to “resuspend” when undressing at 11:30 in the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rrn7fmOn1o
Strongly agreed.
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/1245456701710569477
Click through; it’s England.