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"Coronavirus and the US" or "We are all going to die!!!!"

barbos said:
Something is fishy with China statistics, it jumped to 4,632 dead
Wuhan (China), the epicenter of the pandemic, today reported 1,290 additional deaths that had not been previously counted and reported, bringing the total number of deaths in Wuhan from 2,579 to 3,869, an increase of 50%, as the result of a revision by the Wuhan New Coronary Pneumonia Epidemic Prevention and Control. As part of this revision, 325 additional cases in Wuhan were also added. Separately, China's National Health Commission (NHC) reported 26 new cases (and no deaths) in its daily
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All statistics, on everything, are shit. Only the depth of the shit varies.

Statistics are compiled by people who don't do the work to which the statistics apply, based on data provided by people who have FAR better things to worry about than whether the figures they report are accurate, complete, or compliant with the specifications requested by the statisticians.

People doing mundane jobs distort statistics about those jobs, both accidentally and deliberately, for a wide range of reasons.

When a task is less mundane, as in the case of emergency and acute medical treatment, this goes double. People who are busy trying to save lives, including their own and those of their colleagues, quite rightly don't give two shits about ensuring that every death is reported accurately and quickly.

Later revisions aren't usually evidence of nefarious deeds; They are evidence that statistics aren't a priority in a catastrophe.
 
barbos said:
Something is fishy with China statistics, it jumped to 4,632 dead
Wuhan (China), the epicenter of the pandemic, today reported 1,290 additional deaths that had not been previously counted and reported, bringing the total number of deaths in Wuhan from 2,579 to 3,869, an increase of 50%, as the result of a revision by the Wuhan New Coronary Pneumonia Epidemic Prevention and Control. As part of this revision, 325 additional cases in Wuhan were also added. Separately, China's National Health Commission (NHC) reported 26 new cases (and no deaths) in its daily
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Click to expand...

How is updating the data with the findings of a commission specifically dispatched to gain a clearer picture once things have calmed down somewhat "fishy"?

NYC jumped over 3000 just two days earlier by including cases spread out over the last few weeks they previously didn't count (cases where no test has been conducted but the physician writing the death certificate nonetheless felt confident enough to mention COVID-19 as the probable cause of death). By simple division, that's about three times as fishy.
 
The actual death toll, both by region/nation/state and globally, will likely not be known ever. Accurate estimates are likely decades away, certainly they won't exist until the pandemic has been completely controlled for at least a few years.

An emergency is a terrible time to try to collect statistics, and we need to be aware that all of the figures are going to be wrong - and will likely be corrected many times as new information becomes available.

That doesn't mean that the numbers are completely valueless - the trends in the figures are likely a fair reflection of actual trends in the real world, much of the time. But people need to stop thinking that the last few digits are significant, and they need to stop assigning to malice changes that are inevitably due to incompleteness.

We should probably also stop listening to journalists, unless they also happen to be virologists or epidemiologists, because almost everything I am hearing from even the most reputable sources is basically wrong. Journalists are still trying to be 'balanced', which on questions of scientific fact is a method to guarantee that you are wrong. This is a pandemic. It's not a political debate, or a matter of opinion - it's a series of facts about reality, which you don't get to agree with or disagree with, you just get to be right or wrong.

Dara O'Briain sums the problem with journalists up perfectly:

IMG_4980.JPG

The epidemiologists, virologists, and other experts at the WHO, CDC, and national health authorities worldwide, all agree that the lockdown needs to continue. But for balance, here's the opinion of a man whose sole qualification is that he's the son-in-law of the most incompetent US President in history.

Fuck off.
 
In russian hospital which treats COVID19 patients they tested doctors (260 of them) for antibodies, 15% had antibodies.
 
bilby said:
The actual death toll, both by region/nation/state and globally, will likely not be known ever. Accurate estimates are likely decades away, certainly they won't exist until the pandemic has been completely controlled for at least a few years.

An emergency is a terrible time to try to collect statistics, and we need to be aware that all of the figures are going to be wrong - and will likely be corrected many times as new information becomes available.

That doesn't mean that the numbers are completely valueless - the trends in the figures are likely a fair reflection of actual trends in the real world, much of the time. But people need to stop thinking that the last few digits are significant, and they need to stop assigning to malice changes that are inevitably due to incompleteness.

We should probably also stop listening to journalists, unless they also happen to be virologists or epidemiologists, because almost everything I am hearing from even the most reputable sources is basically wrong. Journalists are still trying to be 'balanced', which on questions of scientific fact is a method to guarantee that you are wrong. This is a pandemic. It's not a political debate, or a matter of opinion - it's a series of facts about reality, which you don't get to agree with or disagree with, you just get to be right or wrong.

Dara O'Briain sums the problem with journalists up perfectly:

View attachment 27138

The epidemiologists, virologists, and other experts at the WHO, CDC, and national health authorities worldwide, all agree that the lockdown needs to continue. But for balance, here's the opinion of a man whose sole qualification is that he's the son-in-law of the most incompetent US President in history.

Fuck off.
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Would you post this on Facebook so I can share it there, pls?
 
barbos said:
Something is fishy with China statistics, it jumped to 4,632 dead
Wuhan (China), the epicenter of the pandemic, today reported 1,290 additional deaths that had not been previously counted and reported, bringing the total number of deaths in Wuhan from 2,579 to 3,869, an increase of 50%, as the result of a revision by the Wuhan New Coronary Pneumonia Epidemic Prevention and Control. As part of this revision, 325 additional cases in Wuhan were also added. Separately, China's National Health Commission (NHC) reported 26 new cases (and no deaths) in its daily
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

They are going back and trying to figure out how many people died of it during the time they were swamped. Just clearing up a bit of the fog of war, not deceit.
 
How does coronavirus kill? Clinicians trace a ferocious rampage through the body, from brain to toes

On rounds in a 20-bed intensive care unit (ICU) one recent day, physician Joshua Denson assessed two patients with seizures, many with respiratory failure and others whose kidneys were on a dangerous downhill slide. Days earlier, his rounds had been interrupted as his team tried, and failed, to resuscitate a young woman whose heart had stopped. All shared one thing, says Denson, a pulmonary and critical care physician at the Tulane University School of Medicine. “They are all COVID positive.”

As the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 surges past 2.2 million globally and deaths surpass 150,000, clinicians and pathologists are struggling to understand the damage wrought by the coronavirus as it tears through the body. They are realizing that although the lungs are ground zero, its reach can extend to many organs including the heart and blood vessels, kidneys, gut, and brain.
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If people are recovering from Covid-19 and don't have antibodies (it is new so maybe they do and antibody tests are not good enough yet)....

How did they defeat the virus?
 
repoman said:
If people are recovering from Covid-19 and don't have antibodies (it is new so maybe they do and antibody tests are not good enough yet)....

How did they defeat the virus?
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I would imagine that people have all sorts of antibodies developed to battle all sorts of viruses. The problem would seem to be in developing a test that reliably isolates and detectects the specific antibody that fights Covid-19 from all the others.
 
It's fair to say that every true statement you can make about any biological system would probably be improved by adding "... although in reality it's more complex than that".

The immune system is hideously complicated - as it has to be, after several billion years of simultaneous arms races against rapidly evolving enemies too numerous to imagine.
 
This is an impossible question to answer because the initial conditions can't happen, but...

If the 1918 flu had hit the USS Roosevelt today with 1918 immunity levels of the crew and no vaccines, what would the death toll be compared to Covid-19?
 
I had a virus question. Are the chances of a mutation higher if more people are infected (ie the reproduction process occurs more, therefore some oops in reproduction will happen)? This would be one reason I'd assume a zero to 'herd immunity' plan would be very risky.
 
repoman said:
This is an impossible question to answer because the initial conditions can't happen, but...

If the 1918 flu had hit the USS Roosevelt today with 1918 immunity levels of the crew and no vaccines, what would the death toll be compared to Covid-19?
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I would assume that the death toll on the Roosevelt from the 1918 flu would have been much, much higher. The last I heard is the there was so far only one death from Covid-19 out of approximately 600 infected, most asymptomatic (total crew of ~5,000). According to the CDC there was about a 10% death rate from those infected with Spanish flu overall. Further, the Spanish flu was most fatal for younger people like the typical member of an aircraft carrier's crew where fatality from Covid-19 is primarily among crusty old farts like me.
 
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Jimmy Higgins said:
I had a virus question. Are the chances of a mutation higher if more people are infected (ie the reproduction process occurs more, therefore some oops in reproduction will happen)?
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Yes. Each transmission is a new opportunity for mutation.
This would be one reason I'd assume a zero to 'herd immunity' plan would be very risky.
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It's also why developing an effective vaccine will be difficult.

And why past pandemics have tended to have multiple peaks - and sometimes the first peak isn't the worst.
 
skepticalbip said:
repoman said:
This is an impossible question to answer because the initial conditions can't happen, but...

If the 1918 flu had hit the USS Roosevelt today with 1918 immunity levels of the crew and no vaccines, what would the death toll be compared to Covid-19?
Click to expand...

I would assume that the death toll on the Roosevelt from the 1918 flu would have been much, much higher. The last I heard is the there was so far only one death from Covid-19 out of approximately 600 infected, most asymptomatic (total crew of ~5,000). According to the CDC there was about a 10% death rate from those infected with Spanish flu overall. Further, the Spanish flu was most fatal for younger people like the typical member of an aircraft carrier's crew where fatality from Covid-19 is primarily among crusty old farts like me.
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The descriptions of troopships arriving in France in 1918, with half the number of people who embarked in the USA (the other half having been buried at sea) back this up. The 1918 pandemic was particularly lethal to the strongest and fittest members of the population, and ripped through the military, where troops were packed into training camps and then crammed even more closely onto ships.

It's hard to imagine how the US Army could have made worse conditions if they had tried.
 
Another study from China.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-smokers-vapers-special-danger-coronavirus.html
An early study from China looked at 78 hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Researchers found those with a history of smoking had 14 times the risk of needing a higher level care, requiring a ventilator, and/or dying.
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I find the number "14 times" hard to believe. I mean it were true then, excluding older folk, dead would have to be almost exclusively smokers. That would be hard to miss. And based of 78 cases? why can't they make it bigger?
 
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