Deadly Wuhan Coronavirus

Sheltie

Sheltie

Fratty and out of touch.
I've never been a big fan of Dr Phil but I agree with his recent assertion that many of the mental health aspects of the quarantine are being ignored. The resulting depression and anxiety being experienced by many may have lasting effects on the social psyche for years, even decades, to come.

I also think many of the world's noted scientists are doing a great disservice by giving us their well-researched scholarly analysis only to be followed in the next breath by childish jabs at various politicians.
 
Spaceman spiff

Spaceman spiff

Noble
Sweden has more new deaths in a single day than weve had in Finland during this whole time.

Were going to have to start opening up our country soon, and im afraid what will happen when we do.
 
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AD1184

AD1184

Celestial
You probably all recall the Stanford University antibody study on volunteers in the Santa Clara area of California that made some waves a few days ago. Within it, the authors purported to demonstrate an incidence of Covid-19 of around three percent in Santa Clara County and an infection fatality rate of 0.12-0.2% (on a par with seasonal influenza).

COVID-19 Antibody Seroprevalence in Santa Clara County, California

However, there is this review which finds the study lacking:



The author points to the following:
  • The test used by the Stanford team has a 'high' rate of false positives (observed to be 0.5% in the manufacturer's own calibration testing, but could be 1.2% or higher). This number sounds small, but could throw off the results significantly, as only a small percentage of study volunteers tested positive.
  • It is not necessarily a random sample of Santa Clara County residents, and could be biased towards those who have had Covid-19 symptoms. The study could have been a means by which people thought they could get tested because they have had symptoms of Covid-19. Some respondents may also have recruited others in similar circumstances through social media and instant messaging.
He also mentions that the Stanford study suggests that Covid-19 is spreading very much faster than previous pandemics. I think this is possibly the case, however, as Covid-19 seems to have a higher transmission rate than influenza.

The lead and principal authors of the paper had previously written an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal to the effect that the infection rate and mortality could be inferred from testing of professional American basketball players. They concluded that the infection had spread widely and the mortality rate was thus low. This was a rather dubious inference, given that professional sportsmen are not a representative sample, and it may have influenced the authors to try and offer a more robust substantiation of their earlier unfounded claims.

Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?
 
pepe

pepe

Celestial
Just saw a guy on the news make a good comparison with numbers of people by using Western Europe as equal to the U.S.A and Western Europe comes out as having twice as many deaths. I know time does play a part here but when looking at it on a national level alone it does make the U.S look so much worse off.

Just a bit of perspective that could allay some worry.
 
AD1184

AD1184

Celestial
pepe said:
Just saw a guy on the news make a good comparison with numbers of people by using Western Europe as equal to the U.S.A and Western Europe comes out as having twice as many deaths. I know time does play a part here but when looking at it on a national level alone it does make the U.S look so much worse off.

Just a bit of perspective that could allay some worry.
Click to expand...
The five largest countries in Western Europe have a population about the same as that of the US. Collectively they have about twice as many Covid-19 deaths recorded at present.

Ranking countries in terms of deaths per capita in Worldometer shows the following:
upload_2020-4-22_14-16-11.png

There are fourteen here, but this is really a top ten, as San Marino, Andorra, Sint Maarten and the Channel Islands are tiny micro-statelets and not real countries. San Marino is, in geographical rather than administrative terms, a town in northern Italy, which we know is a particularly badly-hit part of that country.

If you exclude New York from the US statistics, then the rest of the country is faring even better.
 
Thomas R. Morrison

Thomas R. Morrison

Meh
AD1184 said:
You probably all recall the Stanford University antibody study on volunteers in the Santa Clara area of California that made some waves a few days ago. Within it, the authors purported to demonstrate an incidence of Covid-19 of around three percent in Santa Clara County and an infection fatality rate of 0.12-0.2% (on a par with seasonal influenza).

COVID-19 Antibody Seroprevalence in Santa Clara County, California

However, there is this review which finds the study lacking:



The author points to the following:
  • The test used by the Stanford team has a 'high' rate of false positives (observed to be 0.5% in the manufacturer's own calibration testing, but could be 1.2% or higher). This number sounds small, but could throw off the results significantly, as only a small percentage of study volunteers tested positive.
  • It is not necessarily a random sample of Santa Clara County residents, and could be biased towards those who have had Covid-19 symptoms. The study could have been a means by which people thought they could get tested because they have had symptoms of Covid-19. Some respondents may also have recruited others in similar circumstances through social media and instant messaging.
He also mentions that the Stanford study suggests that Covid-19 is spreading very much faster than previous pandemics. I think this is possibly the case, however, as Covid-19 seems to have a higher transmission rate than influenza.

The lead and principal authors of the paper had previously written an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal to the effect that the infection rate and mortality could be inferred from testing of professional American basketball players. They concluded that the infection had spread widely and the mortality rate was thus low. This was a rather dubious inference, given that professional sportsmen are not a representative sample, and it may have influenced the authors to try and offer a more robust substantiation of their earlier unfounded claims.

Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?
Click to expand...

A similar study by USC and the L.A. Department of Public Health that was first published two days ago found very similar results in the population of L.A. - I wonder if the unreliability of the tests could explain their findings as well. I think it's reasonable to assume that the bulk of cases have gone unreported, and the virus has spread much wider than we've been able to detect until now:

Early antibody testing suggests COVID-19 infections in L.A. County greatly exceed documented cases
 
AD1184

AD1184

Celestial
Thomas R. Morrison said:
A similar study by USC and the L.A. Department of Public Health that was first published two days ago found very similar results in the population of L.A. - I wonder if the unreliability of the tests could explain their findings as well. I think it's reasonable to assume that the bulk of cases have gone unreported, and the virus has spread much wider than we've been able to detect until now:

Early antibody testing suggests COVID-19 infections in L.A. County greatly exceed documented cases
Click to expand...
There are around 2.6 million cumulative confirmed cases globally. There are likely more actual infections than that in Britain alone. I showed my working a few pages back.
 
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nivek

nivek

As Above So Below
Unexplained extra deaths show coronavirus death toll is FAR higher than official global figures: Study of just 13 regions hit by Covid-19 shows glaring omission of 31,000 fatalities

Analysis of death tolls in 13 countries and regions hit by coronavirus has revealed tens of thousands of unexplained deaths that could be linked to the pandemic but are not being counted in official totals.

Data reveals that some 88,000 more people died in the locations studied between March and April this year than in previous years - a figure known as 'excess mortality' - but that only around 56,250 of those deaths were included in the official coronavirus tolls.

The places analysed include: Spain, England and Wales, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, Lombardy, New York City, Istanbul and Jakarta.

That leaves some 31,750 deaths over seasonal averages that are not being included in the total, but may be directly or indirectly caused by the virus.

That figure will include patients who died outside hospital, were not tested for coronavirus when they died, or those who died from non-coronavirus conditions because they were unable to get treatment.

Experts have previously argued that excess deaths during disasters should be included in death tolls because it provides a more complete picture when systems that typically count deaths are overwhelmed - though others say the figures are not accurate.

(More on the link)

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nivek

nivek

As Above So Below
Revealed: America's first COVID-19 death was a healthy 57-year-old California woman who died suddenly at home after complaining of flu symptoms in February - THREE WEEKS before first official fatality

Patricia Dowd died at home on February 6 in Santa Clara County, which takes in San Jose and is just south of San Francisco and the Bay Area, but her death went unreported as a coronavirus death because she was not tested and her family presumed she had died of a heart attack. She had been suffering flu like symptoms and was working from home. She sent an email to a colleague at 8am and was found dead by her daughter two hours later.

It was previously thought that the first US death was in Washington State on February 29. Posthumous tests carried out in Santa Clara have since revealed that at least three others died before that date. It reinforces how far behind the US was in responding to the virus and if lives would have been saved had testing been rolled out sooner. As of Thursday morning, there were more than 856,000 cases of the virus across the US and more than 48,000 people had died.

 
nivek

nivek

As Above So Below
China puts a city of 10 million 'on lockdown' to curb a new coronavirus outbreak after a student returning from New York 'infected more than 70' people

A major Chinese city has adopted draconian quarantine measures against the novel coronavirus after a new outbreak was detected there. More than 70 people have been infected and over 4,000 are being tested in Harbin after the virus was believed to be 'imported' into the city by a student who had returned from New York, according to media reports. Officials have banned gatherings and ordered communities to closely monitor non-local visitors and vehicles in the city of around 10 million. Checkpoints have been installed at the airport and train stations, to screen those coming from elsewhere.

27546872-0-image-a-2_1587636816830.jpg
 
nivek

nivek

As Above So Below
Is coronavirus causing sudden strokes in young adults?

 
SOUL-DRIFTER

SOUL-DRIFTER

Life Long Researcher
Thomas R. Morrison said:
Great idea: let's ignore all of the empirical data demonstrating that widespread home quarantining is the only known effective measure for impeding the spread of the virus and saving lives...and spit-ball some improbable and complex unproven ideas and try them out on the public at large so we can preserve the broken and draconian system of corporate domination of the world...and if a few million people have to suffocate to death on their own blood plasma along the way when it doesn't work out so well, so be it. After all, the Nazi experiments on Jews may have been unconscionable and morally revolting - but we learned a lot of useful medical data that way, right? /end sarcasm

The current economic infrastructure isn't worth saving; we have a global cabal of plutocrats gang-raping the working class all around the globe, and their sociopathic obsession with their insatiable greed is the reason why we weren't prepared for this horrific pandemic, and let it spread like wildfire throughout our world at the key moment when we could've acted and saved millions of human lives. The whole system needs to burn to the ground so we can build a better world where human lives are valued and protected more passionately than corporate profits and elite power structures. In that world, we'd spend hundreds of billions of dollars per year on medical and agricultural research to save lives, instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars per year carpet-bombing entire nations of poor people who happen to have a darker shade of skin. So the next time one of these nightmarish diseases rears its head, we'll be able to develop a vaccine in a matter of weeks instead of years, and millions of innocent people don't have to die every time nature throws us a nasty curve ball.

Everything about our civilization was horribly broken before this pandemic swept the globe. Better to let that sickening sociopathic orgy of exploitation die, than to let millions of good people die agonizing deaths that we can prevent by keeping everyone at home until this viral shit-storm blows over.

We can certainly afford the bill - trillions more are being spent to save corporations, than the mere billions of dollars required to keep our people alive for the next few months while we self-quarantine. I give exactly zero shits about the value of the stock market - the value of human life transcends a dollar figure. And if the stock portfolios of the plutocrats collapse - and those bloated narcissistic sociopaths have to start working for a living, for a change, then I'd call that justice.

And in case anyone is still operating under the delusion that this virus spares people under 65 - the data is far messier, and far more grim: getting infected with this virus is no picnic for any age group:

CDC analysis shows coronavirus poses serious risk for younger people

New analysis of coronavirus risk: Young adults are not invincible - STAT

Younger Adults Make Up Big Portion of Coronavirus Hospitalizations in U.S.
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You and many of the models of statistics are in serious error and built up on fear mongering in an attempt to forever change the country...that will be a disaster.

Herd immunity is the best way to go, but not in your mind.
Lets just all stay at home for until a tried and proven vaccine is ready. Which could be when?...18 months 2 years 3 years. And what would the country look like economically by then and what would the lives lost due to other issues created by not the covid-19 but by other issues it has created by this lock-down.
Your rant is a socialist one who wants socialistic communism which would lead to a dictatorship with all the limited rights and limited freedoms that come with that.
Anyone who opposes this are labeled narcissistic sociopaths. This is as twisted as it gets. That is the group where 'what is right is now wrong and what was wrong is now right. They want to change meanings, representations, freedoms and our rights in this country.
You want this then is it not much easier to move to those countries that reflect this and be happy ever after.
 
SOUL-DRIFTER

SOUL-DRIFTER

Life Long Researcher
AD1184 said:
There has been more than one attempt to downplay this pandemic coming from Stanford. The authors from Stanford wrote in this article that current data allow for the possibility (there article is filled with a lot of 'may', 'might', 'could') that the true death rate is half that of seasonal flu. The problem with this argument is that we are emerging from flu season right now in the temperate north, and seasonal flu does not put anything like this sort of burden on hospitals. If it was half as bad as the flu, then it would put half the burden on hospitals. We know from scenes in Northern Italy, Spain and Wuhan that this virus leaves utter carnage in hospitals.
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We must also learn from Sweden. Whom basically went with the herd immunity idea and never shut anything down but carefully monitored their elderly and sick
 
SOUL-DRIFTER

SOUL-DRIFTER

Life Long Researcher
Me and my wife never wore face masks and never will. We just go along with social distancing. The lock-down needs to be lifted...slowly, but not waiting any longer.


Bye
 
nivek

nivek

As Above So Below
Indonesians Disobeying Quarantine Locked in Haunted House as Punishment

Every country has its own way of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. Indonesia, it seems, has decided to take the spooky route. One regency in Indonesia has decided to punish people breaking quarantine by locking them inside a haunted house. Desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess.

The regency of Srangen in Central Java has had an influx of people native to the region trying to escape lockdown in cities by returning to their small hometowns. Which only makes sense. Like many places around the world, Srangen has a mandatory quarantine of 14 days for any people coming in from other regions. Some folks, however, are not obeying this quarantine order. Sragen Regent Kusdinar Untung Yuni Sukowati made a statement that, at first, seems like the natural sort of hyperbole that comes out during times of crisis. She said:

“If they disobey self-isolation [orders], several villages have asked for my permission to quarantine them in an abandoned elementary school or abandoned houses.

I gave my permission. If need be, they should be locked inside — in a haunted house if necessary. But we’d still feed them and monitor them.”

It seems like exasperated hyperbole, but it’s not. Kusdinar made good on her threats of paranormal punishment when two people who had agreed to self-isolate broke said self-isolation. Kusdinar described the measures taken:

“Two Plupuh residents agreed to self-isolate but they violated the order. So they were locked inside an abandoned haunted house. Had they obeyed their order they wouldn’t have been locked in there.”

According to Kusdinar, the abandoned house is located in a rice paddy and is known by the locals to be haunted. It is not known how long the two people would be kept inside the haunted house, nor what manner of haunting the house is accosted by. Chances are it’s a better place to be than jail, and the two people locked inside will likely have better stories to tell on the other end of this than many others.

Srangen isn’t the only regency in Indonesia to resort to paranormal enforcement of quarantine. The Tuk Songo village in the Purworejo regency, also in Central Java, has recently drawn attention online due to villagers dressing up as pocongs—zombie-like creatures of Indonesian folklore—to guard the gate of the village at night and spray disinfectant on anyone who passes through.

house-2113824_640-570x379.jpg

Americans have been known to pay good money for the exact same treatment.

You have to do what you have to do, I guess. But I guarantee that if America started making people stay in haunted houses for breaking self-isolation, no one would be self-isolating. We love that stuff.

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nivek

nivek

As Above So Below
Wuhan laboratory scientists 'did absolutely crazy things' to alter coronavirus and enabled it to infect humans, Russian microbiologist claims

A leading Russian microbiologist has claimed the coronavirus is the result of Wuhan scientists doing 'absolutely crazy things' in their laboratory. World renowned expert Professor Petr Chumakov claimed their aim was to study the pathogenicity of the virus and not 'with malicious intent' to deliberately create a manmade killer.

Professor Chumakov, chief researcher at the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow, said: 'In China, scientists at the Wuhan Laboratory have been actively involved in the development of various coronavirus variants for over ten years. 'Moreover, they did this, supposedly not with the aim of creating pathogenic variants, but to study their pathogenicity.

'They did absolutely crazy things, in my opinion. 'For example, inserts in the genome, which gave the virus the ability to infect human cells. 'Now all this has been analyzed. 'The picture of the possible creation of the current coronavirus is slowly emerging.'

He told Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper: 'There are several inserts, that is, substitutions of the natural sequence of the genome, which gave it special properties. 'It is interesting that the Chinese and Americans who worked with them published all their works in the open (scientific) press.

'I even wonder why this background comes to people very slowly. 'I think that an investigation will nevertheless be initiated, as a result of which new rules will be developed that regulate the work with the genomes of such dangerous viruses. 'It's too early to blame anyone.'

He said the Chinese scientists created 'variants of the virus … without malicious intent' possibly aiming for an HIV vaccine. Professor Chumakov is also connected to Russia's Federal Research Centre for Research and Development of Immunobiological Preparations.

Vladimir Putin's spokesman warned this week against allegations that coronavirus was manmade. 'In the situation where there is not enough information that has been supported and checked by science ... we think it is unacceptable, impossible, to groundlessly accuse anyone,' said Dmitry Peskov.

Earlier Veronika Skvortsova, head of Russia's Federal Medical-Biological Agency (FMBA) and Putin's ex-health minister, was asked if the pandemic virus could be manmade. 'This question is not that easy. It demands a very thorough study,' she said on Russia's Channel One. 'None of the versions can be ruled out.'

She said: 'We can see that a fairly large number of fragments distinguishes this virus from its very close relative, SARS. 'They are approximately 94 per cent similar, the rest is different… 'I think that we must conduct a very serious research.'

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nivek

nivek

As Above So Below
Coronavirus is causing blood clots and sudden strokes in otherwise healthy patients in their 30s and 40s, doctors report

Doctors have warned that the coronavirus looks to be causing strokes among adults in their 30s and 40s who otherwise are not particularly unwell, or even not showing any symptoms of the virus at all. They have also said that younger people are less likely to call 911 and seek treatment because they fear the hospitals are overwhelmed by coronavirus patients.

There is an increasing body of evidence to suggest that the Covid-19 infection makes patients more prone to blood clots, and while the reason behind this is unclear, a stroke can be a consequence of that. Strokes occur when a blood clot reaches the brain, blocking an artery that supplies blood to the vital organ.

Giving details of five patients he and his colleagues have treated, Dr. Thomas Oxley, a neurosurgeon in the Mount Sinai Health System in New York told CNN that all were under the age of 50, and either had mild or no symptoms of the Covid-19 infection. "The virus seems to be causing increased clotting in the large arteries, leading to severe stroke,' Oxley told CNN. 'Our report shows a seven-fold increase in incidence of sudden stroke in young patients during the past two weeks.

'Most of these patients have no past medical history and were at home with either mild symptoms (or in two cases, no symptoms) of Covid,' he added. 'All tested positive. Two of them delayed calling an ambulance.'

For younger patients, it is not common to have a stroke, especially in the large vessels in the brain. A letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine from Oxley's team said that over the last 12 months, their hospital system has treated just an average of 0.73 patients for stroke under the age of 50 years old.

That's fewer than two people a month, stark contrast to the five they have treated in the last two weeks.

Doctors have said younger patients are less likely to call for an ambulance because they have heard how overwhelmed hospitals are with coronavirus cases, but have urged them to do so if they show symptoms of the virus or of a stroke.

Other doctors are reporting that they are seeing 'unprecedented' levels of blood clotting in coronavirus patients, according to a separate CNN report.

(more on the link)

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Thomas R. Morrison

Thomas R. Morrison

Meh
SOUL-DRIFTER said:
Herd immunity is the best way to go
Click to expand...
What you're proposing makes the most diabolical terrorist plans of al-Qaeda seem trivial by comparison. Congratulations - you're worse than Osama bin Laden.

Given the infectiousness of this virus, we'd have to allow 70% of the American population to become infected with this virus before herd immunity could begin to offer our population any protection from it.

The estimates for the case fatality rate of this virus range from 1% to 6%.

So you're suggesting that we allow between 2.3 million and 13.77 million of our fellow American citizens to die agonizing and grisly deaths on par with the worst forms of mortal torture.

And since we don't yet know if there's any significant level of immunity once somebody has recovered from this virus (which has already mutated into a least three different variants), it may be impossible to develop a herd immunity to this virus. So those 2-14 million dead Americans could die for nothing.

That's your brilliant idea: slaughter millions of Americans in a foolish and evil gamble, on the off chance that we could get the economy up and running again quickly.
 
Autumn Sun

Autumn Sun

Adept
SOUL-DRIFTER said:
You and many of the models of statistics are in serious error and built up on fear mongering in an attempt to forever change the country...that will be a disaster.

Herd immunity is the best way to go, but not in your mind.
Lets just all stay at home for until a tried and proven vaccine is ready. Which could be when?...18 months 2 years 3 years. And what would the country look like economically by then and what would the lives lost due to other issues created by not the covid-19 but by other issues it has created by this lock-down.
Your rant is a socialist one who wants socialistic communism which would lead to a dictatorship with all the limited rights and limited freedoms that come with that.
Anyone who opposes this are labeled narcissistic sociopaths. This is as twisted as it gets. That is the group where 'what is right is now wrong and what was wrong is now right. They want to change meanings, representations, freedoms and our rights in this country.
You want this then is it not much easier to move to those countries that reflect this and be happy ever after.
Click to expand...

We need water cannons, ah the fun of watching good folks tumbling down the street while having there clothes and shoes torn off.
 
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