SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

[Revan]

0.23% is actually still pretty high isn’t it?

Flu is 0.1%, so twice as lethal as flu. Pretty bad, especially with it being more contagious than the flu (and no vaccine for covid), but not as bad as we currently think it is (20-30 times deadlier than the flu).

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Yes very high. And the number of people who need care/ICUs is still way beyond capacity.

Not in Germany.

The 0.23% figure is mortality in Germany, right? And it is low. The lowest I’ve seen in any country with a decent number of cases. High compared to flu but extremely low for COVID-19. The mortality rate in Italy is closing in on 10%!

 

[TMDaines]

Oh yeah, I'm sure one of them did. I more meant it's scary that you could be feeling absolutely fine but still end up fatally infecting someone. Underlines the importance of keeping distance from the vulnerable but in this case someone had to be in contact with her as she needed care. What can you do but hope you don't have it?

Stories like this need to be vetted and then shared by leaders during their press conferences. They hit home more than stats ever will.

 

[Revan]

The most striking thing about the German stats is how few people are critical. They might have loads of ventilators but they’re not using them. Yet.

To me the biggest unknown variable is time. How long the virus has been endemic in a country. It seems to take several weeks before the really sick get really sick. So in the first few weeks after the virus reaches a country the mortality rate will be very low. I suspect it’s been endemic in Italy much longer than in any other European country (via their links to Chinese factories)

Good point. Which means that the virus has been here longer than December.

If it has been endemic longer, than it only means that the number of infected is much larger. Eventually, Germany is gonna have more deaths, but all the countries are further up in the curve than we thought they are (which again, is quite good). If this is the case (and totally speculating here), then the peak is quite near, and in the end, the virus is not gonna kill as much as we think it will.

 

[Skills]

They are around 0.7-0.8. They are also doing a lot of testing (even more than Germany). It could be that countries with more testings are having lower mortality rate, simply because they count more people as infected (by testing them in the first place), while those that do not do many testing, have a higher mortality rate (cause they detect only people who are sick).

If so, that is very good news. If the virus is 3-4 times less lethal than we think it is, then that is great.

So what do you think is happening with Wuhan's figures? Wuhan I believe still has a mortality rate of about 3% - and that's despite them expanding the definition of a 'case' about halfway through to anyone who shows the symptoms and not requiring a test (they had a crazy 20k jump one day). Did they just stop registering new cases after a while?

 

[Lyricist]

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

Only 2 serious/critical cases at the moment, apparently.

Well, I kind of think the site is just not being fed with info from German sources.
Within the last 2 days, thereve been 4 deaths in my city alone. Everyone above the age of 80, 3/4 with preexisting conditions. But I think they might just not be giving out that much live info about critical cases? I’m just guessing though.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Speaking of which, the global death rate for “closed cases” (i.e. when they have either recovered or died, ignoring people still unwell) has been increasing over the last week and just hit 10%.

 

[TMDaines]

Germany has 0.23% fatality rate, by far the lowest from all countries with over 1000 infections. I am saying this every day, but this is extremely weird and I am surprised why no one (researchers, media) are not talking about this. They either don't know to count, or there is something more going on. Which as of now, I see four possibilities (in decreasing order of likelihood):

1) They are counting deaths differently. In Italy, if you are 100 years old and have all three of cancer, AIDS and diabates, and then get covid19 and die, you still count a death from covid19. Is this true for Germany or not?

2) They are doing more testings than other countries (apparently), so maybe their number is correct, while the number of other countries is wrong. So if Germany has same cases as Spain, but 20-30 times less deaths, then the real number of infected people in Spain is 20-30 times higher. This is very good news for the world, it means that the virus is much less lethal than we thought.

3) The virus there has mutated to something less lethal. Why only there?

4) Beer is superior to wine. Germans drink beer, Italians, Spanish and French drink wine.

They publish daily in English and German: https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/Gesamt.html

As I said the other day, they aren’t publishing testing data, other than positive tests, and most of their positives are middle aged as opposed to elderly. Not sure if that says more about their testing protocols or something else.

 

[BeforeKeanetherewasRobson]

Germany has 0.23% fatality rate, by far the lowest from all countries with over 1000 infections. I am saying this every day, but this is extremely weird and I am surprised why no one (researchers, media) are not talking about this. They either don't know to count, or there is something more going on. Which as of now, I see four possibilities (in decreasing order of likelihood):

1) They are counting deaths differently. In Italy, if you are 100 years old and have all three of cancer, AIDS and diabates, and then get covid19 and die, you still count a death from covid19. Is this true for Germany or not?

2) They are doing more testings than other countries (apparently), so maybe their number is correct, while the number of other countries is wrong. So if Germany has same cases as Spain, but 20-30 times less deaths, then the real number of infected people in Spain is 20-30 times higher. This is very good news for the world, it means that the virus is much less lethal than we thought.

3) The virus there has mutated to something less lethal. Why only there?

4) Beer is superior to wine. Germans drink beer, Italians, Spanish and French drink wine.

On the 10 o clock news on BBC, they said Italy is probably understating Covid 19 deaths in the elderly as if they die, they're not being tested so NOT being classed as a Covid 19 death?

Are there any Italians on here? I'm fascinated as to why they DON'T panic buy stuff. I get common sense says take what you really need and everyone should be ok so why are people in the UK panicking?

Mentality?

 

[Pogue Mahone]

So what do you think is happening with Wuhan's figures? Wuhan I believe still has a mortality rate of about 3% - and that's despite them expanding the definition of a 'case' about halfway through to anyone who shows the symptoms and not requiring a test (they had a crazy 20k jump one day). Did they just stop registering new cases after a while?

IMO the mortality rate in Wuhan never hit Italian rates because they were able to massively ramp up their ability to treat very sick patients very quickly. Mind-blowing stuff like building huge new hospitals overnight. The scary death rates seem to be driven by overwhelmed healthcare systems.

 

[Skills]

On the 10 o clock news on BBC, they said Italy is probably understating Covid 19 deaths in the elderly as if they die, they're not being tested so NOT being classed as a Covid 19 death?

Are there any Italians on here? I'm fascinated as to why they DON'T panic buy stuff. I get common sense says take what you really need and everyone should be ok so why are people in the UK panicking?

Mentality?

From my experience most European countries don't have many of these big superstores for bulk buying - so I guess it's not really a part of their culture? Most markets are closer to your tesco express where you go and pick up what you need often in a basket I guess.

 

[Revan]

So what do you think is happening with Wuhan's figures? Wuhan I believe still has a mortality rate of about 3% - and that's despite them expanding the definition of a 'case' about halfway through to anyone who shows the symptoms and not requiring a test (they had a crazy 20k jump one day). Did they just stop registering new cases after a while?

No idea tbf. I also don't trust a single word the Chinese government said.

But Korea are doing a lot of testings and it is at 0.7 (with only one single death under 40 years old). Switzerland (whom I believe do a lot of testings) are also under 1%. Singapore (who are the best at managing this) are at 0. Austria are at under 0.3%. Bahrain (highest testing per capita), is also at around 0.3%.

Essentially, there is a strong correlation between the number of tests and number of deaths. Of course, there is not much you can conclude from this, but my first assumption would be that the countries with a high number of deaths have more infected people than they think they have.

 

[Sarni]

IMO the mortality rate in Wuhan never hit Italian rates because they were able to massively ramp up their ability to treat very sick patients very quickly. Mind-blowing stuff like building huge new hospitals overnight. The scary death rates seem to be driven by overwhelmed healthcare systems.

Also Italian demographics makes it easier for virus to kill in large numbers as pointed out before. It’s basically like you designed it with the purpose of making it the most vulnerable it can be.

 

[Skills]

IMO the mortality rate in Wuhan never hit Italian rates because they were able to massively ramp up their ability to treat very sick patients very quickly. Mind-blowing stuff like building huge new hospitals overnight. The scary death rates seem to be driven by overwhelmed healthcare systems.

True, but what about Wuhan's mortality rate compared to what we're seeing in Germany & South Korea? Are the true cases in Wuhan also out by about 10x?

 

[redshaw]

2 critical in Germany on worldmeters has been that for 1-2 weeks now. This figure at least is a bit suspect.

If Germany are doing a stellar job, they could pass on some care procedures and equipment info to Italy and the rest of the world. Doctors in Italy as seen in the videos are seeing everyone end up on a ventilator and dying.

 

[Sarni]

No idea tbf. I also don't trust a single word the Chinese government said.

But Korea are doing a lot of testings and it is at 0.7 (with only one single death under 40 years old). Switzerland (whom I believe do a lot of testings) are also under 1%. Singapore (who are the best at managing this) are at 0. Austria are at under 0.3%. Bahrain (highest testing per capita), is also at around 0.3%.

Essentially, there is a strong correlation between the number of tests and number of deaths. Of course, there is not much you can conclude from this, but my first assumption would be that the countries with a high number of deaths have more infected people than they think they have.

I think 0.7% range looks most realistic from the data. Korea data is most reliable due to the number of tests they performed. It’s very high but well short of 3% which would be scary or Italy’s 9% which is terrifying.

 

[sammsky1]

It was on the foreign office website in November though, albeit the extent of it being very unclear. The incompetence / fear of looking bad in front of the national government of the local officials is a vastly more likely cause of the cover up than some bizarre biowarfare scenario where they tried to engineer a not very deadly virus that would spread all round the world in a heartbeat.

As I wrote in a post before, i had a terrible wicked bout of flu in December and the symptoms were exactly what is being described for convid19

 

[Dante]

Well, I kind of think the site is just not being fed with info from German sources.
Within the last 2 days, thereve been 4 deaths in my city alone. Everyone above the age of 80, 3/4 with preexisting conditions. But I think they might just not be giving out that much live info about critical cases? I’m just guessing though.

https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Fallzahlen.html

According to this page (via Google Translate):

"Note on the table: Since March 17, 2020, only the cases electronically transmitted to the RKI by the health authorities via the federal state have been shown here. Due to the delay in reporting between the knowledge of cases on site and the transmission to the RKI, there may be deviations from the e.g. figures currently published by the federal states. The RKI will now update the reporting data (with data status 0:00) every day in the morning."

So there seems to be some disconnect between local reports and those of the central authority. But not enough to account for the massive discrepancies between the German figures and those coming from elsewhere.

No word on the number of 'critical' patients, though.

 

[pratyush_utd]

Yeah, this is why the media spin shitting on the government for not immeadiatly employing a ”suppression” strategy, as if it is the clear and obvious path out of here, is so misguided. The report is clear that their modelling suggests this whole situation is worse than we previously imagined and we would have to keep up these intense “suppression” measures until a vaccine is found, which could realistically be 18 months, maybe allowing a month of relaxed measures every so often.

At least Bill Gates thinks the assumptions in the Imperial modelling were a bit too harsh and the latest data from China could see a more optimistic revision. Will people shit on the government if strategy than changes again accordingly?

I don't think UK has changed it strategy. Your chief scientific advisor ( who I must say is quite impressive gentleman) explained clearly what he thinks is the best way forward. It's just the backlash from people who see what other country is doing and Imperial College model ( who knows how accurate it is) forced the government to take some measure to arrest public anger.

 

[TMDaines]

Are there any Italians on here? I'm fascinated as to why they DON'T panic buy stuff. I get common sense says take what you really need and everyone should be ok so why are people in the UK panicking?

Mentality?

I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time there. A crude generalisation would be most Italian families eat far less processed and preprepared food, shopping more in local bakeries, greengrocers, delis and butchers. You don’t really panic buy the kind of stuff you use to make a freshly cooked meal every day. Panic buying in your local shops, as opposed to faceless supermarkets, wouldn’t be a good look.

I cook most nights and would it find hard to not need to go shopping every week for milk, eggs, fruit, veg and meat anyway. I reckon three weeks eating through the freezer and cupboard would be as long as we could last, which thankfully is the maximum amount of time any individual needs to isolate in a 2-person household under current UK guidance!

 

[Revan]

Also Italian demographics makes it easier for virus to kill in large numbers as pointed out before. It’s basically like you designed it with the purpose of making it the most vulnerable it can be.

Definitely. The distribution of infections in Italy is: 0-50 (25.4%), 51-70 (37.4%), 70+ (37.2%). This clearly means that they are under-reporting the number of infections in young population (median age in Italy is 47.3, which means that for sure more than 50% of the population is under 50 years old). So, their effective fatality rate is way lower than the reported one.

When you do more testing, you report a lower fatality rate by simply finding infected people who do not show symptoms (or have very mild symptoms). If you test only sick people, then fatality rate is higher cause you are missing so many infected people who are not sick.

 

[The Firestarter]

Is this lock down actually happening.

I've heard nothing else all night and to be honest I'm fed up with my boss moaning he doesn't want people to work from home because of lack of productive work!!!!

The point is it's protecting people, if he doesn't trust us (proven by this situation) then long lerm I'm gone once it picks up again.

I've grown to hate people I work for through this drama.

Tell your boss to feck off. Shits going down anyway, let's walk tall at least.

 

[Dante]

I don't think UK has changed it strategy. Your chief scientific advisor ( who I must say is quite impressive gentleman) explained clearly what he thinks is the best way forward. It's just the backlash from people who see what other country is doing and Imperial College model ( who knows how accurate it is) forced the government to take some measure to arrest public anger.

It looks to me like we have a roadmap, and we're following it step-by-step as we assess the situation on the ground.

The fact we're closing schools on Friday rather than last month doesn't mean it's a u-turn. It just means that threshold for that particular step wasn't met until now.

 

[The Firestarter]

It looks to me like we have a roadmap, and we're following it step-by-step depending on the situation on the ground.

The fact we're closing schools on Friday rather than last month doesn't mean it's a u-turn. It just means that threshold for that particular step wasn't met until now.

The model they used was wrong, it was widely reported. Why so you keep ignoring this, and still do with "not a u turn" line?

 

[Revan]

I think 0.7% range looks most realistic from the data. Korea data is most reliable due to the number of tests they performed. It’s very high but well short of 3% which would be scary or Italy’s 9% which is terrifying.

It has to be under 0.7% IMO. Kids apparently get as easily infected, but most of them do not show signs. And well, they hardly go to drive through testings. They also got heavily hit at the beginning when there were more unknown, and them sharing a border with China means that the virus might have been circulating longer than they thought (and so missed many infected people without symptoms in the initial stage).

I think Germany's numbers might turn out to be right in the end.

Maybe it is just a wishful thinking from me.

 

[horsechoker]

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/51947129

Coronavirus: Zlatan Ibrahimovic launches fundraisers to help fight coronavirus pandemic

 

[TMDaines]

Definitely. The distribution of infections in Italy is: 0-50 (25.4%), 51-70 (37.4%), 70+ (37.2%). This clearly means that they are under-reporting the number of infections in young population (median age in Italy is 47.3, which means that for sure more than 50% of the population is under 50 years old). So, their effective fatality rate is way lower than the reported one.

When you do more testing, you report a lower fatality rate by simply finding infected people who do not show symptoms (or have very mild symptoms). If you test only sick people, then fatality rate is higher cause you are missing so many infected people who are not sick.

The problem with all this data is no country is publicly going into detail on their testing protocols and sharing exactly how many people are being tested in each age bracket and passing/failing. Everyone is speclating on why the results are the way they are and there could be many possible reasons. It’s quite possible that the age distribution of confirmed cases in various countries is more indicative of the testing being done, than being a true representation of the distribution of actual cases.

 

[Dante]

The model they used was wrong, it was widely reported. Why so you keep ignoring this, and still do with "not a u turn" line?

Closing schools was always on the agenda, depending on when the data showed it needed to done.

A u-turn would be a scrapping/change in policy. This is simply a continuation of the existing policy.

 

[BeforeKeanetherewasRobson]

Thanks.

I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time there. A crude generalisation would be most Italian families eat far less processed and preprepared food, shopping more in local bakeries, greengrocers, delis and butchers. You don’t really panic buy the kind of stuff you use to make a freshly cooked meal every day. Panic buying in your local shops, as opposed to faceless supermarkets, wouldn’t be a good look.

I cook most nights and would it find hard to not need to go shopping every week for milk, eggs, fruit, veg and meat anyway. I reckon three weeks eating through the freezer and cupboard would be as long as we could last, which thankfully is the maximum amount of time any individual needs to isolate in a 2-person household under current UK guidance!

Thanks.

Funnily enough, I went to the supermarket today and most of what I got was fresh fruit or veg (and some milk, bread water).

(No little shops by me).

The toilet paper phenomenon in UK is still odd.

 

[Revan]

The problem with all this data is no country is publicly going into detail on their testing protocols and sharing exactly how many people are being tested in each age bracket and passing/failing. Everyone is speclating on why the results are the way they are and there could be many possible reasons. It’s quite possible that the age distribution of confirmed cases in various countries is more indicative of the testing being done, than being a true representation of the distribution of actual cases.

Yes. In any case, I think we can all agree that the true fatality rate is lower than the official data. Considering that the official fatality rate is number_of_deaths/number_of_diagnosed_infected_people if we assume that there are infected people which are not tested, then the official rate is an overestimate. The only question is how much an overestimate it is. My bet would be that assuming that countries are not cheating by not reporting deaths, the country with the lowest fatality rate (and a large number of fatalities) has the closest approximation to fatality rate. And then you need to adjust it by age, which will lower it further down.

 

[Red Stone]

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/51947129

Coronavirus: Zlatan Ibrahimovic launches fundraisers to help fight coronavirus pandemic

We could eradicate COVID-19 forever by letting the virus catch Zlatan.

I'll collect my Nobel Prize whenever, thanks.

 

[Dante]

Yes. In any case, I think we can all agree that the true fatality rate is lower than the official data. Considering that the official fatality rate is number_of_deaths/number_of_diagnosed_infected_people if we assume that there are infected people which are not tested, then the official rate is an overestimate. The only question is how much an overestimate it is. My bet would be that assuming that countries are not cheating by not reporting deaths, the country with the lowest fatality rate (and a large number of fatalities) has the closest approximation to fatality rate. And then you need to adjust it by age, which will lower it further down.

That would be Italy. Which is very worrying.

 

[DavidDeSchmikes]

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[Nogbadthebad]

All the talk of military lockdown is misplaced I think.

We have just 135,000 police after tory cuts and at 95,000 active personnel, a smaller military than at any time since waterloo for the same reason.

Yes, they are armed, but there are two issues with that. First, asking your armed forces to fire on your own civilians is pretty much game over for a society. And if they ever did, it changes the rules forever. There are 65 million people, guns or not they are not winning that fight.

Johnson will, if he is sensible, avoid testing any of that at all costs.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

It looks to me like we have a roadmap, and we're following it step-by-step as we assess the situation on the ground.

The fact we're closing schools on Friday rather than last month doesn't mean it's a u-turn. It just means that threshold for that particular step wasn't met until now.

So what changed between last Friday and this Friday that meant closing schools a week later than Ireland was the right thing to do? Come on now. It couldn’t be more obvious that the Uk went with what they thought was the best approach (based on whatever outcome they prioritised - presumably economic?) but had to back down when it became obvious they were a total outlier and the public were furious about their more laissez faire strategy.

To be honest, I can see some logic in their approach. Get this thing over as quickly as possible. A prolonged economic shock can kill more people than a virus. If they strongly believed that that was the right thing to do then the onus was on them to share their rationale with all of their neighbours and convince them to do the same. Refusing to accept that no European country can act in isolation and we all need an aligned approach smacks of the Brexit bloody-mindedness that sums up BoJo and his advisors.

 

[TMDaines]

The model they used was wrong, it was widely reported. Why so you keep ignoring this, and still do with "not a u turn" line?

They are not and never have been using a (single) model. That isn’t how this works. They’ll be taking the outputs of all the leading research groups in the UK and internationally. New modelling will be factored in all the time, plans will evolve.

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[hobbers]

Nothing wrong with making U-turns in this sort of situation. Nobody actually knows what's best, you can run models and simulations until the coronas come home but at the end of the day the countries that fair the best will be the ones with the most flexible and pragmatic approaches.

And on that note we are doing a heck of a lot better than mainland Europe. The only countries out ahead are the ones you'd expect. Japan, Singapore and S Korea, albeit after an initial falter.

 

[OutlawGER]

2 critical in Germany on worldmeters has been that for 1-2 weeks now. This figure at least is a bit suspect.

If Germany are doing a stellar job, they could pass on some care procedures and equipment info to Italy and the rest of the world. Doctors in Italy as seen in the videos are seeing everyone end up on a ventilator and dying.

We don't get much info about this kind of stuff in Germany.

Our very first deaths "arrived" (unbelievably) late too. France had 80+ deaths with the same number of infections while we were (officially) still at 0.
I think our gov is hiding stuff to prevent panic in our population.


I personally don't trust in any of these numbers.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Nothing wrong with making U-turns in this sort of situation. Nobody actually knows what's best, you can run models and simulations until the coronas come home but at the end of the day the countries that fair the best will be the ones with the most flexible and pragmatic approaches.

And on that note we are doing a heck of a lot better than mainland Europe. The only countries out ahead are the ones you'd expect. Japan, Singapore and S Korea, albeit after an initial falter.

On what criteria?

 

[horsechoker]

Nothing wrong with making U-turns in this sort of situation. Nobody actually knows what's best, you can run models and simulations until the coronas come home but at the end of the day the countries that fair the best will be the ones with the most flexible and pragmatic approaches.

And on that note we are doing a heck of a lot better than mainland Europe. The only countries out ahead are the ones you'd expect. Japan, Singapore and S Korea, albeit after an initial falter.

In this case I wouldn't say the UK is doing better than anyone, it's just that it's been affected after countries in Europe were.

I agree there isn't anything wrong with a u-turn but it does feed into the theory that they are making it up as they go along. Furthermore, this notion that Britain are following mathematical and scientific advice implies that other countries haven't. From what we know so far, the only thing that works in preventing new cases is social distancing.