Good. Real signs of the flattening of new daily cases of Coronavirus or #CCPVirus in Italy, and possibly in Spain. Instead, ponder that if Italy didn’t slow the spread the 6,500 new cases on March 21 could have become 17,000 new cases every day by now.
Italy appears to have peaked — starting on March 21st — but may need to stop keeping sick people at home
On March 9th when Italy had about 9,000 cases in total, and 500 deaths, the government declared a quarantine across the whole nation. By March 11 everything that could be shut down, was. These changes appear, finally, to have stopped the exponential growth in new cases about 10 days later. But even after three weeks of lockdown there are still 5000 new people getting infected every day. One professor, Andrew Chrisanti, thinks it is because they are telling infected people to stay home instead of isolating them from their families. Presumably if Italians live in larger extended families, they must get the infected out of homes.
“In our opinion, the infections are happening at home.” Crisanti helped coordinate the coronavirus response in Italy’s affluent northeastern region of Veneto, where blanket testing was introduced at the start of Italy’s outbreak in the second half of February. That helped identify cases and limit contagion much more successfully than in the neighboring Lombardy region where only people with severe symptoms are tested, and only in hospitals.
Lombardy has since been hit with 6,360 registered coronavirus deaths, far more than any other Italian region, whereas Veneto has recorded just 392 fatalities. However, the Lombardy outbreak was much bigger from the outset. — Stefano Bernabi, Reuters
In the three weeks since the nationwide quarantine was called, the total cases expanded from 9,000 to 100,000, and deaths increased from 500 to 10,000.
Numbers and graphs from Worldmeter
Spain — may be peaking now.
Too early to tell.
….
France is still rising
….
The UK is expecting numbers to rise rapidly in the next two weeks
“It was announced today one in four NHS doctors are off work sick or in isolation. Professor Andrew Goddard, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said about 25 per cent of the doctor workforce is off, either with coronavirus or because a family member or housemate is ill.”
….
USA — 20,000 new infections a day — growing 16% a day
Australia
This is likely a real plateau, but due to slowing down international arrivals — it may be temporary. Community spread could still take off in the next few weeks. Since we aren’t testing “out there” we don’t know. And with 900 House Parties in Brisbane on the weekend (that we know of) the virus might be quietly partying too.
Thanks to some luck, Australia has closed borders, mandatory quarantine, mostly closed schools, and a lot of people are staying home, so perhaps the toll won’t rise further. Watch this space. In this case luck means — we’re lucky it’s not winter. We’re lucky those infected are in younger age groups so the death rate is lower. Mostly we’re lucky we could learn some harsh lessons from Italy, Spain and the rest of the world first, and still get away with being unprepared and incompetent.
Now is not the time to lift the restrictions. But here’s hoping we don’t need them for too many weeks.
….
There always a lag
After any policy change, the true rate of infections slows straight away, but there is a lag of 1- 14 days until that shows up in cases. No matter how much testing we do the lag can only shrink a little, because it’s hard to detect a virus during the incubation period, and without random testing there is also a lag until the person turns up for a test, and then gets results. Hence any flattening we see now is still likely due to actions taken 1 – 2 weeks ago.
Some commentators are watching the death rates, but that lag is even longer — more like 2 – 3 weeks later.
My reference for new cases shows quite different results. A much better bell curve for Australia.
25/3 380
26/3 379
27/3 371
28/3 460
29/3 344
30/3 266
and apart from the sudden jump on 28/3, a near perfect bell curve. If it continues, the 3 week build up looks like we will be down to a single digit new cases in three weeks.
However the graph here shows a jump on the 29th to 500? Perhaps it is a day behind and that corresponds to the 460 peak shown in my site on 28/3?
So if the data drops suddenly today, we are on our way to eradication of this virus in Australia. Wonderful.
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And there is one other major discrepancy of March 22 which shows 520 new infections where the data I am using shows half that at 280.
The difference may be whether ship borne infections are included, for example. The arrival of virus bearing ships and planes from Italy can
be significant enough to distort the smooth behaviour of a closed sample. It would be a matter of policy as such imported cases do not reflect
at all on the measures being taken domestically.
However it is looking good. On your graph, tomorrow will be a day of high expectation.
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The UK is on course to have a pretty low ‘ excess winter mortality rate’ that horrible official term’, as it has Been a light flu season and covid deaths combined with flu deaths will likely not be as high as in a bad flu year as in 2014.
We can manage a bad flu season without shutting down our economy, putting our people under house arrest , scaring people witless and destroying the economy. That is not to say that we don’t need to take sensible precautions against the differences of covid 19 but surely that is even more true in a bad common flu season which regularly kills far more, or to address the 140,000 ‘ avoidable’ deaths , according to the uk govt, that occur each year out of total deaths of 600,000.
I don’t know the equivalent figure in Oz but there are far bigger dragons to fight than corona virus although sensible precautions and a vaccine are desirable
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This isn’t just a ‘bad flu’. This is viral pneumonia. Italy has had over 11,000 deaths in a few weeks and that is with a total shutdown. No one much is overreacting, but you should be able to walk your dog if you keep meters away from everyone else. And a walk in the countryside or large park should be without a health risk to anyone. That is overreaction but as you know, people take liberties with other people’s lives.
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In Australia, the beaches were not closed, until the police saw how crowds behaved. The invulnerables acted as if there was no actual requirement for social distancing. I saw large groups of people close and talking. Nothing wrong with that in normal circumstances but these are not normal circumstances.
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You mean you saw pictures of this. I saw the same (Bondi) pics – it looked bad. But when viewed close up most of the crowd were in very small groups, couples or singles and they were for the most part 2 or more metres apart. Beaches are zones highly exposed to UV from Sun, sky and even reflected of sand and water. UV is fatal to micro-organisms. The beach is a relatively clean, UV-sterilised zone. Fresh salty air blows over the beach further sterilising the area. Bugs will die quickly on a sun-drenched beach. I have found NO research evidence showing beaches as a respiratory viral exposure risk.
Going to the beach is one of the few really healthy things Australians do. Fresh air, exercise, UV light that increases Vit-D levels (important for disease resistance and health) – this should be encouraged not banned. Most people who have been critical of beach-goers are people who NEVER go to the beach.
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Article in The Australian today pointing out that Italy and Germany have quite different methods of recording the deaths of their covid19 patients.
Italy records all deaths of covid19 patients as due to the virus, even if the main reason for their death wasn’t the virus.
Germany records the deaths of covid patients only if the cause of death was determined to be the virus.
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Interesting. I cant work out which basis is being used in Australia, but I suspect it is the Italian system.
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Its about time we and the government STOPPED PANICKING, and that includes you Jo we need to be on the side of evidence just like global warming – I’ve been right about this all along, Summer has protected us and by winter we should have a controlled deterioration but might have Cloroquine in the arsenal by then.
Lets look at some evidence, in response to this UN dictated “Emergency” the government has shut down the economy costing maybe a quarter trillion dollars, $250 Billion) and is spending 130 Billion on a virus that has caused 17 deaths as of yesterday, thats 380 Billion dollars of damage for 17 deaths or 22 Billion per death, all over 70 and all with comorbidities.
On the other hand the government encourages grannycide with the RET and energy policy which kills probably 2-10000 every winter. All of the 17 deaths would probably have occured anyway in a month or so due to the governments no winter heating policy! I don’t see any move by the government to allow grannies to heat their homes this winter, the grannycide continues, this year to be increased by cold induced Corona spread.
Hypocrisy!
The true serious infection rate has proven not to be 10% but under 5% in Australia its 1% (Summer/Autumn serious infection rate), our fatality rate is 0.7 per million population, the fatality rate from RET induced fuel poverty is likely to be over 100 per million. The NH should fall to this level during their summer. Perhaps governments should let the virus rip over summer to immunise their populations for next season at a point their hospital seasons can cope.
Not to mention that the actual spread is likely about 10 times reported cases. That makes the serious infection rate about 0.1% or 0.5% in Winter. Now that a fast IGG blood test exists we should be doing a random survey to work out the true extent of infection.
“Social Distancing” does nothing recent japanese research shows virus present in microdroplets, this is an Aerosol virus. Drop it, it is ineffective. Like Ekka flu, this virus can travel “On the wind” the only hope is geographic containment and Heat, Whether that be Summer or Space heating. The advice needs to be Stay in Warm places above 25 deg keep windows closed and do not leave your town or suburb, get or make submicron (0.1 u or better HEPA filters) for your aircon. Drop the price of Electricity to under 10c per kWh. In contrast every supermarket still has their aircon set to 18 degrees and hospitals at 15 deg and I’ll wager no attempt has been made to filter virus or microdroplets from their air ( just to make sure you get infected there ). These measures are thousands of times cheaper than the ones we are using.
Finally the Australian government hasn’t even bothered to try to handle this for minimum damage. To do this they need to map infections and quarantine geographically localities with infection. No movement out of infected areas except essential services with manned quarantine stations. There are 4400 infections in Australia but there are 15269 towns. Most of Australia DOES NOT HAVE THIS VIRUS, and we need to keep it that way. Demand on the hospital system can be managed by containing spread geographically.
If a locality does not have the virus then don’t cripple its economy, make sure noone can travel from an infected area to an uninfected one. Move any patients and the people quarantining with them into a designated quarantine zone, particularly in a warm climate. I’m in favour of all convalescing patients being flown by the airforce to N Queensland or NT or North WA. You could probably fit all 4400 patients into under 100 C310 flights. Cairns probably has enough hotel beds to house ALL OF THEM. Even give them their own beach to lie on.
There is no need for the economic damage! Its Insane.
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In correct, it didn’t protect Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia or Thailand at all.
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Bulldust
Indonesia 0.4 deaths per Million Pop
Phillipines 0.7 deaths per Million
Malaysia 1 death per Million Pop
Thailand 0.1 deaths per Million Pop.
World Average
4.8 deaths per Million Pop
Take out imported deaths from Tourism and the toll is even lower.
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@ bobl
Stop citing crap statistics from the Philippines, Indonesia Thailand & Malaysia.
Why ?
An example : The Philippines has 115 million people.
Forty Five people have died there from COVID 19
But only 1300 diagnosed !
Huhhhh ?
Most people are poor on less than $600 US a month.
It costs a lot to get a test.
It costs to see a quack.
And most people have mild symptoms and do not bother with either.
But the entire country is in lock down
Because for the 20% of people who get this disease it can be catastrophic !
Similar conditions apply in Thailand, Indonesia, & Malaysia.
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Air cons at 18 C.
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Who called my name?
We are trusting stats from the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia now? I’d as soon trust temperatures charts from GISS.
If you’d cited Singapore and South Korea I would have taken it seriously. Germany is doing pretty well too… because they are testing. It’s hardly summer there, not in South Korea.
What we will find, in my opinion, is that the death rate from this bug is around 1% when all cases are known. At the moment Australia is barely testing, and Western Australia is lagging, even by Australia’s meagre standards. This good news here is that we probably have 10-20 times as many cases as we are reporting, but most of them are minor events symptomatically speaking. Consequently the CFR is probably an order of magnitude lower than we think it is.
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C 130 ?
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Oops finger trouble, I sometimes wish I could actually type
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Thanks for that bit of common sense Bob.
The government has not pulled back to examine the whole CV19 situation and has not bothered to identify all relevant facts: all they do is act too late, if at all, with the main focus on The Media.
The economic, social and mental health considerations have been put aside and the future of jobs in Australia looks perilous.
KK
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Yes Keith, a most Disproportionate response much cheaper and more effective methods exist using real Quarantine in a geographically isolated place without the need to shutdown the country. All that’s needed is to control movement on major roads, nothing else.
They actually did it with the Diamond Princess passengers, so we know they know how to Quarantine, – Quarantining them in NT. This should be happening to every case.
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@Bill in Oz
Serious Infection Rate currently in Australia is 28/4460 = 0.7% not 20% even Italy Has a serious infection rate of 3.9%
20% is no longer correct.
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Tdef, O guess some people can not visualize exponential math. Left to treat like a normal flu this virus increases 25 to 30 percent a day. So call it 27 percent growth unchecked for 30 days starting with 1000 cases. ( A number most reach before defensive protocols)
30 days = 1,300,503 infected
40 days = 14,195,439 infected
50 days = 159,000,000 infected
Starting with one instead of 1000, 60 days untreated becomes
1,691,310 infected. May feel that this is essentially what happened in China before January 23. And it essentially grew unfettereed for 10 more days before the massive quarrantines kicked in.
Potentially 18 million infections in China.
Now if one started with one dollar, and invested ZERO additional dollars a year, and every year for 74 years, made 24 percent on that one dollar intialy investment, you would die with $18,461,223.00 dollars.
( Dang, where can I get 27 percent on my money?)
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David A
I guess some people just can’t tell exponential growth from linear or no growth, like Daily cases shown by Jo which exhibits not quite linear growth except for France, or Daily deaths which for Australia is best described as a constant < 1.
Looking at a cumulative graph and screaming exponential is unscientific, exponential behaviour needs to be seen in the daily histogram and it is NOT, it's seen in the cumulative graph and even there it looks linear to me.
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Bob .. you do realise how limited the testing has been in Australia, yes? As in very limited.
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The sick don’t exist huhhh ?
Bu#gger that you [Snip] AD !
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I reckon that if we hang in there and just keep it friendly , that eventually calm will return.
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For the record WA has tested about 0.5-0.6% of the population to date.
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And WA has the worst figures by a mile – PER CAPITA.
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Thanks bobl.
I have read with dismay over the past couple of weeks the premature and panicked comments from everywhere.
Take a breath everyone.
It is not as bad as the fake media are telling us.
It may spread farther because of the long incubation period but the virus itself is no more dangerous than many others we have lived through in the past.
If you subject every flu in the past to the same scrutiny you will find similar results.
Before the attacks on my comments begin, think about where this started and who is pushing the panic.
Check out the many accounts on social media of the so called war zone hospitals under siege. When people go to these hospitals they find them virtually empty.
Also the CBS in the US has been caught out pushing fake news using footage from an Italian hospital and claiming it is a hospital in New York.
Fake event anyone?
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That might be correct Scott. Or it might not.
Certainly you’ve got the media nicely taped.
However, can you show me in that “scrutiny” of the flu that you speak of, where the hospitals have been massively overwhelmed, where ICU beds can’t cope, and where national leaders have had to beg companies to produce ventilators that have never produced those machines before? Where PPEs are in short supply? Where coffins containing the dead have to be stored in ice-rinks?
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This isn’t automatically viral pneumonia. Many people don’t get to that stage, in fact in Victoria more than 95% of cases don’t even get hospitalized.
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John, the exponential are fooling again here. Compare current serious/critical with the number of cases 10 days to 21 days ago, as that is the time to serious critical. The Diamond Princess still has 95 sick and 15 serious critical.
Germany numbers looked like Aussie numbers a few days ago. Now there are almost 2 k Germans serious/ critical, plus 645 dead, and only 13,500 recovered. It has to play out, and the recent cases in the exponential growth stage have not had time to become seriously ill, or die, or recover.
Global CFR on complete cases is 19 percent dead and increasing.
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TdeF — The Worldometers graph calls it a day at GMT time I think. That won’t fit well with countries putting out final daily figures on other clock schedules. Yours are probably more accurate.
But as I said, don’t get too excited just yet. I’m hopeful, but we may be in the calm before the community spread rise. The stay at home order is good but not strict. People are still partying and going to work. We are still not random testing or mass testing. We wont know if we have community spread until there is a rise in pnumonia cases needing ICU. If this is spreading among the young, there might be quite a lot of community spread before enough people need the ICU.
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The thing that is most striking is that civilisation has now been divided, into essential, and non-essential components.
I imagine Jordan Petersen saying , as he is wont to do, ” That’s dangerous.That’s very dangerous for a lot of people.”
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Did you know that, in Spain I think it was,it is now reported that professional non-essential people have been ordered into their houses, joining the “common or garden variety” of non-essential persons in lockdown.
The language is fascinating.
I also hear, increasingly , “War, war, war ; China, China, China”
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For a change I think it is probably good for truckies and garbage collectors to hear that they are essential, while lawyers are non-essential.
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Yes, it has also been good for people to realise that the people behind the tills, the shelf stackers, those clearing up, are all valuable members of society and not an automaton who you can ignore as you chat on your mobile whilst ignoring the person on the till.
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Yep no lawyers needed at judge-only trials behind closed doors.
In reality you don’t need the judges either; they could find themselves decreed non-essential in short order too.
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“Exclusive – USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue: ‘The Real Modern-Day Heroes’ Are Farmers, Ranchers, Truckers, Supermarket WorkersExclusive – USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue: ‘The Real Modern-Day Heroes’ Are Farmers, Ranchers, Truckers, Supermarket Workers”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/03/30/exclusive-usda-secretary-sonny-perdue-the-real-modern-day-heroes-are-farmers-ranchers-truckers-supermarket-workers/
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So Jo who has the job of deciding is essential or not? Let’s hope we don’t go down that road because blog sites might be categorised as non-essential.
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Looks like we have at least two people here who want this blog site shut down. I for one want it to remain open. It’s one of the best around.
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Shut down a blog site because of Corona virus? That makes no sense at all.
Firstly it’s not a business, there is no actual charge for the service and unless you are paying regularly and that would be nice but entirely voluntary.
And there is absolutely no personal contact, the social separation apart from being electronic only, there is a minimum of 2,000km for most of the world as that is the distance of Perth from just about everywhere.
You cannot even pick up a virus from Jo’s blog.
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I would say that the staff that keep our power stations running 24/7 would have to be some of the most essential staff right now, along with medical staff.
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For the non-essentials we have this lovely Ark which will take them to Mars to establish a utopia. We shall dub it the B Ark.
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Should we put them on the B ship?
If you don’t know what I mean then you just haven’t lived…
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OOPs before I get Chipped, the “B Ark” I think is the correct reference.
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Jo, there are still people going to work & some shops open here in SA.
But most of the shops are essential services : food, supermarkets, service stations etc.
I notice that the other shops which remain open are getting hardly any foot traffic & so very low business.
The exceptions are Bottle shops and Smoking product shops.
But I guess such drugs are essential for many people’s mental health !
🙂
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Your source looks a lot more useful.
Worldmeter numbers have looked a bit… casual to me. The point that has been confusing me with the Australia Worldmeter graphs is the distinct spike and then drop that had been appearing on the ‘New Infections’ tables.
It was quite clear on 4th, 10th, 16th, 22nd (six day gap) and now on the 29th (7 day gap). The fact the graph spikes and then drops again suggest that data from the day after is being brought forward. Why it has been in a 6 day cycle I have no real idea.
What I find interesting with the covid19data graphs is the breakdown by state. When considering Australia we need to remember the obvious point that Australia is bloody big with large gaps of very thinly populated areas. So, especially considering the restrictions on crossing state borders, we probably need to be considering not Australia as a whole, but each state as a separate petri dish.
So if we look at the State day by day new cases the suggestion is that NSW peaked last week and is now firmly in the down side. Australia as a whole isn’t really showing that yet but each state didn’t become infected at the same time. It would seem that Victoria is still yet to peak and apart from Qlds the other states are still statistical noise at this stage.
Other considerations might be that Victoria – or at least Melbourne – is in real terms a depressing dystopia with miserable weather while Queensland is nominally a climate a lot less virus friendly.
Also the low figures for South Australia are CLEARLY based on the lack of inferior Convict Scum in our overall genetic make up and the fact that as the Murder Capital of the country the virus is too fearful to fully cross the border. Clearly. No Snark. Honest.
Remember kids, Intentional Self Harm is the 14th biggest killer in Australia and statistically more people will die from it in the next 48 hours than the current Covid19 totals. So remember to joke, find humour in things and keep an eye on your peers.
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I make no apology for repeating this AGAIN
I cannot speak for other countrys data, but if it is collated in a similar way to Australia…..
..IT IS HEAVILY CORRUPTED.
The simple tally of “new confirmed cases” is useless without correcting for the number of tests done on that day,
More tests…more positive results
Fewer tests …fewer positive results
..and Australias testing rates have been hugely variable , day to dat sometimes DOUBLE the quantity compared to previous days !
This is why there are huge “spikes” and variations in the graphs.
Folks, please think about what data you are reporting and check it validity before you post rubbish.
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And it is wonderful to see static results and more bell curves in the other data, no thanks to the appalling WHO.
I think there is no reason for a WHO to exist under the politicized umbrella of the United Nations. Any more than the formation of the IPCC by the WMO in 1988. Putting formal disciplines inside the United Nations opens up the fields of international technical and professional cooperation to the opportunistic manipulation of the myriad of political opportunists representing the tin pot military dictatorships of the world.
It is notable that Figueres and family are embedded in the UN in areas where they have political ambitions but Ms. Figureres is an anthropologist. What on earth is she doing running the IPCC? And Indian train engineer Paucheri before her. This is exactly what I mean.
The World Health Organization should not be a political one, but a medical one. And meteorology should be by meteorologists, not opportunists and socialists. The idea that ‘climate is not the weather’ is insulting to meteorologists, allowing ratbags like Flannery to pose as self appointed ‘climate scientists’. Without weather climate does not exist. The cost to society has been incredible, the greatest waste of public and international funds in history. Over 350,000 giant windmills largely in countries which do not need them.
The UN needs to become what it was, a forum to prevent world conflict. It has metastasized into a government, corrupting both health and meteorology into political tools.
And the EU should not be a supra national government with its own army and government but what it was, a common market with Shengen rights and the option of adopting a single currency, which is utterly unnecessary in a world where few people use cash. Especially in a pandemic.
The UN/EU both stand exposed as fr*uds, political bureacratic giant machines seeking power at all and any cost. And they are playing with our lives, not helping us.
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Updated:
One professor, Andrew Chrisanti, thinks it is because they are telling infected people to stay home instead of isolating them from their families. Presumably if Italians live in larger extended families, they must protect the homes.
“In our opinion, the infections are happening at home.” Crisanti helped coordinate the coronavirus response in Italy’s affluent northeastern region of Veneto, where blanket testing was introduced at the start of Italy’s outbreak in the second half of February. That helped identify cases and limit contagion much more successfully than in the neighboring Lombardy region where only people with severe symptoms are tested, and only in hospitals.
Lombardy has since been hit with 6,360 registered coronavirus deaths, far more than any other Italian region, whereas Veneto has recorded just 392 fatalities. However, the Lombardy outbreak was much bigger from the outset. — Stefano Bernabi, Reuters
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From my reading, the days of the large extended Italian family are long gone. One figure was that 30% of young men are only children who live at home with their parents at age 40. And sometimes an only grandson. I have seen that in Australia. The same in many Catholic families. I remember when families would have 13 children and some still do, but it is extremely rare now with only one or two children being far more common. These societies are aged by world standards, which is the likely explanation for the high death rate, preexisting conditions.
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My Mum was one of 14. She passed away last week after a couple years of fairly advanced dementia (so we were well prepared for the eventuality). She had lung infections off and on for a couple weeks leading up to last week, culminating in a heart attack. She made it through that for a temporary reprieve in hospital (apparently she ate a meal), but passed a day or two later. At almost 90 she had a pretty good run all told, and the demetia would have gotten her eventually.
The kicker? She was in Andorra, which has the fourth highest CCP virus rate in the world per capita, but it is not clear if the virus got to her or not. I am not sure if there was much of an investigation post mortem, given their health system is probably overrun at the moment. Andorra has a similar number of cases to WA, with a population of circa 70-80,000. They rely on day tourists (shopping due to low VAT of 4.5%) and skiing, hiking etc for their economy.
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So sorry to hear that mate .
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Jo
But that is what we have been saying for four or five weeks.
Italians are very tactile and often live in poorly ventilated small flats with no gardens in highly polluted northern air. They also often llive with other generations of the family of whom the old might have multiple illnesses and often smoked heavily, so the virus is spreading from one generation who might not know they have it, through to other generations In very close proximity who might be badly affected and be highly susceptible
They will meet up with neighbours either in their neighbouring flats in the building, or on the landings or hallways and thereby spread it again from one group to another.
Apparently there is a significant number of gregarious teenagers who go to meet their friends in the park at night, go back home, presumably kiss their gran goodnight and circulate a fresh batch.
British numbers compared to flu have been small and I worry about the impact of locking up everyone together in often small houses, as in effect that turns us into the much closer knit family groups of the Italians when in reality we tend to keep our distances and this stand offishness Is a good characteristic at the present time
Isolation of the vulnerable, testing , then isolation of new cases is surely the answer and let everyone else get on with their lives.
Logically in future years we should take these same ultra extreme measure to protect the much greater number of flu deaths and other avoidable deaths that happen year after year.
Ironically because of current measures there will be lots of people left alive who otherwise would have died of flu, or car accidents or sporting accidents or murders etc but they will be spared although they will not know that of course. I think suicides etc will be well up as will physical and mental health problems, together with relationship and financial problems. The cure is worse than the cause if you look at in the round
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Tonyb — given that we don’t have enough tests, and know almost nothing about this virus, that it causes potential permanent lung damage, neurological symptoms, plus may rebound, or cause heart problems after recovery, and that 0% of the population were immune. Doesn’t it make sense to hold it off until we know whether it should even be compared to the flu?
Obviously testing the vulnerable and isolating would be great if we had the tests or knew who was vulnerable. Healthy doctors have died.
Saying the numbers are small after “three weeks” compared to the flu after a whole season seems a bit unfair don’t you think?
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Jo
In the Uk we have up to 40000 flu deaths a year. We also have 140,000 ‘avoidable’ deaths a year. Year after year. Why are we not doing much more to halt this huge and recurring problem? Yet, we have dealt with all that for decades without it being allowed to utterly change our way of life.
Surely the logic must be that in future we must take much more extreme measures to stop this annual carnage of other categories of deaths?
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Surely the logic must be that, in future, extreme measures , such as the denial of adequate medical services to the non-essential, will be necessary to ensure continuity of existence for those who are essential?
Surely?
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So life comes down to some corrupt committee’s interpretation of essential? Welcome to the socialist state of eugenics where we will fashion a society based on essential characteristics. I guess the only benefit of such is that there will be no more ‘celebs’ but I’m even prepared to put up with the entertainment value of these useful idiots in order to protect everyone’s right to life.
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Remember — if we’d done what I suggested and stopped importing the virus, none of these domestic actions would be necessary. My plan was the cheapest and kept more of our freedom. What we needed was a mandatory two week quarantine from mid-February.
The price of one extra month of foreign holidays and conferences and weddings is something like 250,000 lives in the UK (we can’t even estimate it properly) and an unknown risk of permanent disability, loss of productivity, massive medical bills, the loss of some doctors and nurses and other valuable citizens and massive economic disruption as people stop going to work or school voluntarily, and the loss of normal hospital care for an indeterminate number of weeks or months. OR
We could have ramped up mask and test production and gone for less disruptive options. We didn’t do that either.
Tonyb, so 40,000 deaths is OK, therefore the risk of 400,000 deaths is also OK? What if the virus mutates and/or some genetic risk factor made the fatality rate even higher in the UK. Am I the only one who thinks “unknown deadly disease” ought be studied before we decide to fly it in?
I’ve never argued that we should accept the flu deaths, the accidental overdoses, the prescription drug addictions, or anything else. I seem to recall that governments do try to prevent these with major vaccination programs.
Farmerbraun — I’m the main advocate that the loss of normal hospital care is one of the worst prices of choosing to import pandemics. I’m the one trying to make sure all essential and non-essential people can get cancer treatment, heart valve replacements, angiograms, etc.
Any normal population would panic at the point that their own doctors were dying and knowing that if they had a stroke, they might not get any help.
From the minute we know the Ro was 2+, the fatality rate might be 1 – 5% and the spread was asymptomatic all the economic disruption, fear and panic was inevitable. At that point we had choices, now we just have to get rid of it. Our delay and denial that trouble was coming has made this worse. Our choices now are rock or hard place.
The economy won’t get better until we deal with the virus. And the economy BTW was already screwed by the massive debt burden and government endorsed mismanagement of artificially set and far too low interest rates. It took decades to wreck the currency. The crash was going to happen anyhow, and the bankers and govt are probably relieved to have the chance to nakedly throw helicopter money which makes all those malinvested debts get lower through the magic of inflation.
100
Jo, some reading Ive been doing suggests while , yes the virus is nasty, its been the perfect cover ( hence part of the reason for the draconian lock down ) to basically wipe the financial slate clean to hide all the financial crimes that have taken place by the Banksters i.e. No “body” , no crime.
71
Id agree with one variation. When the government took in the people off the Diamond Princess they put them into an NT Quarantine before releasing them back. This was better than leaving them overseas because they were removed from the infection pool… Then they STOPPED DOING IT. All cases detected (asymptomatic or not) need to quarantine in a quarantine zone, so the rest of us can get back to work. This will work and on the numbers STILL CAN.
The Japanese say this is an aerosol Virus, only removing the infection pool to a safe distance will work since this virus is able to travel from house to house.
50
House to house? I have not seen any evidence of that. Room to room in a building or hotel with common air circulation, that is possible, even likely.
21
With several hotels full of newly arrived in quarantine, we may well see a large uptick in newly diagnosed cases. These cases can be (relatively) safely be ignored from infection rates as they are still sort of overseas – at least not in the community.
10
Yes, but the numpties keep them in Populated and Cooling high density population areas. They on the latest research are not removed from the infection pool.
30
Jo , I’ve been on the case of this one since early January when a friend from Hong Kong took a break here.
So when my Chinese neighbours , from whom I lease land , arrived back home just before Chinese New Year, I gave them a wide berth for nearly a month
At the back of my mind throughout has been a 92 year old retired Steiner teacher who assisted with the education of four farm kids in a schoolhouse in a paddock visible from where I am writing this.
As a young nurse she was instrumental in guiding a group of women and children through internment and eventually to safety in the then Dutch East Indies during the Japanese occupation.
I see now , now that it is clear that biosecurity at the border, quarantine and lockdown , are all beyond the capabilities of our pollies, that all that is left now to protect the likes of Sigrid is adequate security around the retirement homes, and such nutritional measures as can be taken to improve immune response.
I agree with all that you tried to do, but it didn’t happen
It seems there was no intention to stop the virus , and they didn’t.
She is in a retirement home
30
I sent my email to Slomo 2 weeks ago. I called for Dr Brendan Furphy and the Health Minister to be sacked. I don’t think the PM has listened.
40
Jo
There was never going to be that extraordinary number of deaths you cite. This is a little like the IPCC claiming their measures have reduced global temperatures by ten degrees and saved 1 billion lives.
We can protest all we like that it was never going to happen and they will say well it won’t now because we have taken precautions.
This is not to say we should not take sensible precautions against covid 19 but is closing parks, golf courses and forbidding people to go to more open spaces than might surround them sensible Instead it crowds them together. Is forbidding shops to sell easter eggs sensible because they are ‘non essential’?
We need to take a big step back, recognise that the wildest estimates were never going to happen, take sensible and specific precautions including quarantine and realise that a devastated economy and in effect locking people up under house arrest gives us the worst of all worlds, as ultimately the overall deaths from various causes will not show a dramatic uptick.
It is not a good idea to shut groups of people up in small houses and allow the virus to be transmitted from one to the other as has happened in Italy. It will also ruin their physical and mental health and cause dramatic break downs in relationships
41
Plus one or moah, Tony ‘n Nic Lewis @ Climate Etc. This virus, like Flu has a mortality rate under 1% of yr mapamound population…. Spanish Plague, The Black Death, it is not. ( And I, as asthmatic, am one of the vulnerables.)
Do-not-be-afrayed.
30
What about the aftermath…if only a very small percentage of the population has been infected…so very few have acquired immunity…resources depleted….and the virus is still lurking somewhere?
Will we be back to square one …are we counting on the virus being weakened…or do we have to fear a mutated virus that’s even worse?
We would have bought some time at great economic cost…and if chloroquine etc prove to be as effective as hoped…we’d have less to fear in venturing out of lockdown….but will we be vulnerable then to expansionary Chinese opportunism…too poor to resist further takeover and encroachment of our essential services, farms. ports and industry?
China has already shown it’s prepared to take advantage with its illegal virtual takeover of Philippine islands under cover of the crisis.
Will we be too poor to defend Australia …or too poor to maintain our health system…and PBS?
We may wish then we’d concentrated on making sure the vulnerable were confined to home with guaranteed medical and economic support…and the rest had continued working etc …and thrown everything at equipping hospitals with an oversupply of ventilators and relevant drugs….plus research.
It all rests on how badly the otherwise well population are affected by the virus…and with people like Prince Charles and Tom Hanks recovering quite easily you have to wonder.
30
They are Jo, this is my point, take all detected infections and give them a 14 day holiday in NQ courtesy of the government, Heat, Lots of Beds, Even beach therapy (Viruses don’t like a lot of salt). Keep that death rate at 17 in 5000.
Even if the Whole population of 25 million was cycled through NQ NT or NWA for a fortnight it would cost 50 Billion compared with about 380 Billion of damage so far with the current policy.
41
bobl, if you’re going to insist that warmth is the solution to moderating the Oz infection, first you need to explain the recent rapid infection growth (as much 15% to 24% per day) and high death percentage of known cases in South east Asia (7% to 8.8% die).
Personally, I think this theory that warmth will moderate this virus spread and effects is being falsified and contradicted by the data we currently have available. Conversely, it also indicates that Winter may not make it’s spread or severity worse.
50
There is a Paper from the British about this I noted on a previous thread. on the numbers looking at the USA and World stats, Hot Tropical and Subtropical countries are 5 times lower in death rates per Million Population. Taking out External infections (Those from NH) Australias death rate is around 0.4 per Million 10 times lower than the world average, due to our location and the fact that its been SUMMER.
Its not the infection rate, its the death rate that counts. Its clear hot climates are at least 5 times safer than cold.
Take a look yourself, Worldometer lists deaths per Million Pop.
34
“Its not the infection rate, its the death rate that counts.”
That’s pure horse sh$t.
Sick people count !
But not to you !
I’m amazed at your callousness !
47
I’m in a HIGH risk group.
Besides Bill, have I advocated for doing nothing? No!, I advocate to take our small numbers of infectious people and isolate them in a nice warm climate for a few weeks courtesy of the government, well away from you and your family.
I look at the statistics on death in order to determine what THE SAFEST PLACE for the infected people to be quarantined is. In this case in a warm climate, for Ebola, it’s a cold climate. The death rate takes into account the overall infection rate and the fatality rate. The lowest (local) death rate is the SAFEST place to be infected
You argue that I’m Callous because I don’t subscribe to your ideal of leaving infected people in high density cities, heading for cold winters favourable to coronavirus contagion, next door to your sister.
Who’s being Callous Bill?
60
Bill , I had to down vote you on that one.
I’m honorary Tukorehe, if you’re wondering.
10
Off Topic Jo but I think relevant.
Regarding that 80 ton plane load of medical equipment sent to China at the end of February.
Here are some interesting FACTS!
I have an empty box on my desk that Medical Examination gloves come in, there are some very interesting details printed upon that box.
These Examination Gloves are the only sort I could find available in Australia in this sort of quantity and approved quality.
ARTG 188920 seems to be the designated product number of
‘Premier Clear Vinyl Powder Free Examination Glove (100 PCS)’.
Made in China of course and imported by a company in Scoresby Victoria this information is clearly printed on the box.
The batch number and date of manufacture is clearly printed on the box, P935785 2019-12.
The box when full weighs some 525 grams for the large, 500g for the medium and 475g for the small sizes.
I could not get a cost per box as IRT, I live in an IRT aged care facility and where I got the empty box and borrowed a full one to find out the weight wont tell me how much per box, so there is a vague indication, off the cuff and un-official that they are about $20.00 per box.
Let me as an illustration do the math as if that plane load consisted of this medical product only.
80 tons works out at 80 x 2000 boxes of said gloves.
160000 Boxes @$20.00 per represents a total cost of $3,200,000.00
Now those gloves would be just about the cheapest medical items available in Australia back then in February, though they will cost much more now!
Now factor in the transport costs, a full cargo plane, no other cargo, special delivery to China is not cheap!
And a Sydney property firm was able to do this at short notice under the nose of our wonderful civil service people who let that shipment leave.
Our taxes at work!
I wonder what that company will put on their tax return for that expenditure?
Any bets that they will claim tax exemption for a charitable donation to the CCP?
Another aspect of this is the plight of the Italians. The Germans refused to allow an export shipment of medical equipment to Italy in late February.
The wonderful CCP donated a plane load. I wonder if they were able to divert the one that left Sydney?
I wonder if any of the examination gloves are in boxes clearly marked imported by xyz of Scorseby Vic Australia.
There is a bar code 9 325191 001270 on the box which may help identify the product.
Why is the SMH and all the other hot news channels not investigating this shocking action by a Chinese owned and run property development company working out of Sydney?
Some transport company had that plane available?
Some one paid for the fuel it MUST have had to get for that journey to China, who’s name is on that payment for several tons of Jetx?
Do Universities not teach investigative journalism any more?
The times they are ‘a changing’!
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People with hypertension have a worse course of Covid-19. Ask your doctor.
20
So hypertension is only a comorbidity in Covid-19 infections?
What are you trying to say there?
10
ACE inhibitors are used for a reason to treat hypertension.
Interesting that the ACE2 receptor is the virus’ point of entry to the cell.
Have no clue if this is relevant. ACE is angiotensin converting enzyme which converts
angiotensin1 to angiotensin 2.. Angiotensin2 is thought to be the cause of much hypertension.
Since I retired, ACE2 has appeared and is serviced by a cell receptor. Wonder what it does normally?
10
The thought was to find inhibitor drugs to ACE2. Unfortunately not as simple as that . ACE2
breaks down angiotensin 2. The by products of that are vasodilator, tending to lower BP. In the lungs they
increase local pulmonary blood flow and decrease the chances of getting pneumonia.
Back to the drawing boards.
10
This virus appeared in Wuhan at moderate temperatures. It is similar in Italy and Spain. Can start a second wave in the spring in Australia. After winter, the human body is more susceptible to infection.
20
You call 3-10 deg C moderate, the Chinese got it under control as the daytime temp reached about 15C about the middle of last month.
41
Isolation was not needed?
11
Did I say that? No, just that it took the daytime temperature being over 15 to make the isolation measures effective enough to count… now that microdroplet transmission has been shown.
20
One thing is for certain; China lies, people die.
China just shut down movie theaters nationwide *after* reopening them.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3077398/coronavirus-chinese-cinemas-told-close-just-week-after-reopening
Sound to you like they have pandemic under control?
Me neither.
120
Yes, I think it is important to try to get behind the flurry of fake news and actually find out how many did die in china. Is the talk of tens of thousands of cremations with photos of rows of burial urns correct or is there some truth in Chinese figures?
If the former and not the latter even more questions need to be asked at the international top table as to the way china has behaved.
80
The numbers in Wuhan is considered by some to be much higher, perhaps we’ll never know.
https://gellerreport.com/2020/03/china-is-lying-locals-in-wuhan-believe-42000-people-died-accounts-of-crematoria-working-24-7.html/
40
Backwards and forwards between Level 4 and Level 3 will continue for some years
This is expected.
11
Not if we move infections into a Tropical Quarantine zone. Once we get the rate down to a jumbo jet of people per city per day we can use geographic isolation. Oh hang on we are already there…
For god sake can we stop putting the infected peoples families at risk and properly isolate the infection in the most adverse (to respiratory viruses) environment we have IE northern Oz
41
Evidence warmth makes a difference please.
21
DIY
Look at death rates in US southern states Vs USA Average.
Anecdotally 14 Infections only in the NT do you think the NT Health system is so much better than the East coast?
41
No, just that they have a tiny population and stuff all traffic.
Look at QLD, same latitude spread but 742 cases.
21
Hi Folks,
there is an adage rubbish in rubbish out.
Looks like this may have a part to play here.
https://principia-scientific.org/shock-report-current-eu-total-deaths-per-week-lower-than-normal/
The changes to death reports to indicate Covid-19 have skewed to numbers.
There never was a cause of death being recorded as ‘FLU’.
Everybody who has ever had Flu has Coronavirus antibodies.
You get sick and are hospitalized and die, they test and find Coronavirus antibodies and the cause of death gets recorded as Covid-19
Skewed data!
20
Swiss numbers now looking like they are starting to roll off the top. Data from Federal health authority – https://www.corona-data.ch
Sanitiser now in plentiful supply. Many cleaning products out of stock. No disposable gloves available.
Masks not available anywhere. Pharmacies told by health authorities they can’t sell them anymore. All going to hospitals.
Masks are the “get out of jail card” in this pandemic. Without them its hard to see how lockdown can safely end. People ignoring advice from government about not wearing masks, if they can get them! Is there any doubt the medical fraternity were disingenuous about mask effectiveness for their own benefit?
Still no word on broadscale, randomised and comprehensive testing. Britain and Germany now talking about anti-body certification after positive antibody tests. But how do you discern the recovered from the careless in the supermarket, etc.?
Seems as though we’re slowly moving from “don’t get this virus” to “you can still get this virus”. Expect those wearing masks will be doing so for several months to mitigate risk.
Restrictions due to officially end on April 19th. Expect rules will be relaxed early if numbers consistently fall through this week.
Feels like we’re through the worst of it. Not dropping your guard on anti-virus hygiene is now the main battle.
50
Yes, people don’t like being told to stay in their houses and if they believe the worst is over there will be considerable pressure put on the govt to allow them more freedoms
Are you implying medical staff said masks were not effective in order for demand to drop off from the public allowing medical staff to move in and buy them up?
21
Disposable gloves and masks are reserved for the exclusive use of essential persons.
Surely you realise that?
12
“we’re through the worst of it”
ROFL
Well done!
14
It could well be true that we are through the worst of it from the recent Sam Vaknin video talk…. For example, the virus has an extraordinary incubation period of up to over three weeks from what i can gather as a non expert..
Given that premise is true, then the cases we are seeing are incubated cases waiting to develop from over three weeks ago. Sam Vaknin, a professor of numbers calls this phenomena, a time machine in his recent video.
From:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhN_GekoFek
Pandemics: COVID-19 and Life’s Meaninglessness (also in Abusive Relationships)
20,854 views
•Mar 27, 2020
“Reviewing the WHO’s inane COVID19 data (the mathematical extrapolations in the video are based on WHO numbers, e.g. Ro – Basic Reproduction Number – of 2-3). Watch my other videos regarding this outbreak on this YouTube channel.”
10
Sorry, I don’t see it. Switzerland is the worlds 8th most infected country with cases rising at ~1,100 per day, ~8% more cases as a percent of actives each day, with ~16,000 total cases and less than 2,000 recovered. The situation continues to deteriorate and not through the worst of it. All that’s occurring is it’s getting worse a bit slower. It needs to get a lot slower still. Countries will be through the worst of it when new cases and active cases fall to lower levels and case resolutions out number them.
Your country is a long way from this and expect, “Restrictions due to officially end on April 19th”, to be a review and adjustment, not an off switch.
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WXcycles, thanks for your post and all of your other great posts. Your constant addition to the knowledge base is greatly appreciated. It’s preferred (by me) not to have a long discussion but simply to broaden thinking and let Jo run her blog. Extemporaneous thoughts these largely are. Scepticism and non-linear thinking form part of the analysis. Switzerland’s qualitative and quantitative metrics in terms of what i would call “Resolution Momentum” have been good from the start. I acknowledge reported cases are increasing at a decreasing rate and absolutes are as you say. But this needs to be offset by the rapid increase in rate of testing due to testing capability, reported hospitalisations and releases, Case Fatality Rates and what is being seen on the ground in terms of human behaviour.
The Swiss health authorities locked down when the first cases appeared in the Italian Cantons and brought in the present level of domestic restrictions in one iteration. International restrictions required consultation with five other countries and took another week to substantively get into place. Domestically, Swiss residents adopted these restrictions very quickly without much complaint. Many businesses and communities readily activated pandemic plans. There was little panic buying. The restrictions allow for free movement in Switzerland but otherwise are all but identical to Australia. The Swiss self-enforced these restrictions at a local level. The understanding of what needed to happen and when it needed to happen was not tested by people having last hurrah get togethers by the lake, in bars, etc. The above behaviour set the country up well for a desirable outcome. The big “fail” was the lack of Federal stockpiles of PPE, sanitiser and testing equipment. This is now only slowly being resolved with substantial federal intervention (https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/coronavirus-protection-_eu-agrees-to-deliver-masks-and-protective-gear-to-switzerland-/45631040).
The rate of infection data arguably has a low level of statistical confidence at present but is better than all countries in terms of per capita testing (https://lenews.ch/2020/03/26/coronavirus-swiss-test-rate-now-higher-than-south-koreas/). This demonstrates good Resolution Momentum. Without random, broadscale and comprehensive sampling the figures only make visible those who’ve been able to present to a doctor and pass the eligibility questionnaire for testing. Switzerland has the second highest rate of infection per million persons behind Spain (worldometer data) if you remove all of the small sample sets with high volatility like San Marino, Gibraltar, Vatican City State, etc from the mix. Given the testing guidelines are almost identical to other countries with test kit shortages, the latter is put down to volume of testing; not breadth, randomness or comprehensiveness. It is a given that 80% of infected persons in most documented populations are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms ie. they are not necessarily presenting to a doctor. In the circumstance where the total reported cases are increasing at a decreasing rate, whilst statistically “sailing into the wind” of rapidly improving sample sets, it is not unreasonable to infer a statistical outcome that suggests the situation is substantially and rapidly improving.
To add to the above momentum, a number of metrics are very promising. Case Fatality Rates (“CFR”) have stayed low. It’s understood there’s a long tail risk on these and volatility, particularly where the CFR’s are very low, can lead to big percentage increases in the CFR. But the mortality distribution skews heavily toward the second phase of what appears to essentially be a bi-phasic illness. Mortality is very likely to occur within two weeks of symptoms. My guess from reading widely would be at least 80% of fatalities occur in the second phase within two weeks of symptoms (would you have data to improve this estimate?). Given Switzerland has been tracking for over a month and testing has increased very rapidly, the tail risk of increase is really outweighed by the improving statistical confidence brought about by volume of testing. I expect the trajectory to further improve as test eligibility criteria is broadened (more random and geographically available) and becomes more comprehensive (mandatory). In the circumstances I’d argue reported hospitalisations and releases are a much better indicator of how Covid-19 is progressing within the cantons. Reported Hospitalisations are increasing at a much decreased rate with a high ratio of hospitalisation to ICU/Ventilation. Reported Releases are increasing at an increasing rate. This despite the fact many who have the illness, whether they are tested or not, are told to go home until they absolutely require hospital treatment. This protects against all the inherent risks associated with hospitalisation, which can be discussed ATAP (Another Time, Another Place).
On a simple probabilistic basis, The virus can be seen in feedback and iterative terms. It operates via network and node. You probably know it’s a complex area that goes into chaos theory; which i’m not going to discuss in pure terms, or game to to address in applied mathematical terms; ATAP! Needless to say, we want to remove the chaos from the virus transmission equation as much as we can. Simply speaking, Nodes are defined as all carriers of the virus no matter how ephemeral. Network is defined as the physical connections formed which allow for transmission of the virus. The solution is to maintain networks and nodes that exclude the virus as much as possible. If one measure the virus connections in these terms, the maths of replication and distribution begin to become understandable. My argument is that the Resolution Momentum via a process of feedback and iteration, feeds good numbers into this network/node algorithm to produce an increasingly good outcome over time. As momentum increases, there are exponential effects that lead to collapse of the virus if all good behaviour is held constant. Hence my comments on not dropping your guard and numbers rolling off the top. Anyone who’s interested should perhaps start with Benoit Madelbrot’s writings and perhaps Niall Ferguson’s last book on Networks, The Square and The Tower.
Describing matters as “feeling like we’re through the worst” is not only reliant upon the thoughts expressed above. We’ve been in lockdown for two weeks now. The first week was difficult, the second moreso. Now we see in probabilistic terms, that we’re substantially more likely than not, over half way through this. The battle is one of physical and mental health in these situations. We are battling a purely Darwinistic molecule that is supremely well adapted to exploiting our basic and culturally evolved traits. A molecule more ruthless but not smarter than the culture from which it originated. Eradicating a virus whose modus operandi has exquisitely evolved to be syntonic to our momentary cultural existence requires balanced adaptation, discipline, resolve and most importantly self-knowledge. An exquisite resolute hammering; not a clumsy ambivalent post-modern dance.
Lastly, Switzerland tends to be fairly precise in its dealings. Trains run on time, government policies are well costed and thought through. I believe the Swiss federal authorities very likely epidemiologically modelled outcomes using the techniques described above. Perhaps not, there’s no way of knowing with certainty at present. If April 19th does not see a lifting of restrictions, it will be an exceptional decision in this culture. I’m looking forward to seeing more mask and testing availability to build Resolution Momentum and collapse the infection numbers.
22
Thank you for the interesting reply Sunni, I do see Switzerland doing better than most in Europe and your proximity to northern Italy was not a good way to get started. Though I would have put some of your country’s success in limiting the damage down to of course an orderly society, and the glacial mountain valley geography and innate ability to regulate movement along these to reduce the network options for spreading between the city nodes. It’s almost 2 hours into April Fools Day here so expect to be fooled today.
20
The spike in Australia’s cases was because of the Cruz ship docking in Australia with 500 cases. Would that be right?
Our Airports still have no masks to had out or thermal camera temperature checks?
90
A peripheral discovery
“Study! COVID-19 affects men/women more than all other genders combined”
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2020/03/study-covid-19-affects-menwomen-more-than-all-other-genders-combined.html
150
“COVID-19 Deaths in Europe: Excess Mortality is – DOWN?”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/30/covid-19-deaths-in-europe-excess-mortality-is-down/
51
Yes indeed !
Deaths are down !
Why ?
Far fewer car travelling = far fewer car collisions
Far less going out = far less overall infection
Far more face masks = far less infection
These things are NOT reasons for abandoning the lock downs in Europe or here in Oz.
So what to say ?
Ummmmm …. More WUWT misinformation ! And Roy Spenser should stick to his own area of science that he knows something about : climate science.
33
True Bill, out on the bike the traffic is up to 80% lighter or more so its a lot safer for us, still the odd idiot though.
22
The Chinese took extreme measures…after exercising extreme cupidity. They (the government) were lying before and they are lying now.
Bringing back as much of their economy as possible, shipping to the world, demonstrating the ‘superiority’ of their system to the world,
is well worth the few million deaths that may occur in a nation where under-population is hardly a problem.
The traditional relationships between independent nation states call for our leaders to publicly accept the Chinese claims, continue
trade, re-open transit, and return to normalcy.
The question the world has to answer is this: is this different than Tianamin Square, or suppression of Hong Kong? Is this different than
putting Tibet under coercive control, or putting certain Muslim ethnics in concentration camps? Or is this just an “internal Chinese matter”.
In the history of international relations, this is a hard question. Countries have frequently invaded and conquered others without leaving
more or less “normal” international relations.
Is the Chinese behavior in this matter more, or less serious than a take-over of Taiwan would be…..that would kill no Australians, or Italians,
or New Yorkers. Of course, the virus was the villain, not the Chinese Government. Right? All of humanity is fighting this on the same basis. Right?
One of the worst things a nation can do is sponsor international terrorism, that kills randomly. Also high on the list is drug dealing, which preys on vulnerable
populations. Nuclear proliferation is high on the nasty list. This seems different. An accidental bio-weapon.
We’ve not had a conversation about something like this before. Especially in the context of a lot of trade that has been positive and mutually beneficial, and a lot of
Chinese individuals visiting and living in the west in highly positive social interactions. Its difficult to look at a Chinese Doctor labeled an Enemy of the State
who we in the west might have considered a hero. How do we calibrate our relationship with these folks, and their government; and are they the same.
Yet if circumstances don’t change, this will happen again. We need to measure our pain realistically. It will help inform us on the course to take for the future.
70
Well, for a start we should pay close attention to Chinese Communist Party’s endeavour to change the narrative after the event:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1244344145646440456
11
‘New drug trial could be ‘silver-bullet solution. Australia’s richest person is helping to fund a trial of existing HIV and arthritis drugs that could stem the coronavirus tide.’ Oz
50
The silver bullet has been established and is being rolled out.
Didier Raout’s Marseilles trial on 80 patients convinced the French Government to authorise it as a treatment.
https://gellerreport.com/2020/03/france-government-authorizes-use-of-hydroxychloroquine-to-treat-coronavirus.html/
20
EL, while my first response clears the moderation process here’s the same info from a different source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=hQV4YcaILDA&feature=emb_logo
I’d said (but with a spelling error now corrected) “The silver bullet has been established and is being rolled out.
Didier Raoult’s Marseilles trial on 80 patients convinced the French Government to authorise it as a treatment.”
30
Just wondering, where the “curve” looks more like a clipped peak – that is instead of rounding of it suddenly flat tops (similar to audio clipping), would that not indicate that those countries have reached the absolute limits of their ability to test and confirm volumes of infections, while the actual figures are likely far higher ?
20
Something similar happened to AGW. Wasn’t there a pause?
61
“Nothing makes people forget about a fake crisis like the appearance of a real one. Except maybe for those who are making a living off the fake one.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/30/monday-mirthiness-double-feature/#comment-2951409
20
Most countries have been running at the limit of their testing ability for several weeks, due to a shortage of both test kits , resources, and lab capacity.
australia has been testing “about” 10,000 per day since early march, but have often “dropped the ball” for some reason and only tested a few thousanf on some days.
The daily count of “new cases” is not a accurate or reliable indicator of the true infection rate.
And of course the true level of infection is much higher,.. if you only test a tiny fraction of the population, …you only detect a tiny fraction of the actual infections.
So far Australia has tested less tham 1.0% of the population , so its quite possible there are 100 time the “confirmed infected cases” ,..iE..4-500,000 infected people running around the country !
Actually it is hopefully much less , as the testing has been focussed on “high probability” samples…so we may only have 2-300,000 infected individuals amoungs us !!
20
I’m surprised that the above post and comments make no reference by state. The statistics by state make for interesting and provocative reading. Add to that the closure of borders to general traffic and it becomes yet more interesting.
South Australia, for instance, could begin to encourage economic activity, not by so-called “stimulus”—nothing more than a racket encouraging crony capitalism—but offering simple verbal encouragement, especially to trades and associated firms. The rules of social distancing and hygiene must remain in place (more shortly); each trade must develop, and quickly, protocols for behaviour that limits the possibility of transmission of the virus. That should not be difficult. Libraries—I’m biased—should follow suit. And so forth and so on.
The numbers of new cases in SA are encouraging. Not only that but looking fairly closely at Worldometer, for instance, the whole question of distancing becomes yet more interesting. I don’t say it is, but perhaps the most interesting column is “Deaths/ 1 M pop”. For the moment Spain is somewhat mystifying. The others, such as USA and Italy are intriguing. Both involve association with China in one form or another. Thus New York is in a critical set of circumstances. Italy and various other places, thus San Marino, Liechtenstein and Austria, share borders. San Marino, about 340 km from Milan, for instance, requires no visa for entrants from China.
Nothing can go back to being “normal”. Tourism is dead and will remain so for at least some years. Cruise ships are now history. By state, median incomes will fall, possibly greatly. Much deregulation is required urgently to help people create new work. SA, for instance, must provide regulatory and taxation regimes that encourage the rebuilding of manufacturing. Picking winners, for long the preferred method of the SA government, must cease. There is much that one could add. But the (somewhat misty) signs are gently encouraging. And will probably continue thus if the basic rules of hygiene and distancing (including closed borders) remain firmly in place.
We also need masks.
30
Paul, I agree they are interesting, I’m just trying not to be too Australia focused for foreign readers, and our situation must look like nothing to what the EU and US are dealing with.
As I’ve said all along, slicing up our nation into small quarantined parts means we can restore normal activity to any virus-free-zone sooner and gradually build up from there.
70
Yes! Go Jo.
Further lets depopulate other areas of infection when we can by relocating the sick into a quarantine zone. Every person we move removes 2-3 infections.
30
That’s Nonsense until every person in Australia has been tested
So we know
Who is a carrier,
Who is sick with mild symptoms
Who is recovered but still infecting other people !
Any ideas on when that will happen ?
11
Your fear again,
Once you’ve established infection zones, you zero in testing around any infections geographically, as well as by contact and remove all detected infections to the quarantine zone.
Let’s say I get symptoms, not only do they test my contacts but every house for 500m around me. My whole suburb goes into the infected list and is locked down, noone is allowed out of my suburb unless they are known free or immune.
I’m completely removed and sent to the beach in NQ coutesy of the airforce for a holiday in the Quarantine Zone, I can’t infect anyone.
When there are no infections for 4 weeks then you release my suburb (Zone) from the infectious list and the lockdown is relaxed.
I go home when I’m tested to be not infectious anymore. Being known immune they can use me to ship freight around
20
Well, in SA, the new figures—of 32 new cases—send the possibilities some while away. One serious problem is that SA Health tells the public very little indeed. Accordingly, how can we members of the public contemplate and discuss what are difficult matters seriously?
To Bill in Oz. To “wait a while until the virus has been destroyed because it cannot find new victims” is quite impracticable. In that sense my points remain valid, but the time for relaxation has been postponed somewhat. In terms of rethinking how this state operates, its rules and regulations and codes of taxation, that remains pertinent.
Regrettably I find that I disagree with Jo on the use of the term “normal”. Normal has gone. We shall need to find new ways of operating in our public, daily lives and create new points of familiarity. Eating out, by and large, has gone. Tourism (related to that), has passed from view and may only resume after several years. Building and construction have similar outlooks. That and much like it will depend upon the development and testing and licensing of a (and possibly more than one) vaccine.
In terms of the significance of this virus there is a parallel from 1941, notwithstanding all manner of difference (Mark Twain might say that it “rhymes”). The words following come from Vasily Grossman, Stalingrad (NYRB, 2019), p. 120. The character concerned is one Col. Pyotr Pavlovich Novikov, a staff officer, caught in the front line during the German assault on Soviet Russia, 22 June 1941:
00
Paul Re South Australia
On March 7th the number infected in SA was 7
Today March 31 the number is 337
And by some fluke no one has died -yet.
There are 8 critically ill in hospital.
The government is saying that there is no ‘local transmission’ here.
But frankly I think they are whistling in the dark …
It would be wonderfull to regain some of our normal life again.
But given how inter-connected SA is,
I suggest we would simply be opening the flood gates again
To another round of infections.
Better to wait a while until the virus has been destroyed because it cannot find new victims.
10
A church singing group goes on with practice and guess what happens:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/choir-decided-ahead-rehearsal-now-023414705.html
Strongly forcing air into a closed room with lots of others is not a good idea.
Who knew?
100
Everyone who works in positive pressure rooms with outlets. Masks and gloves are usually worn .
Singing in a mask sounds feasible.
00
Tomorrow marks 2 weeks since the French government shut down almost everything. Reported deaths will go up because the government has been relatively open in admitting that they are only including deaths in hospitals.
They are dragging their feet with regards to including nursing home deaths in the tally. They are also, like many countries, only testing “high risk” people.
70
It’s ironic. So many bureaucrats, Greens, journalists, socialists, politicians praying for warm weather to save them. Clearly Global Warming cannot come fast enough.
120
Yes but the left are clueless. The can’t tell the difference between up and down. Their understanding and knowledge of temperature trends has proven that many times.
40
PeterS. I think they understand ‘uo’ very well. In fact, if it’s not ‘up’ then they homgenise and it goes up.
It’s just ‘down’ they don’t understand. Real temperature measurement is ‘Oh! So last century.’ The modern
way is measure by homogenisation. That’s why they love trucks driving close by the screens. In fact, I
reckon now the system is electronic they will already be building ‘thermometers’ in which the data goes
through the circuit and comes out as recorded temperature. Then there is no need to waste time with
recording old fashioned temperatures and having to go through the whole homogenising process where nasty people
like Jo and Co. demand revelation of the first stage data and the methodology. It won’t exist.
20
When I was working as a scientist at CSIRO I was very careful with how data was processed. I was criticised for taking too much time doing so. That was decades ago. More recently when I worked at CBA as a Senior Technical BA I was criticised for the same reason. I was also told I was too technical. Nothing has really changed. What has changed is senior management and above have turned a blind eye to how bad things are managed at the lower levels. Whole organisations were already heading to their own destruction. The current virus crisis is just accelerating it.
60
Good observation.
Management was once responsible for keeping things functional.
Now management has the main aim of making sure that they can provide deniability for those above when things go wrong.
40
Exactly. I’ve seen it happen all the time. By the time upper management get the reports from lower management, things look so rosy. The closer one gets to the coal face, reality paints a totally different picture. What’s worse is middle management gets promoted regardless. “Brown noses” were a plenty. I used to love working at CSIRO at the start. It was a vibrant small group working working as a great team. It was smashed when a couple of egotistic members decided to build their own empires in other parts of CSIRO. I left to join the real world only to find out it’s not that much better. At least the pay was great.
20
That must have been not long after the lefties moved in under their chief commissar Neville Wran. Yes?
40
Barry Jones came over to open a new section. Neville Wran visited us but at another time for another purpose. Shook their hands but felt very uneasy on each occasion. Had to be polite and all that. Neville was friendly but Barry was like a robot on drugs. Not very friendly.
20
Was working in the bush, in agriculture, once, in the ’60’s. The CSIRO then was really something, doing work in hydrology and defining underground water sources, identifying native flora over huge areas of the country, developing
pasture grasses for the Kimberleys, animal nutrition, wool and deficiencies etc.
Then, in the ’80’s it died. The next thing it was politicised and entrenched in the
anthropogenic global warming debacle and looking to sack people that were ‘non collegiate’ in their public utterances, like the bloke who decided there should be a
contra story put out on AGW, for balance, and was publicly (The Australian) ~ sacked. The strange part about all that was the silence from the science world that one of its members could be so badly treated for seeming to be doing his job.
30
‘Australians are being urged to visit the GP for their influenza vaccine because the nation can’t afford a second crisis.’ SMH
21
I suspect this will be the least flu season on record. Normally all those returning from the summer sojurn to winter/spring in Europe and America would have brought all their sick children home. This time the flus are not being passed to us.
At the same time, the flu innoculation is a major and costly program. We will get to GPs when we are no longer in isolation and businesses are not closed. The GPs are probably starved for work. And no elective surgery either.
30
I’ve had my shot
11
I thought they weren’t available yet?
20
The “senior” flu shot is not widely available yet.
Which begs the question, which age group does G A fall into ?
30
here are the technical notes
https://www.health.gov.au/news/clinical-update-2020-seasonal-influenza-vaccines-early-advice-for-vaccination-providers
when you talk about availability you mean government run programs? My workplace supplies staff gratis
01
Maybe not which Age group, but which Privileged group.
Probably most Uni’s offer their staff free Flu jabs. ANU is one of them.
40
not sure why my other comment went into moderation but it was linking to current flu inoculation information. Here are is a workplace, similar to mine, already jabbing people
https://www.nhc.coop/anufluvax
01
Tuesday 31 Mar is today! First again.
30
that was not my institution. It’s announcement are only on the intranet
00
Humm,
Misplaced apostrophe! Careless or not?
10
Hi Annie,
Yes. They’re certainly available in WA, at least. I had mine last week.
My usual reaction started pretty soon there-after. Joint and muscular aches and pains. Sore ribs. Sore throat. Neuralgia and head-ache. Sore eyes. Same thing every year.
Today, I’m back to normal.
20
It’s probably not a good idea to jump straight into a UFC match after getting the flu shot, Sam…
30
I had that last year! It seemed like I was given the Flu instead of inoculated against it.
40
Last years shot are available now, essentially useless due to mutation
10
Sweden keeps schools and borders open
Swedish children continued to stream through the gates of their schools and kindergartens on Thursday as the Nordic nation stood increasingly alone in Europe in its approach to tackling the coronavirus pandemic.
Shops and restaurants also remained open across the country, with parks and recreational areas packed with groups enjoying the spring sunshine.
Despite a surge in Covid-19 patients and growing dissent among epidemiological experts, the Swedish government’s medical experts stood by their decision not to follow almost all other EU nations and institute economic and social lockdowns.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/26/sweden-keeps-schools-borders-open-huge-experiment-virus/
60
It will be essential to prevent any Swedes travelling to any other countries
Until it has proved that the virus is not present in Sweden at all
That includes all EU countries as ell as anywhere else.on the planet
Isolation until it has disappeared completely.
Let the Dumbnuts in Charge think on that for a while !
30
You’re dreaming Bill. Swedes who can’t produce a vaccination certificate that matches an implanted bar code on their arm will be going nowhere fast. Relax. We’ve got this 🙂
41
Bill,
Thank you, I’m just so glad that you didn’t call them Idiots.
31
A couple of points :
Watching Sky News last night and I see scrolling across the bottom of the screen some of what NZ was doing. I do not know for sure, but I doubt that the different Levels of restrictions in NZ and Australia are the same. Level 3 in Australia is not that different, if at all different, from Level 4 in NZ. What Australia is doing with lock down of arrivals in hotels if much tougher than what NZ is doing. We are meant to have closed borders but planes still arrived after the so called close off. What NZ has done with arrivals over the past few weeks has been pathetic (and that is being kind –Jo would not let the words I would like to use, through moderation) The one exception was very early on when there was a “mercy” flight removing people from the Wuhan area and they were put in isolation.
So Aussies who think Ardern is handling the situation better than Morrison are just reading biased MSM reports.
Secondly I do not think reporting positive tests alone is right. It would be much better and present a more accurate picture, especially when comparing different countries, if the the positive test number was expressed as a percentage of tests done other wise the comparison is a bit meaningless.
80
The WHO just continue to be a source of misinformation and bad advice whether it was encouraging travel and tourism which any moron could have deduced would spread the virus, trumpeting the lies of the CCP that it could not be spread human-to-human or stating that masks are of no use and that the virus cannot be killed by heat could easily be considered criminal negligence.
Scientific study, lived experience and common sense refute most of the utter garbage the WHO emits. It would seem that the WHO is to health what the IPCC is to the environment.
In short, whatever the WHO say, assume is a lie and the opposite is true.
162
WHO is part of the problem. Big time.
14 January it advised Corona virus not transmitted human to human;
24 February it advised Corona virus is not a Pandemic; and, belatedly on…
12 March it advised it is a Pandemic.
30
WHO must be on its last legs now. China seems to be in control of its utterances.
On Fox News they showed a recording of an official being interviewed and he refused to
talk about Taiwan at all. One gets the feeling that China has overplayed its hand in the bodies like the UN and WHO, especially with Trump.
It wouldn’t surprise for him to say the USA is on a huge project to keep its economy running, on deficit funding, all thanks to China hiding the COVID-19 outbreak and allowing it to spread world wide. The USA will no longer be the main funder of these bodies and may withdraw completely, suggesting these unfriendly bodies move elsewhere.
I think the world will look at its crazy total dependence for everything manufactured,
on China. When this is all over, President Xi will be looking down the barrel of his
greatest nightmare – a withdrawal of international companies by demand of their governments.
Xi is then left with the challenge to China’s stability due to self induced poverty simply
by trying to be too clever by half.
40
DOC, if western governments don’t reassess where their national interest lies then we are all at risk. Next time it will probably be too late. This time we’ve been lucky. It’s a lesson that must be learnt.
The national interest has to be reprioritised and reworked to include the establishment, development and maintenance of strategic industries and resources. It needs to refocus on the level and source of foreign direct investment in companies that are of strategic importance to the health, security and economy of the commonwealth. It needs to identify and ring-fence companies operating in strategic areas from foreign control or influence.
In other words, Huawei in spades.
20
Hi Sceptical. Australia is already moving. Tonight it’s announced that the FIRB will in future
Look hard at all foreign buys regardless of value ie interest in value is reduced to zero Not
A $billion nor $250m. ZERO. I gather there is a lot of fury generated by the legal ability to plunder our
PPE and that’s hiving off to everything else ‘given away’. It applies to all buyers.
China has burned its own boats lately with its plunder of medical resources world wide and
Making it apparent that it has its foot firmly planted on western nation throats because it
makes everything we depend on.. Reversal of fortunes is coming quickly! That’s before Trump
starts. Reminds me of Yamamoto’s appraisal of Pearl Harbour attack.
10
HNA Group, holds a 19.9 per cent stage Virgin Australia — along with China’s Nanshan Group with its 20 per cent. Virgin Australia’s others shareholders include Singapore Airlines (20 per cent), Bahrain’s Etihad Airlines (21 per cent) and an arm of the Virgin Group (10 per cent) as shareholders.
VA now with their hand out asking for a taxpayer bail-out of $1.4bn.
The simplest way to fix this is to ban mainland Chinese ownership of any land or business assets in Australia, and confiscate any existing to the tune of at least $250bn being the minimum bill so far owed to us by the CCP and WHO.
We are all being taken for a ride.
30
I note that the hotter countries are doing far better. Egypt. Iraq. India are very surprising. India is still just 1,000 cases. The Middle East generally. That would provide the best anecdotal view that the virus is very susceptible to heat and dry heat in particular. Which means great hope for the 60% of humans who live North of the Tropics.
In Australia it looks like the pandemic will be well over by the start of winter. Then perhaps we can all work to minimize transmission of the flu from our million overseas tourists a month bringing home gifts for everyone. The flu shot is fine for the latest European mutated viruses, but it would be far better if it was not part of living in Australia. The thing we have learned in this pandemic need to be applied from now on. Handwashing, isolation and quarantine, not bundling the asymptomatic children off to school the day after they get home from overseas.
50
Those hotter countries are ALL poorer TdeF.
Most people are so poor they cannot afford the test
So the passage of this disease goes unmarked
As 80% of people have mild symptoms or no symptoms ….
Go check out the statistics in the Philippines
45 deaths last night but ‘only’ 1200 people infected officially ?
Nuts !
20
Heat DOES affect it. but so does poverty and particularly separation. Why is New York having a bad time? Because its cold and New York city at up to 22,015 people per square km (1 person per 45 square meters) is the most densely populated city in the USA on average there is just 3.7 meters between you and the next person. Summer will help but…
The Philippines have high population densities too, but have the added disadvantage of poorly sealed housing (low rates of sealing against airborne contaminants). Even so their death rate is 0.7 per Million Pop.
Australia on the other hand has a relatively low population density except in the Inner City Latte Set’s native habitat. We need to compare with Singapore (0.5 Per Million) or other developed tropical nations like Hong Kong (0.5 per Million)
All these nations have low overall death rates per unit population, why,? Heat.
This is an aerosol Virus spreading on microdroplets much further than droplet reach. Heat isn’t a total panacea but it helps A WHOLE LOT in eliminating microdroplet bourne virus.
51
New York is also a major destination for travellers. From a swag of different countries.
30
Including illegal immigrants who do not have secure work or access to social security.
So they have to keep working if they can even if sick or asymptomatic..
An unintended consequence of the promotion of uncontrolled global migration in the USA, the EU, Italy etc..
30
PS, Subtropical – Tropical USA – Winter. USA being the current hardest hit Nation note that there are no internal travel restrictions in USA to my knowledge, meaning a substantial fraction may have been imported from Northern USA.
Winter Death rates
Florida 3 Per Million
Texas 1.4 per Million
Arizona 2.7 per Million
New Mexico 2 per Million (Unreliable, only 4 deaths so far)
Alabama 2 per Million
USA Average 10 Per Million.
Hot climates ARE SAFER by a factor of 5.
31
That statement will be proven wrong
Louisiana is shaping to be up with New York when it comes to overstressed hospital system. They have recorded 186 CV19 deaths in a population of 4.7M.
Both Philippines and Indonesia have more deaths than recovered. Iceland has 2 deaths and 157 recovered. Taiwan 5 deaths and 39 recovered. Australia 19 deaths and 244 recovered.
The death rate really only goes ballistic once the hospital systems are overwhelmed.
30
Those Southern states are NOT warm in winter. From 29.5 North to about 32North, North of Sydney, but colder. Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia. Average low temperatures between 3C and 8C in winter, and sometimes below zero. Only Southern Florida can hope to have warmish winter weather. Texas can have an inch of ice on the roads in winter. And Dallas can be snowed in. The cold air roars down the East side of the Rockies. As with the rest of America, it all changes when the Chinooks come in spring and hot air comes from the South, melting all the snow in days. America has extreme weather.
40
March is a gorgeous month to visit New Orleans. The weather is comfortable, with the average high being 71 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius) and the average low being 56 degrees Fahrenheit (13 degrees Celsius).
Mardi Gras in late February and St Patrick’s Day in New Orleans are no noted for their chilly . You can bet Mardi Gras provided plenty of fresh flesh for the CV19 virus – St Patrick Day Marches were cancelled:
https://www.fox8live.com/2020/03/28/video-new-orleans-mayor-cantrell-says-city-saw-no-reason-cancel-mardi-gras-needs-medical-supplies/
10
I agree TdeF.
There has been speculation that the virus does not survive well in hot moist environments! That does not accord with the very little I know about infective agents. Desiccation kills them. The virus actually seems to travel in droplets of water.
Hence just about anywhere in Australia is good for quarantine, except the coast.
30
Well , that escalated quickly. I’m referring of course to the use of the -e- word, together with “less” qualifier. As in less essential. Less equal- that sort of usage.
I’m sure that some NZ farmers will be a little surprised to read in their weekly toilet tissue issue from the MSM that “some” fossil fuel usage is less essential. The announcement of the fossil-fuel free farm at Lincoln University will no doubt come as a surprise to some also, but the university has to make the mistakes so that we plebs won’t. cf James Cook.
So that’s all good then.
It’s very timely, or do I mean very very very timely as some in the U.S. like to say. But the rag was dispatched Monday, so probably written Friday last when essential was not even a meme. prophetic. Obviously.
The fact that artificial nitrogen fertiliser is non-essential in pastoral systems, such as McMeekan et al developed, will come as a horrible shock for quite a few.
But the minister of Agricultural Communications , looking like he is really squirming very awkwardly(perhaps he has bitten his tongue in the photo, ), in his most soothing tones , assures we peasants that others are making sacrifices too , and greatly reduced productivity, and “possibly” a reduction in profitability , are small prices to pay for saving the planet etc, etc ,etc.
But lo and behold , a saviour cometh (sorry).
Organics is here to help all you bewildered folk who thought that sequestering CO2 was a VERY GOOD thing.
So what is this rough beast which slouches towards Godzone to be borne?
The Spectre of Organic Aotearoa 2020.
O.K. it does have an uncanny resemblance to the Grim Reaper, but it’s purely coincidental.
All of this is no surprise to all paranoic conspiracy theorists, but why listen to them?
All together now.
Organic Aotearoa 2020 .
“Let’s do this” ! TM(the Pied Piper)
50
New Orleans is now under stress. It will be reminiscent of Katrina. This is a story giving some details:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-new-orleans/deaths-intubations-swamp-new-orleans-doctors-in-coronavirus-surge-idUSKBN21H0BG
A young doctor’s observation gives insight into what they are facing:
60
Does use of the word “vaccination” trigger moderation?
FB in the dog -box , again.
00
The number of deaths in NSW due to road accidents appear to be much lower than average so far. If the trend continues we should end up with a significant net saving of lives taking into account the virus over the longer term. That’s looking on the bright side if you can call it that.
50
Don’t worry, RET induced fuel poverty will make for a horrific winter death toll.
21
‘ … we should end up with a significant net saving of lives …’
If you include the people who don’t die from the flu this winter, because of distancing, then definitely that would be true.
At the moment the government is quietly nationalising airlines and private hospitals, socialism with Australian characteristics.
10
Great discussions on this thread.
My concern is that governments at all levels seem to be competing in the sport of control. It is likely a number of the measures will never be repealed. From regulating the wheat industry, to printing money on a scale that ensures everyone will carry the yolk for the remainder of their lives, all for a mortality rate of .42%.
I bought in to the concern of overwhelming the health system but not at any cost, which it has become. Sure we need to practice common sense but the disaster is not Covid 19 it is big government. When so many climate skeptics rile against big government but see it as a solution for a pandemic, it leaves me with a sense of confusion and a headache.
71
Dont put common sense and “climate change advocate” are mutually incompatible.
I think Big Gov will try and keep as many “emergency” measures in place and hope we forget.
We need to be vigilant to force govt to repeal all emergency powers once the issue is sufficiently resolved. You wont mop it all up right away, but you dont need emergency powers to mop up….
I suspect control freak advocates will try and use the current situation as cover for pay back to any who have sleighted them in the past, so be vigilant and dont be afraid to call out any abuse of power…
31
Vigilant to force govt to repeal all emergency powers once the issue is sufficiently resolve? Would be nice but I’m afraid as was the case with 9/11 many of the restrictions will remain albeit perhaps at a lower level of severity. We have been ratcheting closer and closer to an Orwellian style society for a long time now. Don’t forget technology advancements continually make is easier for Big Brother style tactics. Has been happening already with drones checking out people in public places during the current restrictions.
00
I do not see big government as a solution to the pandemic. The whole situation could have been avoided by simply controlling Australia’s borders when Wuhan was locked down. It has escalated now so helicopter money is being used to keep non-essential workers from giving the virus an easy path to infect essential workers.
The helicopter money comes at zero cost providing it does not feed inflation. As long as people only purchase what they need to survive and the survival supply chains remain intact then the situation is highly deflationary. Oil prices being a good example.
The government makes money at no cost and it is being given away at little cost, mostly through existing channels. Whether through employment retention schemes or MyGov.
The government has very little manpower involved in supplying the essentials. Coles and Woolworths are the prime movers and interface in keeping the supply lines to Australia’s primary producers to keep the population sustained. The Federal Government needed to lift its game on the MyGov system.
Australia’s care workers are yet to come under pressure. State governments are the interface for helicopter money to keep the private care providers on standby in case the need eventuates.
The next phase is maintaining the lock down while developing a system of rapid, reliable testing in conjunction with follow up capacity on tracing movement of individual found to have the virus.
40
Australia’s case total and daily new cases curves are flattening, we’re no longer on the strong growth path, but everything we do now to isolate will have a huge impact on the totals in 1 month. We need to keep this up until active cases stop rising and begin falling.
There are indications the global case and death curves suddenly began to decrease but I’m suspicious of this as it occurred abruptly over the weekend, when the numbers often go soft.
New Cases | Country | Total Cases
17,553 … USA … 161,044
7,846 … Spain … 87,956 (strong rise in Spain)
4,450 … Germany … 66,885
4,376 … France … 44,550
4,050 … Italy … 101,739 (strong drop in Italy)
3,186 … Iran … 41,495
2,619 … UK … 22,141
1,610 … Turkey … 10,827
1,107 … Canada … 7,427
1,093 … Switzerland … 15,922
1,063 … Belgium … 11,899
884 … Netherlands … 11,750
809 … Austria … 9,597
448 … Israel … 4,695
446 … Portugal … 6,408
328 … Sweden … 4,028
323 … Brazil … 4,579
310 … Chile … 2,449
302 … Russia … 1,836
295 … Ireland … 2,910
294 … Romania … 2,109
271 … Australia … 4,361
227 … India … 1,251
% New v Active | Country | Total Cases
20.3 … India … 1,251
19.2 … Iraq … 630
17.7 … Canada … 7,427
17.1 … Russia … 1,836
16.0 … Romania … 2,109
15.5 … Mexico … 993
15.3 … Turkey … 10,827
15.2 … Morocco … 556
14.3 … New Zealand … 589
14.3 … Algeria … 584
13.9 … Ukraine … 548
13.6 … Chile … 2,449
13.0 … France … 44,550
12.8 … Iran … 41,495
12.7 … UK … 22,141
12.5 … Colombia … 798
12.4 … Spain … 87,956
11.6 … Saudi Arabia … 1,453
11.5 … USA … 161,044
11.2 … Peru … 950
10.8 … Belgium … 11,899
10.7 … Croatia … 790
10.6 … Indonesia … 1,414
10.6 … Thailand … 1,524
10.3 … Ireland … 2,910
10.1 … Egypt … 656
Australia is currently 6.6% (271 cases). That must be regarded as unreliable given we’ve had 13.3% 9.1% 13.5% and now 6.6% during the past few days.
% Died | Country | Total Cases
11.39 … Italy … 101,739 (up 0.36%)
8.77 … Spain … 87,956 (up 0.27%)
8.63 … Indonesia … 1,414 (down 0.24%)
7.35 … Netherlands … 11,750 (up 0.25% Netherlands is the next to join Spain and Italy)
7.30 … Iraq … 630 (down 0.38%)
6.79 … France … 44,550 (up 0.30%)
6.64 … Iran … 41,495
6.36 … UK … 22,141 (up 0.07%)
6.25 … Egypt … 656
5.99 … Algeria … 584
5.94 … Morocco … 556
5.05 … Philippines … 1,546
4.66 … Dominican Republic … 901
4.31 … Belgium … 11,899 (up 0.33%)
3.62 … Sweden … 4,028
3.55 … Greece … 1,212
3.47 … Brazil … 4,579
3.08 … Romania … 2,109
3.06 … Ecuador … 1,962
2.99 … Denmark … 2,577
2.89 … Japan … 1,866
2.80 … Argentina … 820
2.56 … India … 1,251
2.53 … Peru … 950
There are several countries transitioning to a higher mortality in their known cases right now. Those that don’t move much are mostly because more new cases are being added which tends to suppress the percent died for a time as total case numbers expand.
This is also why Italy is rising more sharply, but the effect is opposite. As they get lower numbers of new cases each day, a higher percentage of existing cases will die. So the died percentage will go much higher as the growth of the disease actually slows down in Italy (but is still growing).
Italy with 101,739 cases, 11,591 deaths, dying at 812 today and 14,620 recoveries, suggests the final died percentage of known cases will approach ~15%, or even higher.
80
This is what both global scale curves just did from March 28th.
The fact both curves did this together suggests it’s just noise.
Date | Case Curve | Died Curve
17-Feb-20 … 1.018 … 1.042
01-Mar-20 … 1.032 … 1.041
11-Mar-20 … 1.072 … 1.090
16-Mar-20 … 1.088 … 1.120
19-Mar-20 … 1.117 … 1.136
22-Mar-20 … 1.120 … 1.132
30-Mar-20 … 1.090 … 1.108
It means we reach 1 million cases plus ~51,000 deaths on April 2nd, instead of April 1st. But the numbers become a bit less aggressive in their rise from here.
if it is just noise the total died curve should re-steepen in the coming days.
70
WX i read somewhere a warm climate enables the virus to stay airborne up to a few hours and has been found in hospital ac ducts. Might be worth researching if you are interested
10
farmerbraun in moderation again. must be the v word
00
try the word immunisation instead . . . I’d be interested to see what you’ve got to say . . . . .
00
The up to date Australia graph
https://infogram.com/1p7ve7kjeld1pebz2nm0vpqv7nsnp92jn2x?live
10
Thanks Tim,
Your data suggests that the turning point was about 20-24 March. What did we do to make the change? Stop Overseas Travel, that’s what.
10
Odd Jo, Italy cases level off just as Rome Weather reaches 15C daytime temp, Just like in Wuhan. 22deg C Coming to Rome on the weekend. I reckon decrease in 3 weeks (after the 2-3 week incubation lag).
15C seems to be the magic temperature.
32
Should work in Indonesia then, right?
Come on, discuss South east Asia! This is what all the people sprouting this warming moderation thesis are avoiding doing.
50
It does, but indonesia is VERY exposed to international travel and has a high population density with inadequate sewerage and from what I’ve seen a rather mediocre hospital system.
Even so the Death per million population (representative of infection and death rates) is low.
You like to Spout Deaths / Recoveries, yet you don’t lag the data. Deaths happen about 2-3 weeks earlier than recoveries that take 4-6 weeks for the same time of infection. So you need to use Deaths (3 Weeks ago) / Recoveries today to develop any useful statistics. To take infectiousness in a given climate into account it needs to be Deaths/Population which is why I use that metric to look at climate effects.
12
For the non numerical among you:
What this means is that while infections are rising fast the deaths/recoveries seems astronomical because people have died but others aren’t recovering yet. On the downside of the curve the opposite happens Deaths/Recoveries seems small because all the people going to die already have, and the last recoveries are swinging through the system.
The death per Million population however gives you roughly your probability of dying from the epidemic. In Australia that’s 0.7 per million or about 1 chance in 1.4 Million and possibly as low as 1 in 14 million if there are 10 times the recorded infections in the community as suspected.
Bill from Oz, says I’m Callous but I’m really just being scientific. The numbers say what the numbers say.
33
You cannot trust the numbers on this. Most countries arent testing beyond the highest priorities for knowing. For example, Ontario doesnt test other residents of a retirement home once it has been established that the location is infected..
Indonesia has a very young population
10
Bobl do it without the barbs please.
Impartiality is the key
10
Not going to either.
10
Notice the massive amount of help Italy has received from the EU elite in Brussels ? /sarc.
40
All of Europe with its 512m has access to EU37bn in emergency funds for CV19 fight. For comparison US has USD2tr for its 327m and Australia AUD300bn offered for 25m.
I agree that EU help is not massive.
Italy has just announced EU400m for food stamps to be distributed. Many Italians in voluntary confinement are now broke and need foodstamps to get essential supplies.
20
A few odd things about the data.
1. Check the details of most countries in Worldometer (well, those that open a link to a new page) and you’ll almost always find a dip in the number of new cases around March 20th to 23rd. Why??
2. The men:women ratio is sometimes surprising. In Sweden for example (see https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa) the 4028 cases of covid-19 are split women: 1916 and men: 2112, which is about equal. Now look at the number of deaths, which is 146, split women: 59 men:87 (almost 50% more men). Now look at the middle figures, the ones that need intensive care. The 306 are split women: 81, men: 225. Are men the weaker sex or are they more prone to factors that seem to increase the risk, aged over 65, hypertension, chronic heart and lung conditions and/or diabetes (see https://www.icuregswe.org/en/data–results/covid-19-in-swedish-intensive-care)
10
Agree John, their data is definitely looking sub-par of late. I’m wondering who’s submitting and filtering it.
40
I have it on good authority that SBS technical staff are going remote.
10
I isolated all countries above 500 cases, sorted them in the order of % died, removed all countries below 2.5% died, then removed all cold winter countries. If warmth were the solution to COVID-19 cases all of these warmer countries would not have a rapidly growing severe infection spread and a high and growing proportion of deaths in hospitals which already can’t cope with its onset.
% Died | Country | Total Cases
8.63 … Indonesia … 1,414
5.05 … Philippines … 1,546
4.66 … Dominican Republic … 901
3.54 … Brazil … 4,661
3.15 … Ecuador … 1,966
2.56 … Mexico … 1,094
2.56 … India … 1,251(very warm for a few weeks)
2.53 … Peru … 950
2.51 … Panama … 1,075
2.48 … Argentina … 966
There were almost as many warm countries in this list as cold countries before I removed the cold ones.
These countries below are all in the high rate of spreading group (above 10% new cases v active cases). Al countries below 500 cases were removed and sorted in % new v actives, removed all countries below 10% died, then removed all cold winter countries.
% New v Active | Country | Total Cases
20.3 … India … 1,251
15.5 … Mexico … 993
14.3 … New Zealand … 589
13.6 … Chile … 2,449
12.5 … Colombia … 798
11.2 … Peru … 950
10.6 … Indonesia … 1,414
10.6 … Thailand … 1,524
Again, there are almost as many warm countries in this list as cold countries, before I edited the cold ones out.
It’s apparent that both the spread and the severity are about the same as in the colder countries. The difference is merely one of developmental stages of growth of the infection.
The countries with the most developed infections now also had the closest and largest-scale of economic, technical, investment and strategic connection with China.
The later developing infections listed are simply the result of the disease taking longer to get to them and the differing starting situations. We all saw the international growth taking place each day with new countries added at a rate of 5 to as many as 10 per day, the virus did not go everywhere at once. The infections did not all start at the same time, nor from as many spreaders, and/or differing mobility levels.
But now that they have the infection it’s growing in the usual way, at the same rate of about 25% per day if nothing impedes it, as in he colder countries. It’s behaving just like it does in cold countries, as far as I can see so far. So I currently think the suggestion that warmth is our salvation is a false hope.
If it was not a serious problem within warm counties these same warm countries would not consistently showing up in the daily top-20 lists of countries with a serious rapidly growing COVID-19 infection problem. Not only do they keep appearing, there’s a growing number of them. The infections are not mellowing out and going away. Their disease level is growing and developing just like it did in Europe and Russia, with the same severity, I don’t see any real difference here so far.
There’s just a difference in development timing, due to differing starting situations. There’s nothing in the data I’m seeing which suggests anyone should pin their hopes, plans or propositions on seasonality factors moderating the virus.
60
Also, South East Asia is literally a sea of islands, big and small. If you want to bottle it up and limit spread of a virus it’s fairly easy to do that as even the locals could make sure of that. So there’s no comparing like-for-like with Europe, China or USA infection situation, as you’d expect the disease to be more easily impeded within an Island Archipelago if a quarantine were imposed and the locals became hostile to people flouting it.
60
Sorry, you need to lag your death stats by 3 weeks.
13
They are not my death stats, they are the global deaths data.
20
PPS WXCycles The real question is why is Indonesia just 1400 infections and 122 deaths to the USA 160000 infections and 3000 deaths for similar populations despite the undisputed fact that the USA has a vastly superior hospital system, has underground universal sewerage and water treatment, better sealed housing and a far lower population density.
Let me tell you, Temperature at which transmission happens, in the USA its been Winter.
25
read what happened at a Newfoundland funeral home. This is how the virus spreads
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/st-johns-funeral-home-a-covid-19-mini-epicentre-after-more-than-60-cases-traced-to-two-wakes/ar-BB11LyyJ
10
What part of these known percentages of daily spreading of the virus in warm weather don’t you understand, bobl?
% New v Active | Country | Total Cases
20.3 … India … 1,251
15.5 … Mexico … 993
14.3 … New Zealand … 589
13.6 … Chile … 2,449
12.5 … Colombia … 798
11.2 … Peru … 950
10.6 … Indonesia … 1,414
10.6 … Thailand … 1,524
The rate of transmission in cold countries is observed to be exactly the same in hot countries!
50
That is interesting, the problem is though that you don’t know what ACTIVE is. Its Not Stable, and does not count asymptomatic cases and in many cases is confined only to cases presenting at hospital. It has bothered me because I’ve been expecting to see a change in the rate of increase of actives, but there’s that pesky 3 week lag again. Active isn’t going to change rate until cases start clearing in any number in a few weeks time.
The other problem is that your new infection rate isn’t going to be driven by ACTIVE cases, these are known infectious in Quarantine who are less likely to infect anyone, its the undiagnosed cases that cause New cases noone knows what this is or how climate affects it.
But it is an interesting stat, its still clear though that in warm climates the death rate per Million population is generally lower.
11
These are not my data, my stats, or my infection rates they’re just the global data. I’m not at all interested in any of the finer arguments or lags you’re talking about. I’m presenting the data as it is, with just two derived indicative percentages added, to reveal the trends which will matter to people. I’m not interested in academic intrigues. It’s just to see what the virus is doing zoomed-out.
Doing that I can see the thesis that warmer weather makes it relatively innocuous, less transmissible or less severe is wrong.That’s all I’m interested in clarifying, as that’s what the data is showing.
All the talk and assumptions about temperature and humidity effects on this virus’s behavior appear (so far) to be false. That’s all.
60
The problem with presenting just a number of positives cases and comparing countries is it does not reflect the testing rate in each country. It should presented as positive tests as a percentage of tests done. Just presenting a total of positive casesis meaningless.
That is not a criticism of you WXcycles –it is a criticism of those collating the data.
Even the graphs Jo has above are not that accurate in that most countries have increased their testing rate over the time period so it could be argued that the daily drop off in some cases in more significant because it is based on a higher daily rate of testing.
30
We’ll never know Ross, Worldometer seems to be struggling to present what they do. I know the daily Oz data is often incomplete so I presume a lot on it is. Plus the 24 hr update cycle makes it almost impossible to do a meaningful comparison. The best time to do so is about mid-morning AEST as the Euro and US data is usually close to complete for the day, but fairly poor Austral-Asian data. Seeing through a glass darkly is all we’re going to get.
30
I note from today’s media that two Chinese real estate development companies with operations in Australia, the Greenland Group and Risland Australia, have surreptitiouslu bought up in Australia and shipped to China in February bulk quantities of masks, hand sanitiser, protective gowns and non-prescription medications. The shipments totalled 180+ tonnes of goods which are now in desperately short supply in Australia. Removing 180 tonnes of these goods from Australia definitely did not help that shortage hich started only days later. Both companies boasted on Chinese and Australian social media of their patriotic deeds supporting the coronavirus fight in the Hebei province.
Greenland is apparently part-owned by the Shanghai Municipal Government, that is, part owned by the Communist Party of China, unless anyone believes in independent and sovereign Shanghai. Risland is apparently privately owned, and accordingly is fully dependent on the goodwill of the Communist Party of China, unless anyone believes in fairies at the bottom of the garden.
Being part-owned by a local government body in China, Greenland requires a FIRB licence to operate in Australia. That licence is limited to property development and construction, and does not include export trade in medical supplies. Risland likely needs real estate licences from the NSW State Government.
Both companies, technically correctly, point out that at the time of shipping these supplies out of Australia in February the epicentre of the pandemic was in Wuhan, and nobody could foresee the course it would take in Australia. Therefore, they say, they were well within their rights to strip the Australian market of scarce supplies in order to send them to China.
How about someone in DFAT and/or NSW Government look for and find a new or slightly used spine, use it to stand upright, and politely communicate to the two Chinese companies that while they may have been technically in the right a month ago, the situation in Australia has changed rapidly for the worse, so they are now expected to source from China and fly to Australia the amount of medical supplies equivalent to one they stripped from the Australian market in January and February. To wit – 180 tonnes of masks and protective gear. Within, say, 7 days. If not, their Australian operating licences will be put in jeopardy on the strength of their standard ‘fit and proper person’ clauses. Some people have long forgotten that ‘fit and proper’ is a broader concept, including but by no means limited to ‘never convicted in Australia’.
I am sure Sydney probably can right now make do without more luxury appartments for sale to foreign buyers, and definitely can do without affluent Chinese businesspeople enhancing their standing with the Party and the Motherland at a cost to Australian coronavirus patients.
20
New York has a fleet of refrigerated trucks lined up to expand the morgue capacity:
https://nypost.com/2020/03/30/fema-sending-refrigerated-trucks-to-new-york-city-for-covid-19-bodies/
New York is at a stage where its CV19 death toll is no longer reflective of reality. Same thing occurring in NY as Wuhan. The focus has shifted to those who have a good chance of survival or the money to pay for the required care if it is still available:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/new-york-coronavirus-cases-updates.html
Like Wuhan, Spain and Italy – tragic.
30
Rick,
I dont seem to recall NY bringing refridgerated trucks to store and then haul out the dead every flu season.
20
50% of recovered COVID 19 patients are still infectious a week after recovering !
This has major implications for the time in quarantine of those infected with this disease.
It also has major implications for all medical people and others treating infected persons. Maintain PPE for at least a week after they have recovered.
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-news-study-shows-more-than-50-percent-of-clinically-recovered-covid-19-patients-are-still-infectious-with-the-sars-cov-2-virus
10
I understand the test is supposed to be 2 x negative tests over 10 days. Patients are supposed to be released on pathology results rather than clinical symptoms.
30
What if a theory/angle/point-of-view takes into account that perhaps this corona is an organism that can take a very long time to incubate?…according to some, 27 days plus??… Not an exponential curve at all. A long incubation period changes the numbers somewhat. Why not? Who else is looking at those numbers for us ? Maybe Sam Vaknin/others is/are onto something too?? Some flu virus’s incubate in 6 hours is a good comparison for the other end of the scale with respect to ‘incubation period’ i suppose in this instance.
6:30
Notes and eratta: 27 days.
Certainly this is interesting in my opinion.
20
WA, SA, Vic (Australia) case data is bad. I haven’t looked into the other states. The test criteria nearly exclude identifying community transmission.
Western Australia
31/03/2020: “WA will expand its COVID-19 testing regime in the coming days to include people with a fever and acute respiratory illness.”
Prior to this, only people with symptoms and known contact with someone having travelled overseas were tested. Even with this measure they’re only testing those in respiratory distress.
South Australia
Please only present for testing if:
You have travelled overseas in the past 14 days AND have symptoms.
You have travelled interstate in the past 14 days AND have symptoms.
You have been in contact with a confirmed case AND have symptoms.
You are a healthcare worker with direct patient contact AND have a fever OR an acute respiratory infection
You are an aged and residential care worker AND have a fever OR an acute respiratory infection
Victoria
Assessment Complete: symptomatic
You have now completed the self-assessment. You have indicated that you are symptomatic but that you:
have not travelled overseas in the last 14 days
have not had close contact with a confirmed case in the last 14 days
are not living in aged or residential care
are not a health care worker or residential aged care worker, and
do not identify as a First Nations Australian
Advice
At the present time testing is not recommended for you.
30
Same in Queensland:
Testing and fever clinics — coronavirus (COVID-19) Testing criteria (updated 26 March)
A person is eligible for testing if they have a fever (or history of fever) or acute respiratory symptoms, and, in the last 14 days:
– they were a close contact or a household contact of a confirmed case
– they had been overseas, including on a cruise.
Testing is also possible for people who have a fever (or history of fever) or acute respiratory symptoms, AND:
– work in vulnerable settings such as healthcare, aged or residential care, military, correction facilities, detention centres and boarding schools.
– live in an area where an outbreak has occurred
– live in a First Nations community.
If you are unwell and haven’t been overseas or in contact with a confirmed case, you may not be tested for coronavirus (COVID-19). Your doctor will make this assessment based on your symptoms.
https://www.qld.gov.au/health/conditions/health-alerts/coronavirus-covid-19/take-action/testing-and-fever-clinics
40
Note the development of the Spanish epidemic over time.
“In the United States, the disease was first observed in Haskell County, Kansas, in January 1918, prompting local doctor Loring Miner to warn the US Public Health Service’s academic journal. On 4 March 1918, company cook Albert Gitchell, from Haskell County, reported sick at Fort Riley, a US military facility that at the time was training American troops during World War I, making him the first recorded victim of the flu. Within days, 522 men at the camp had reported sick. By 11 March 1918, the virus had reached Queens, New York. Failure to take preventive measures in March/April was later criticised.
In August 1918, a more virulent strain appeared simultaneously in Brest, France; in Freetown, Sierra Leone; and in the U.S. in Boston, Massachusetts. The Spanish flu also spread through Ireland, carried there by returning Irish soldiers.[citation needed] The Allies of World War I came to call it the Spanish flu, primarily because the pandemic received greater press attention after it moved from France to Spain in November 1918. Spain was not involved in the war and had not imposed wartime censorship.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
20
Rapid tests for the detection of antibodies should be developed to detect people who have immunity. These people can help a lot in the long run.
10
G’day ren,
Does the presence of antibodies in a person necessarily demonstrate future immunity in the person, or merely that they have been confronted by the disease? Seems to me that immunity is possible, but not proven in this case.
I have assumed that if I get the flu my body will produce antibodies, but I can still get that again. Same with a cold. True?
Cheers
Dave B
20
It means immunity to the strain that generated the immunity and possibly wider immunity if the target antigen is present in multiple strains.
10
Already exist Ren, Sars Virus tests work, and the USA has a new 3 hour (I Think) IGG Test. You can buy chinese home test kits on DX.com but I have no idea about efficacy.
I think our government needs to supply us reliable home test kits, then we can get a real quarantine going.
21
It will be difficult to get a vaccine, because you have to reckon with fast mutations.
10
If that happens.
10
Not necessarily. It depends on whether there is a part of the virus that does not mutate and which you can produce an antibody to. If the spike that attaches to the ACE2 doesn’t mutate and an antibody can attach to that say, a vaccine will work.
But the simple truth is that the virus only kills elderly people in bad health. Yes, a few others, but diseases still kill the young and the healthy no matter what- meningitis say. Vaccines too kill a tiny percentage if young people each year.
12
Wuhan coronavirus death toll 12 times more than official figures, claim locals
https://www.metro.news/wuhan-coronavirus-death-toll-12-times-more-than-official-figures-claim-locals/1962578/
20
I’m sorry, but this is how nature works, and man has no influence on it. One outbreak of the virus will be extinguished, and new mutations will appear in other areas of the world.
11
The number of cases are meaningless. They are an unknown percentage of unknown number. And we don’t know the accuracy of the test nor its false positive rate.
Amazing how you are willing to ignore how poor data is when it suits your arguments.
34
Fully agree P44.
Even the number of fatal cases is an unreliable figure in many countries. ..
IE ,..Wuhan an obvious under quoted figure buy orders of magnitude.
…..Italy,..have admitted they have basicly labeled any death a cv19 fatality
Indonisia…. have hardly bothered looking !
And i am sure even some of the few deaths in Australia have not been fully investigated
20
This is just cruel, Jo.
You’re basically telling me I’m not invited to the party… 900 times. 😀
But seriously, the reason all these house parties can legally occur is because of the public health direction in Queensland prohibiting “mass gatherings”:
So you can hold a house party for infecting 98 other people and then tell the nice officers who show up that it is fully compliant with paragraph 9, subsection c ii of the Mass Gatherings Direction (No.2) under the Public Health Act. ( I am not a lawyer, but I can read. )
Qld also has not legally enforced the PM’s strong advice against gatherings of more than 2 people, and thank goodness as I cannot imagine the cost of patrolling for every place that 3 people are walking together down the street. They also make exceptions for public thoroughfares such as Queen St mall, which is again fine if people aren’t lingering and are unlikely to be touching things on their way through.
It’s completely ridiculous we are trashing the economy and yet still partying like it’s 2019. The “mexicans” are lucky us dirty, dirty Queenslanders are not allowed across the border to infect the New South Welshmen with our party diseases.
(Shhh! The border closure is really to stop Sydneysiders bringing the Iranian strain up to Brisvegas.)
Getting the economy back to normal implies either sacrificing ~ 300,000 aussies to the disease in 5 months, or eliminating the virus. Any intermediate approach will quickly devolve into the first option. The case doubling time has gone from 3 days to 9 days, and the health outlook is much better than before, probably postponing the deaths of at least 25000 people. Great work Australia, but at what cost? We have succeeded in flattening the curve but most people are coming around to the view that the long term cost of this approach is too big to bear.
Our strategy is perimeter defense, but the perimeter right now is our own home. We gotta expand the perimeter.
We gotta crush that curve. Make it a project. Put a sunset clause in the martial law that says it ends in 21 days. Commit to ending all domestic suppression orders on a fixed near term date while keeping international arrivals quarantined for the next 12 months and keeping the hand hygiene high. The sooner this dragnet is complete the sooner most businesses can go back to normal. Then Australia can go back to being a guilt-free party island.
Travel agents can offer 2 weeks of quarantine and 2 weeks of Covid-free partying for tourists. Other nations which achieve the same status may have bilateral agreements to waive quarantine requirements on visitors who arrive on direct flights from Australia. Step by step medicine will conquer the virus in each country and bring them into the covid-free club. This could all turn out fine in the end if we play our cards right soon.
40
Can’t hold a council election without a crowd.
55 new cases in QLD today. 1 case in my town 9 days ago, 18 cases now though.
Winning.
40
Mods:
Comment in moderation beyond the typos god only knows why just delete please
Cheers
10
The only solid data we have is if you catch tbe virus there is a chance you will die a slow horrible death because your lungs will fill with fluid and you will have to fight to breath and you will eventually drown.
For those that think it is just the flu dont hide in your house espousing gibberish online seek out a carona virus case and give them a big sloppy kiss then keep us in the loop as your symptoms progress.
64
I find the most intriguing numbers are the ‘Recovered’ numbers. They seem to be taking
forever to rise much at all. Will have to look up to see how they are measured. It’s almost
as though they are dependent on serum tests for antibodies. How long therefore is it going to take to clear people as ‘cured and immune’ and free to return to the workforce? I gather there is a phase in some where they become ‘better’ but then regress again.
50
This virus is rather long lived apparently it can take 6 weeks or more. Then add the time for the pathology to show you are no longer infectious. Maybe 8 weeks to “recovery”.
Recovery numbers come from infections at the start of the curve
30
“Wuhan Flu: Hydroxychloroquine”
Experimental results
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/03/31/wuhan-flu-hydroxychloroquine/
Right click on the square then click ” view image” if the results don’t come up
30
Source: Pulse of Medicine
https://pulsmedycyny.pl/koronawirus-sars-cov-2-uszkadza-serce-986835?fbclid=IwAR22YMB6BEN5FGa-cRyCLfhHyIwr0Wqhf5ArNL8sDMPSgIip8F5NM7UFZRY
SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus not only affects the respiratory system. “People who have cardiovascular disease such as hypertension, myocardial infarction or diabetes are more likely to die from coronavirus infection than those who are not burdened with these diseases. Observations also indicate that the virus can irreversibly damage the heart in previously healthy people “- says prof. dr. n. med. Adam Witkowski, head of the Cardiology and Intervention Angiology Clinic of the National Institute of Cardiology in Warsaw, president of the Polish Society of Cardiology.
30
Wait for the post-mortems if they get done. Could be illuminating.
10
How lucky is Taiwan?
It is not a member of the UN nor the WHO.
No wonder they have fared better than any other country.
90
According to WHO, Taiwan does not exist.
20
Nor Israel.
30
Someone is calling out the WHO.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-31/who-accused-of-suppressing-taiwan-coronavirus-response-data/12101512
I’m a bit surprised that the Oz ABC has reported this.
Cheers
Dave B
30
The WHO was called out for its poor handling of Ebola in West Africa.
Result: they got worse.
10
An essential part of pulling the number of new cases to zero, is to track every lead when someone is identified with the virus, making sure all those infected by the new victim is identified. The confinement, distancing, reporting are all fine but someone might have been infected. Member of the family, friend, store owner, fellow passenger. Everyone has to be tracked, notified, tested to isolate this branch.
Does anyone know who is doing this vital detective work?
20
Yes, I know. What is on third base and WHO is doing nothing.
20
The Chinese Premier is on the phone.
WHO is on the phone? (Johny Carson)
10
In Queensland there is a new group of “enforcers”
http://statements.qld.gov.au/Statement/2020/3/31/special-team-to-boost-tracking-and-enforcement-in-bid-to-halt-coronavirus
40
Thanks. “Law enforcement officials will now be able to assist the Public Health Units with contact tracing people who have come into contact with a known coronavirus case.”
Any idea who these people are? Which departments? Army? Police? Police (medical) staff? Detectives? You need someone with reasonable grasp of infection routes, mechanisms, virus behaviour and with the legal authority and people skills to get answers or obtain information. Virus police.
10
Some think Jo is being ‘obsessive’ on this issue.
Some friends think I am being obsessive.
In fact I want to see you all stay alive & healthy.
And that applies even to those who I am not friends.
There is a lot of blatantly wrong information being dumped here
Which will lead to us being infected and maybe getting very ill.
If you still doubt the need for face masks read over this :
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/03/31/states-counties-cities-personal-you-are-on-self-rescue-now/
22
The Aussie approach ‘she’ll be right mate’ and ‘no worries’ does not apply to easily acquired rapidly spreading and often fatal viral pneumonia. Nothing less than a total focus on elimination of this virus from our shores will do.
We do not have rabies, a distant cousin. We do not want this virus either and we can eliminate it. It is not one of God’s creatures. It is an evil chemical which self replicates in victims and ruins lives. It does not have to exist. And if it was in fact created by the military Wuhan Institute of Virology as is possible, it is a weapon of war.
31
The most obvious is the correlation with high levels of galactic radiation and low solar activity. They affect large temperature jumps and the increase of troposphere ozone. Also, an increase in UV radiation at the surface weakens immunity. The increase in ionizing radiation at the surface lowers people’s immunity around the world.
https://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/
11
AD
I dont follow your logic, you have commenters here making claims that are not supported by them or by an external source (news, scientific studies etc) ergo it is opinion. Anyone in the world can read these comments and then also form the same opinion.
This in theory could lead people to develop a false sense of security and potential harm. I am merely trying to apply balance, a sane voice if you will to the situation.
I fail to see why my comments fall into moderation, perhaps you should view this discussion in a more impartial way.
Regards
Crakar24
[ As soon as a comment gets personal it gets our attention and the attention of the filter ,you weren’t singled out Crackar there was another .] AD
[ I’m not here to argue the rights and wrongs of the debate or pick sides but can I refer you to this comment which shows how to give a counter argument without getting personal.
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/03/coronavirus-signs-of-peaks-in-the-west/#comment-2301580
] AD
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See my post on the NYC doctor at Cornell Med Center treating the Covid-19 patients. It’s not “highly contagious” like, say, measles meaning that staying away from those with symptoms might be all one needs to do AND quit playing with your face unless you’ve sterilized your hands. Try using a 91%+ solution of rubbing alcohol with a bit of witch hazel and glycerin to leaving it on for 10-15 seconds (as in wet). Kills even the noroviruses.
Under one reality the virus is so “highly contagious and airborne” that all we can hope for is to slow it down so the med folks can get some rest versus having a method that will basically halt the spread. Sadly, most people have been warned so many times about staying home if you’ve flu-like symptoms, that, like the wolf story in Aesop, it was just background noise.
Interestingly, the S.Kor. method of detect-isolate-treat was possible since they have such widespread use of cell phones with gps tracking. Some will be opposed, almost violently, to being tracked 24/7. Another post-panic issue.
Then, some experts are surfacing warning about if one doesn’t allow these pathogens to work there way through, then entire generations could be wiped out when an even worse, truly highly contagious pathogen arrives. Like what happens if one eliminates chicken pox in all children somehow without vaccines, etc, but through isolation/quarantines/etc then when it does manage to slip in, it’s the adults that will have large number of complications, some deadly. Children not so much. Same thing happened with polio (do an internet search). Yet another issue to sort whenever the planet returns to whatever normal is.
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Read some background material on polio.
Fascinating.
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you have my backing on this one craker. With the old climate blogs it didn’t matter much if someone just made up stuff as there were no consequences. This is different.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=12&v=JBB9bA-gXL4&feature=emb_logo
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Academic Bullsh#t !
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Treating Covid 19 with HCQ, a field report by a New York City area physician, as related to former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani in his podcast Sunday(?), as well as the doctor’s own word (as posted on http://www.freerepublic.com, a news and discussion website for Patriots on the Right).
Apparently, Dr Zev was frustrated at patients becoming I’ll before Covid19 test results, taking three days in turnaround time. So, he looked at the three or so reports from China, South Korea, and France and began his own tripartite trial since Tuesday (or the Tuesday the week before last)?
He estimates that 59% of patients were testing positive, and since no one else was giving patients HCQ, decided to give all from vulnerable groups the same regimen.
In the video interview, Dr Zev says only 3 patients have been hospitalized and all 3 for pneumonia. He emphasizes that this infection is a two part one, and catching and treating it before lung congestion becomes severe is vital for success.
======================================
THIS CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE
EXCELLENT NEWS: Hydroxychloroquine Treatment Effective on 699 Patients
Must see video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TJdjhd_XG8&t=586s
Dr. Vladimir (Zev) Zelenko
Board Certified Family Practitioner
501 Rt 208, Monroe, NY 10950
845-238-0000
March 23, 2020
To all medical professionals around the world:
My name is Dr. Zev Zelenko and I practice medicine in Monroe, NY. For the last 16 years, I have cared for approximately 75% of the adult population of Kiryas Joel, which is a very close knit community of approximately 35,000 people in which the infection spread rapidly and unchecked prior to the imposition of social distancing.
As of today my team has tested approximately 200 people from this community for Covid-19, and 65% of the results have been positive. If extrapolated to the entire community, that means more than 20,000 people are infected at the present time. Of this group, I estimate that there are 1500 patients who are in the high-risk category (i.e. >60, immunocompromised, comorbidities, etc).
Given the urgency of the situation, I developed the following treatment protocol in the pre-hospital setting and have seen only positive results:
1. Any patient with shortness of breath regardless of age is treated.
2. Any patient in the high-risk category even with just mild symptoms is treated.
3. Young, healthy and low risk patients even with symptoms are not treated (unless their circumstances change and they fall into category 1 or 2).
My out-patient treatment regimen is as follows:
1. Hydroxychloroquine 200mg twice a day for 5 days
2. Azithromycin 500mg once a day for 5 days
3. Zinc sulfate 220mg once a day for 5 days
The rationale for my treatment plan is as follows. I combined the data available from China and South Korea with the recent study published from France (sites available on request). We know that hydroxychloroquine helps Zinc enter the cell. We know that Zinc slows viral replication within the cell. Regarding the use of azithromycin, I postulate it prevents secondary bacterial infections. These three drugs are well known and usually well tolerated, hence the risk to the patient is low.
Since last Thursday, my team has treated approximately 350 patients in Kiryas Joel and another 150 patients in other areas of New York with the above regimen.
Of this group and the information provided to me by affiliated medical teams, we have had ZERO deaths, ZERO hospitalizations, and ZERO intubations. In addition, I have not heard of any negative side effects other than approximately 10% of patients with temporary nausea and diarrhea.
In sum, my urgent recommendation is to initiate treatment in the outpatient setting as soon as possible in accordance with the above. Based on my direct experience, it prevents acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), prevents the need for hospitalization and saves lives.
With much respect,
Dr. Zev Zelenko
=============================
I realize there seems to be an inconsistency in treatment regime start days. I trust someone else might further investigate and resolve this discrepancy. Thank you.
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“Unprepared and incompetent”? No, Australia will probably be a country used as an example of handling the pandemic much better than most. Look at the number of cases in proportion, look at the low mortality rate, look at the incredible proportional testing rate in NSW. There is no pleasing perfectionist and doomsday predictor Jo.
consider analysis of Sweden next time you discuss slowing the spread…
Glad to see the “laughing” schtick and hair-on-fire fear mongering has eased a bit…
01
Australia has a low death rate because our patients are mostly under 70 years old.
If we are not New york or Italy, it’s not because we acted faster than them to prevent the disease, it’s because it was summer here a few weeks ago.
Doomsday predictor Jo was right on Feb 1, Feb 9, Feb 14 and still right now, though didn’t predict doom, just accurately predicted pandemonium, closed schools, closed factories, closed borders, and mass disruption weeks before it happened. All of which could easily have been avoided.
Now I predict we’ll solve it faster than people expect…
Maybe read the posts here before you comment.
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Jo
You seem to pop up at all sorts of hours. Either you are in my time zone and secretly live on the Isle of Wight or you are an insomniac or you are working much too hard and at all hours. Perhaps all three, but do take care
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I think the treatment will evolve into a two stage treatment set.
Stage one: the 3 drug Zelenko treatment for early stages of the disease. This boost the immune system generically, which will (hopefully) be enough to stop the disease progression.
Stage two: at hospitalization stage, the IL-6 blockers, such as Tocilizumab, (sold under the name Actemra) to try to stop the cytokinase autoimmune cascade. This is going into trial in NYC in a couple of weeks.
Treating stage two case with stage one drugs will not do much good, as the cytokinase cascade is what is doing the killing. On the other hand, the stage two drugs will not do much good at boosting the immune system (they work counter to that).
How long it will take to convince he medical profession about this is unknown.
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Here is something new to throw into the discussion :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-31/qantas-baggage-handlers-test-positive-to-coronavirus-in-sa/12107258
Today we found out that 6 baggage handlers at Adelaide airport have tested positive. There are not many flights per day now – 90% reduction in fact ! But we have had Australians flying home on special flights from Italy, France, the UK, the uSA and South America.
And baggage handlers handled their suitcases etc when it was unloaded and sent to the airport carousels for passengers to collect.
So it seems that this virus can survive on the surface of such materials through the long flights back from overseas.
In the USA most airlines are still flying so I wonder how much the virus is being spread via this route of transmission ?
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Cold will not kill viruses. Or bacteria. It would kill people but viruses are not alive. That is why it is folly to have ice blocks in most countries, a misunderstanding that cold kills bugs of any kind. If anything, it ensures that they live on suitcases.
Heat is the enemy of infection, which I am hoping is why some very hot countries are going to be safer than we thought. And there is nowhere in the US or Europe which is hot in winter. You need to go to the tropics for that. It’s why all the viruses and mutations come from the Northern winter. 60% of the people live above the tropics.
It is why we need viral screening of returning Australians, which should not be difficult or expensive. Especially for Corona virus but also for the many flus which should no longer be tolerated. It is better to stop them at the airport or sea terminal and slow their entry to Australia. We and the medical profession have become too accustomed to viral plagues. The ‘flu’ kills 60,000 Americans a year. It is not the old people’s friend. Many are gone long before their time and this is preventable.
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Hawaii TdeF : 90 infections ther as of two days ago.
https://www.kitv.com/story/41902621/22-confirmed-cases-of-covid19-in-hawaii
Hawaii is tropical all year round.
How can there be any COVID 19 cases there under your belief ?
I used to hope this like you.
But the figures in tropical countries keep going up.
🙁
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Looking again at the numbers, if we continue on our path, we will flatten out at 5-6,000 cases of COVID-19. At half the population of South Korea, this is half the number of cases. While the world is praising South Korea, they started much faster and pulled it back savagely but we will have achieved the same result. As I wrote before, South Korea like Australia is effectively an island and this can be done. The virus can be eliminated and will die out.
I am still reading apologists for corona virus. People who think it is all overblown. They want to see if it is really deadly before anyone takes drastic action. Coronavirus rationalists. Unfortunately some of these are doctors who have the ear of politicians and politicians are always interested in doing nothing if at all possible.
It is a sad fact that the rolling disaster in Italy is a lesson to all these nay sayers. Why wait to see if it will happen here? Of course it will. And then action is too late.
Australia is going to come out of this with a safe country and without mass deaths and hopefully only perhaps 6,000 people who were infected at any time. There will always be someone who will argue that could have been achieved by doing nothing. Or that the deaths were going to happen anyway. Eventually. So why bother?
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Brazil may become a new great epidemic focus Covid-19.
We should observe an increase in all deaths in individual countries if such statistics are public.
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You can expect a large number of all deaths in the UK. Also among teenagers.
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No shirt sherlock.
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As suspected the dip in the global curves was a processing delay as both curves are bouncing back, and as expected, the deid curve bounced back much more strongly.
Date | Case Curve | Died Curve
17-Feb-20 … 1.018 … 1.042
01-Mar-20 … 1.032 … 1.041
11-Mar-20 … 1.072 … 1.090
16-Mar-20 … 1.088 … 1.120
19-Mar-20 … 1.117 … 1.136
22-Mar-20 … 1.120 … 1.132
28-Mar-20 … 1.090 … 1.108
31-Mar-20 … 1.105 … 1.122
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This might be of interest. According to a front line treatment of COVID-19 as a primary doctor at Weill Cornell Medical Center.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/doctor-david-price-coronavirus
As facts catch up with guessing, it may very well be that it’s not a “highly contagious airborne” pathogen but closer to the contact transmitted Espstein-Barr virus (aka, “mono” or kissing disease). If the doc is right (and it’s hard to poo-poo a clinical treatment doctor at such a hospital in the “epicenter” of the hot zone of NYC) then the South Korean method of detect, isolate and treat was so effective apparently in stopping the spread in their nation. It’d be more akin to a contagious STD than a true airborne flu/cold strain.
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Welcome back Captain.
I was worried that the good ship Venus had sunk on us.
“http://joannenova.com.au/2020/03/coronavirus-signs-of-peaks-in-the-west/#comment-2301606”
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http://joannenova.com.au/2020/03/coronavirus-signs-of-peaks-in-the-west/#comment-2301606
Inverted commas
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Coronavirus Australia: Warning nine cruise ships off Australian coast could ‘flood our system’
Nine cruise ships floating off the NSW coast could flood the state’s hospitals with coronavirus patients, NSW Police have warned.
https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/australia/coronavirus-australia-warning-nine-cruise-ships-off-australian-coast-could-flood-our-system/news-story/8456c862d038cc1fd9b328b48baec9be
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Dr Zev story on early HCQ use to save lives (above 10 or 20 posts) appears in a new place. And gets endorsements:
https://techstartups.com/2020/03/28/dr-vladimir-zelenko-now-treated-699-coronav
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Italy = 11.75% died (11.03% 2 days ago)
Spain = 8.78 (8.50% 2 days ago)
Netherlands = 8.25% (7.10% 2 days ago)
UK= 7.11% died (6.29% 2 days ago)
France = 6.79% (6.49% 2 days ago)
Belgium = 5.52% (3.98% 2 days ago)
One country that superficially appeared to be doing well was the Philippines which fell from 6.59% died about 4 days back to 4.22% died today, but only because this was being diluted by a 27.8% growth of new cases per day, as a proportion of active cases. They have a big problem brewing.
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The numbers for 31 Mar kept going up. I hope this is a pulse from a cruise ship or aircraft.
While still clearly a downward trend, the rate of fall will be clearer over the next three days.
“Someday we’ll all be together once more
When all of the ships come back to the shore
I realise something I’ve always known
I still call Australia home”
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I see AD got his mod training whilst working at Wikipedia
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