Potential Good News On the COVID Front [Archive]

D.W.

23rd July 2020, 04:55 AM

So, this is a country agnostic comment. I can't stop anyone from going off track but can't promise I won't respond if someone does.

The point is more from my view as a kind of country agnostic person (I feel like I could live anywhere other than countries where you are not allowed to speak freely) is understanding how all of us get past covid. That's not just countries with infection, but letting countries with low rates out of the cage. If you're in a country anywhere that exposure has been low, then until or unless there's a useful long term vaccine or treatment, this hasn't gone away.

Lead time between small problem and big problem is only a couple of months.

There was an article in the news here lately that explains a lot of mysteries here in the states where infection rates have been pretty high:
* why isn't antibody testing more accurate or reliable (I don't know how accurate the antibody tests are, there may be two aspects to this)
* stories coming out that antibodies fade fairly quickly
* negative tests for people with covid that come back to positive later (I think this is a testing issue and not that people are "re-getting" the same thing). I don't have HIV but when I was younger, I read about it out of curiosity. I remember seeing that you can have low viral loads (can be undetectable) in some parts of the body and the virus can reside elsewhere (gones, especially) and then recur if you drop your guard. Actually, I don't know that I've ever known anyone who has HIV or had it, but for some reason, I found the information fascinating. If someone is swabbing your nose and you have covid virus in concentration elsewhere bobbing up and down above detectable levels, then by all means.

So, here's the point. fading antibodies is bad because if you're going to provide people with antibodies and they don't last, what good are they? If someone gets the virus and their antibodies fade, then they're going to get it again at some point. Figure the news will always make it sound worse than it is, so if they can find someone who loses their antibodies to any detectable amount in 3 months, then they'll just love a story like that. People seem to love to click on scary stories. Pro wrestling psychology - show someone something they really like or they really hate. Anything in the middle will be forgotten.

It turns out that there may be some immunity from T cells for two reasons (in the absence of antibodies or after loss of antibodies)
1) some people have T cells that are reactive to covid that exist much longer than antibodies (17 years so far for SARS patients)
2) a separate story suggested that when lab samples were checked from prior to the COVID outbreak, some samples have T cells that are reactive to COVID even though it's suspected that those cells weren't exposed to the current COVID round

Why is that? I don't know. Was there a virus strain in the past that wasn't recognized or maybe as severe, but was similar?

Whatever the case may be, it means immunity may last longer, and another cohort may never be easily infected in the first place.

That's good news.

Apparently, immunizations can be tailored to elicit T cell response, and if vaccines intended to make antibodies aren't long lasting, then a different type of vaccine may be.

And we may be as a population (especially in places who have weathered it, US, western europe, Sweden) further ahead of it than we think.

bueller

23rd July 2020, 12:20 PM

Just what the forum needed, Another COVID thread. They haven't been divisive at all.

D.W.

24th July 2020, 02:32 AM

Just what the forum needed, Another COVID thread. They haven't been divisive at all.

Perhaps one where people are dedicated to talking about nothing other than solving the issue (and not what other people should do to solving other issues, or telling anyone else what to do in general) would be good.

I've noticed here, and probably in much of the US, when I'd come into work (which we are allowed to do on a limited basis), I was here by myself the first day. There was no traffic, etc. That was after the first outbreak was over and the entire county of 1.2MM had only 8 people serious enough to be hospitalized.

I came to work today and had to pay attention to other drivers, because people are just going back to work, anyway. In this county of 1.2MM, the total deaths are only 210. I asked my PCP and he said that they have had 3 deaths in their clinic, but none were a surprise, and in most cases, he wasn't aware of any. We have twice as many cases as we did the first time around, but the death count increases by about 1 per day or a little bit less. People under lockdown will eventually get tired of waiting as they have here.

the idea that things may be bad, but not as bad as we thought (or we're told in most news outlets "the antibodies go away within months!!!!") seems like good news. We're a canary in the mine here, so to speak. What appears to be the case is that most of the places that were not much exposed early on decided they'd not be affected, and they're heavily affected now and locking down. The places that were heavily affected don't seem to be as highly impacted as one would expect on the second go-around here.

That's good news, because from a problem solving standpoint, I suspect we'll be living with this thing for quite some time. Maybe forever.

ian

24th July 2020, 03:37 AM

responding in the spirit of the post ...

So, this is a country agnostic comment. I can't stop anyone from going off track but can't promise I won't respond if someone does.

Lead time between small problem and big problem is only a couple of months. based on the "moral panic" currently influencing Covid responses in Victoria and Australia more generally, the lead time between "not an issue" and "big problem" is more likely measured in weeks, not months.

There was an article in the news here lately that explains a lot of mysteries here in the states where infection rates have been pretty high:
* why isn't antibody testing more accurate or reliable (I don't know how accurate the antibody tests are, there may be two aspects to this)my understanding, based a lot on Canadian media reporting of scientific research, is that the "false negative" testing rate can be as high as 30%.
i.e. 30% of people who are positive to Covid-19 test negative via the molecular test.
What I don't know is whether the "false negative" result is independent (i.e. the chance of two "false negative" tests on the same person have a probability of 0.09) or if the testing is related -- if your first test result is a "false negative" subsequent test results are also likely to be "false negatives".

* stories coming out that antibodies fade fairly quicklythat is my understanding. A "successful antiviral will likely require annual boosters much like the flu vaccine.

* negative tests for people with covid that come back to positive later (I think this is a testing issue and not that people are "re-getting" the same thing). I think -- i.e. I don't have access to the relevant research, or the research is not yet available -- that the problem is related to the "false negative" results I mentioned above and might provide evidence that each Covid test is independent.

So, here's the point. fading antibodies is bad because if you're going to provide people with antibodies and they don't last, what good are they? If someone gets the virus and their antibodies fade, then they're going to get it again at some point. this is the outcome I figure is most likely, annual or even bi annual booster anto virus injections.

It turns out that there may be some immunity from T cells for two reasons (in the absence of antibodies or after loss of antibodies)
1) some people have T cells that are reactive to covid that exist much longer than antibodies (17 years so far for SARS patients)
2) a separate story suggested that when lab samples were checked from prior to the COVID outbreak, some samples have T cells that are reactive to COVID even though it's suspected that those cells weren't exposed to the current COVID round

Why is that? I don't know. Was there a virus strain in the past that wasn't recognized or maybe as severe, but was similar?I also don't know.

Whatever the case may be, it means immunity may last longer, and another cohort may never be easily infected in the first place.

That's good news. I agree. That would be good news

Though I accept that annual flu shots are a wise idea

D.W.

24th July 2020, 04:34 AM

We do the annual flu shot here. It's free. I'm pretty much country agnostic as an individual and politically uninterested in any political organization of any type (politics uses problems, I prefer people who solve problems and get fulfillment out of the goodness of doing that, not using things and people).

At any rate, there's some misunderstanding, probably in most places, that getting the flu shot is to keep you from getting the flu. Many here rely on anecdotes (the "it gives you autism" cohort is small despite the amount of blog posts they make). Based on how I view things (in my day job, more spatial), I've never read the point, but would suspect it's outbreak control. Reduce the likelihood of a carrier for certain types, reduce the concentration of it and greatly slow the spread.

It's uncommon for me to get the flu either way, so I don't care for myself. It's more a matter of not contributing to a problem. which now is a lot more understandable for people given how easy it is to observe the spread of covid.

Yes on the news. As soon as an outbreak starts and testing numbers go up, the news will seize on it. As lockdown progresses and the new diagnoses go down but death numbers go up, it won't be "the trailing indicator of reported covid deaths are up, but we would've expected this and new cases are down, so the increased deaths should be temporary".

We get this instead:
* RECORD NUMBER OF DAILY DEATHS AGAIN, 5 DAYS IN A ROW. WHEN WILL IT END ?!?!?!
* DEATHS UP, MYSTERY OF DELIRIUM IN INDIVIDUALS WITH NO OTHER SYMPTOMS, COVID CAUSING PERMANENT BRAIN DAMAGE!!!

It becomes a 1950s horror story and the "what can you do to help" message is lost.

The upside is we're in our second outbreak here - diagnosed cases are up, deaths are way down vs. the first. We opened bars and restaurants and expected we'd see a bump up in cases (at least I did), but not that many deaths because most folks with vulnerable relatives are a lot more cautious.

I expect that the outbreaks will occur more and more slowly here as it's likely that about 50 million people in the states have had the virus by now.

Still extremely dangerous for the vulnerable, but we're getting to see the effect a second time now that transmission occurs inside. Second wave diagnosis numbers are trending downward again after only two weeks of the second shutdown. It's controllable, except this time, dining is still allowed outside (it's summer here) and outdoor recreation continues in great volume than it did previously (our club pool stayed open this time - about 500 members, no cases).

Flu shot and avoidance of getting colds is a good thing for the upcoming fall and winter season here if for no other reason than to not have to guess that with cold or flu (about 93% of symptomatic folks here have something other than covid according to the test results) that you might have to quarantine due to having covid.

ian

24th July 2020, 06:52 AM

At any rate, there's some misunderstanding, probably in most places, that getting the flu shot is to keep you from getting the flu. Many here rely on anecdotes (the "it gives you autism" cohort is small despite the amount of blog posts they make). Based on how I view things (in my day job, more spatial), I've never read the point, but would suspect it's outbreak control. Reduce the likelihood of a carrier for certain types, reduce the concentration of it and greatly slow the spread. my understanding is that annual flu shots are about REDUCING the severity of the annual flu strain.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported yesterday that so far this year 39 people have died from influenza compared with an expected 430 deaths from the flu. The cause is most likely related to improved hand hygiene. Total Covid-19 deaths in Australia are currently 133, so after adding in the 39 due to "the flu", the total deaths are well under half the expected number.

Not sure at this time what that means for deaths due to other causes.

It becomes a 1950s horror story minus the "duck and cover" to survive the 1950s expected nuclear fall out

D.W.

24th July 2020, 07:03 AM

It sounds like flu is more easily spread by hand/touch than covid. As time goes on here, we are finally dealing with the fact that most transmission is respiratory in enclosed spaces. Early large groups of transmission made this pretty obvious. My wife bleached all of our food and mail, but I was skeptical at first after reading some chinese study information and said "let's watch the letter carriers. they're carrying a thousand times as much as we're touching - they can't walk around without touching their faces, etc forever".

None of ours got sick. I'm sure some did, but would suspect they did from delivering mail into apartment buildings and working together. They gradually stopped wearing gloves and masks (our carriers drive their van to the center of the neighborhood and then walk on foot).

That was a REAL concern early on. We all lock down, everyone increases the amount of food they're getting by mail, etc. If the letter carriers go down, we're going to be in real trouble.

Fortunately, it didn't happen. I have asthma (though not severe). Information about my risk level is ambiguous at best. I've avoided enclosed spaces (stopped riding public trans - not surprisingly, we did end up with a bunch of bus drivers getting covid - they're sitting in an enclosed tube and a lot of the ridership is nutty folks who may not grasp the whole covid thing. public trans in the US generally is only concentrated in cities, so the nutty types will end up living here because transit is free for them. You can spot them pretty quickly, or figure it out when they talk, but who is going to do anything about them rubbing their faces and touching seats and coughing without a mask.

I would imagine the data about influenza and respiratory infections other than covid will be very enlightening - as in, if we stop going indoors with each other, all of that stuff is going to drop drastically. Nursing homes don't allow guests on the premises indoors. They've been hit hard by covid, but that's better controlled now, too. I'd bet their seasonal flu and other respiratory infections will be down. In order to slow down covid, those avenues are greatly reduced.

Yes on the reduction in severity of the flu, I've heard that, too and forgot. The people who won't do the flu shot because they believe it gets everyone sick with the flu remind me of an aunt of mine. For those folks, nothing ever happens that's just routine. This aunt went to McDonalds once in the 1980s here, ate a big mac and felt ill later that day. She probably was already sick and didn't know it. Since then, nobody in her family has ever gone to mcdonalds. She's got them all convinced that "the food is bad".

One of my coworkers won't get the flu shot "i once got a flu shot and got the flu two weeks later. You can't tell me that the shot didn't cause the flu". (OK, that tells me enough to know not to try...but jeez, ever get the flu in a year you didn't get the flu shot? what caused it).

clear out

25th July 2020, 11:08 AM

Don’t want to derail your thread but I agree with your Aunt.:D
H.

ian

25th July 2020, 01:13 PM

One of my coworkers won't get the flu shot "i once got a flu shot and got the flu two weeks later. You can't tell me that the shot didn't cause the flu". As far as I know no one who has had influenza will knock back the chance to get a shot of anti-flu vaccine.
Sounds like your coworker just had a common cold.

woodhutt

1st August 2020, 04:40 AM

As far as I know no one who has had influenza will knock back the chance to get a shot of anti-flu vaccine.
Sounds like your coworker just had a common cold.

Well said. I had influenza once as a youngster (diagnosed by a test). For three days I didn't know where I was, hallucinations, sweating etc. and had to be spoon-fed and bed bathed. I often wonder how many cases of influenza which are reported and go to make up the annual statistics are the real deal.

ian

1st August 2020, 04:57 AM

Well said. I had influenza once as a youngster (diagnosed by a test). For three days I didn't know where I was, hallucinations, sweating etc. and had to be spoon-fed and bed bathed. I often wonder how many cases of influenza which are reported and go to make up the annual statistics are the real deal.
I suspect all of the cases reported and making up the annual stats are the real deal.

Unless your test result is positive for influenza, by definition you don't have it.

woodhutt

1st August 2020, 06:15 AM

I suspect all of the cases reported and making up the annual stats are the real deal.

Unless your test result is positive for influenza, by definition you don't have it.

I'm not so sure, Ian. I know many people who have been given a GP certificate for their employer claiming they have 'flu but without having been given a test. In fact, I am the only person I know to have had such a test. If the stats are based on sickness certificates issued then this would be misleading.
A GP I know socially said the furthest he would go is to write a cert stating the patient was 'displaying 'flu-like symptoms'. He said that, if a patient had influenza they would not be able to make it to his surgery. I can vouch for that!
Pete

ian

1st August 2020, 11:59 AM

I'm not so sure, Ian. I know many people who have been given a GP certificate for their employer claiming they have 'flu but without having been given a test. In fact, I am the only person I know to have had such a test. If the stats are based on sickness certificates issued then this would be misleading.
Hi Pete

It's sometimes surprising what's available on the internet from: Department of Health | Australian Influenza Surveillance Report - No 08 - week ending 26 July 2020 (https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/ozflu-surveil-no08-20.htm)

Activity – Following a high start to the 2020 interseasonal period, currently, influenza and influenza-like illness (ILI) activity are lower than average across all systems for this time of year. At the national level, notifications of laboratory-confirmed influenza have substantially decreased since mid-March and remain low.
Severity – There is no indication of the potential severity of the 2020 season at this time. In the year to date, of the 20,934 notifications of laboratory confirmed influenza, 36 (0.17%) laboratory-confirmed influenza-associated deaths have been notified to the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS).
Virology – In the year to date, the majority of nationally reported laboratory-confirmed influenza cases were influenza A (87.3%). Of cases in the last fortnight, the proportion of cases attributed to influenza B has increased (29.2%), compared to the previous fortnight (26.6%; 29 June to 12 July 2020).
Vaccine match and effectiveness – It is too early in the season to assess vaccine match and effectiveness.

Based on the above I think it safe to conclude that "flu like symptoms" are not counted in the annual stats.

D.W.

2nd August 2020, 11:55 PM

influenza tests are underdone here, too. I guess the PCPs (our term for general doc) usually assume that unless you're not resolving by the time a subsequent visit is needed, there's no great need to test for influenza.

If there are complications from it at a nursing home or hospital for elderly, same.

No clue if overall, reported deaths are overstated or understated - pneumonia is often reported as a cause of death here.

Fellow in my office had influenza in February, and was slow to resolve. He got tested for it several times and actually had confirmed positive results, first test and second, and only tested negative after resolving at a third visit.

Much of what people refer to as "having the flu" for 24 hours or whatever else it may be is probably something else, like mild food poisoning. There's just no economic incentive for the health systems to really narrow down what an illness is with an assay unless they're doing a data survey or someone isn't resolving. Many nursing homes here are for profit and probably have no incentive to spend unneeded money. The not-for-profit versions probably don't have the money to spend.

Second round of covid is thoroughly around here now, though. It's in a local nursing home that's not a county home of abandonment (as in, well run), and I see reports that it's on the upswing in parts of western europe.

At the same time, the initial testing of vaccines sounds like it's being done less than objectively. For example, the vaccines can cause complications or increases in other infections (Some flu vaccines increase the frequency of respiratory viruses, at least in some past tests - and with statistical confidence). Listening to a debate between Alan Dershowitz and Robert Kennedy's son (can't remember his name, he's a nephew of JFK), about how well a mandatory vaccine will go here, RFK's son mentioned that when vaccine trials go poorly with complications, the next test generally gets done against the meningitis vaccine as placebo (which often leads to other illness not related to meningitis, sometimes paralysis and more deaths when given widely than meningitis generally causes itself).

It's apparently not yet clear whether it's better for most to avoid a vaccine if their death rates for a cohort are 1 in 1000 or less. This leaves the people in at risk cohorts stuck.

I didn't believe the commentary about respiratory viruses, but I have asthma and respiratory viruses lead to bronchitis for me about 2/3rds of the time. That sucks. It turns into a three week ordeal of lost sleep unless addressed with steroids (not a fan). I located the study that RFK referred to, and it was legitimate. I also located conflicting studies and others that said there was an increased risk but less than 4 times higher for respiratory viruses.

I probably won't get the flu vaccine next year if it matches one of the types mentioned in the increased risk studies, but my kids and spouse don't have asthma, so they will.

ian

3rd August 2020, 03:25 PM

elanjacobs

3rd August 2020, 07:00 PM

What will be interesting is if the greater availability of the "annual flu shot" in March and April 2020 has a bearing on the incidence of influenza this current flu season.
We already know that the flu numbers here are waaaaay down on previous years, although my totally uneducated opinion is that's probably more to do with people having less contact with others in general than vaccine availability (obviously it's a combination of both, although I have no idea how you'd be able to accurately measure them independently).

ian

4th August 2020, 04:12 AM

We already know that the flu numbers here are waaaaay down on previous years, although my totally uneducated opinion is that's probably more to do with people having less contact with others in general than vaccine availability (obviously it's a combination of both, although I have no idea how you'd be able to accurately measure them independently).
I think you could measure the number of doses of the annual flu vaccine administered in 2020 compared to 2019 -- my impression, based on vaguely remembered reports on the ABC news, is that significantly more (perhaps as many as 2 million more) flu vaccine doses were administered in 2020 compared to 2019. This should give a measure of the overall herd immunity add to which would be increased hand hygiene and social distancing.
However, I'll let the etymologists play with the figures.

D.W.

19th August 2020, 05:13 AM

Small update here, as the officials argue about who is right regarding who is now protected against the virus and for how long.

Our second wave after opening everything including bars and such is winding down, and the tail end of that is deaths (the pattern is predictable - open for two weeks, cases start to rise. Wait and watch a week or two longer, cases accelerate more. Close things back down in critical situations - schools, public concerts, bars, etc - griping, cases continue to increase due to lag in incubation or slow testing results. Horror stories follow in the news to keep everyone tuned in, and then as with the initial go around, a nursing home or three gets inundated and drives up the counts - and this is a very bad thing, not just "oh well, they were all on the back side of the hill".

My county is a little more than 1.2MM people. 291 documented deaths so far in both outbreaks (about 50/50, but more cases in the second outbreak and lower death rate). At first, that seems like a lot - it is a lot - if it were a train wreck, but then it comes to mind how vulnerable diabetic, aged, infirm, cancer patients, folks with heart disease are, etc, and there must be more than a hundred thousand of those folks here. Diagnosed cases are 10k. The death count suggests they are under by about a factor of 6.

College kicked around the idea of going back to school, but that's been put on ice - they will start their semesters online. Public schools in my state have their choice of what they'll do, but all that open will likely shut as soon as there's any outbreak. In the suburbs here (there are some areas of the state where the case count is a couple total for the whole county, but not in my populous area), our schools are a little bit more progressive and they've changed their mind to online school through the fall, but it will be involved online and teachers will be teaching and kids will be on video conference for half the day at least with enough work to keep them busy most of the other half. That is a good thing under this roof as the kids quickly learned that when it was pass/fail submissions of worksheets, they could do the day's worksheets in 2 hours and have the rest of the day off. My kids are young, so you could see the things they were making progress on slow down a lot.

The BIG difference here now, and one the news finds uninteresting is that testing is widespread. You go to the dr. with anything that looks remotely similar to flu, cold, diarrhea...anything at all, you're sent to get a covid test. There is no question now of who you were exposed to and whether you were a high enough priority.

My comment of things on the ground - I work with 25 people, figure they have spouses and kids. Our circle of pool and friends is a couple of hundred people more with only a fraction of them close to us. I don't know anyone yet who has gotten covid and tested positive. It looks like we'll all get it at some point, and the vaccines thus far may have poor effective rates and sketchy side effect trial statistics (common here to test vaccines against a control instead of nothing and report effects above the control - if that's the meningitis vaccine, that's a problem as that one is associated with a lot of complications).

Very early on, I observed that the nursing homes, etc, with high concentration of virus had terrible outcomes. Even the staff had high hospitalization rates (50% in the NW US in washington state) and in other areas that continued to operate (like meat packing factories) huge numbers of people tested positive but were asymptomatic, even though they had physical characteristics (high obesity rates in low wage jobs, etc) that should've made the situation worse. I joked with someone if this was going to go on forever, i'd like just a tiny amount to put in the tip of my nose and we'll see how it goes from there. At least it would take about 6 days before it would get to my lungs.

This is turning out to be no joke, and supports wearing moderately ineffective masks. While certain partially effective masks aren't good at preventing people from getting covid, the data is coming in to suggest that they lower the initial load received and the number of folks who are asymptomatic is far higher as a %.

One of the meat packing factories here had an asymptomatic rate close to or above 90%, and the speculation is that the folks are working side by side in a large area, they continued to work and couldn't avoid all exposure, but the volume of the area and their use of marginal masks made them all start with low doses.

One hopes there's not a snafu where they just had false positives.

ian

19th August 2020, 11:47 AM

One hopes there's not a snafu where they just had false positives.
Must admit that I'm more worried about false negatives.
I understand that the false positive rate is <2%, but that the false negative rate can be as high as 30%.

Very concerning if true

Bushmiller

25th August 2020, 09:45 PM

David

I wondered how you are going over there in the land of the free. There are many reasons why people go quiet on the Forum, but inevitably we tend to think the worst: Still, I am hoping that is not true.

In many ways I can relate to your experience of this virus and by that I mean the way in which we are exposed to it. I too live in a small community and it is probably much smaller than yours as the town is around 1400 population: Not much more than a hamlet really. There are no cases of Covid 19 in the immediate vicinity and even in the nearest major town, Toowoomba ( we call it a city and it is the largest inland city in Australia at around the 100,000 mark) there were about three cases early on and a small controversy when a single person entered the state from overseas on a diplomatic passport and then did a runner before his quarantine period had expired. He did give himself up.

Consequently, the chance of exposure in our region seems slight. However, this is where the greatest risk lies to my mind. We become casual (more than normal) and relax our guard. Then somebody comes into our environment carrying the virus, quite likely unknowingly, and within a short period of time you have an escalation of cases ripping through the community.

So what is the problem with that? For many there is no problem. They may show mild symptoms or even no symptoms. Unfortunately that doesn't apply to everybody. People at risk are those with underlying health issues and the elderly as typically they will be more likely to have health problems. So, if we do not isolate, that leaves us deciding how many people we are prepared to let die from the virus. What is the acceptable number? What degree of liability do we accept? This is perhaps the variable around the world. The argument for this path to happen is that they were going to die anyway. True, we all are: Eventually. The case against is that very few people wish to die prematurely and in particular from something that is preventable. Preventable by contact rather than cure. Around 20% of infected people have serious issues stemming from the illness and a further high proportion require hospitalisation and intensive care. For some unfortunate individuals the virus sparks a raft of other issues that continue well past the life of the original infection. Some survivors report that it is a particularly nasty and invidious condition and quite unlike the common all garden flu varieties.

One of the issues that makes this virus so contentious is the different ways it has manifested itself and the consequences of how it is treated in different parts of the world. I have put together a table below to illustrate that just because a country is one of the so-called developed nations, it does not automatically mean it has handled the outbreak well. There is this juxtaposition of economy versus health. Also bear in mind that although I have taken my figures (now about two or three days out of date on 22 Aug 2020) from information displayed by Johns Hopkins (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html) on their website, they can only rely on data supplied to them. Some countries may not have the facilities for testing extensively, some may not have comprehensive reporting facilities and some may, for their own reasons, be clouding the information (A euphemism :rolleyes:.)

I have chosen countries from your region, our region and some others. I have not cherry picked, but I have selected, but not to support any agenda. We can always find information to support our position if we wish and I am sure (I think you mentioned your profession is an actuary) you know of the saying " there are lies, damned lies and statistics!" However that was not my intention. Just a broad spread was intended. I hope my percentage figures are correct. I appreciate I could have set up an Excel spread sheet which would have done the hard yards for me, but it would have taken me longer to get my head around that and I would have suffered more hair loss as well. So I did the manual thing.

<tbody>
Date 22/8/20
Cases
Deaths
Population
Deaths as % of cases
Cases as % of Pop
Deaths as % of Pop

Worldwide
22,998,346
800,000
7,806,682,000
3.47%
.29%
.01%

United States
5,624,721
175,416
331,002,000
3.12%
1.6%
.05%

United Kingdom
325,271
41,491
67,886,000
12,75%
.48%
.06%

Canada
126,318
9110
37,742,000
7.21%
.33%
.02%

Brazil
3,532,330
113,358
212,559,000
3,12%
1.66%
.05%

Mexico
549,734
59,610
128,932,000
10.8%
.42%
.05%

Russia
949,531
16,268
145,934,000
1.72%
.65%
.011%

France
271,960
30,508
65,274,000
11.2%
.42%
.05%

Saudi Africa
603,338
12,843
59,308,000
2.13%
1.02%
.02%

Saudi Arabia
305,186
3,580
34,814,000
1.17%
.88%
.01%

India
2,975,701
55,794
1,380,004,000
1.88%
.216%
.004%

Sweden
86,068
5,810
10,099,000
6.75%
.85%
.06%

Australia
24,602
485
25,500,000
2.13%
.09%
.002%

Norway
10,275
264
5,421,000
2.57%
.19%
.005%

</tbody>

Sweden is a good example of why the "herd" immunity is not an option and, as the figures show, that path was disastrous for them. It is a little difficult to understand the high proportion of deaths in the like of France and the UK, the latter of which has a fairly good National Health system. I would be interested to hear from others as to why the figures are there. One possibility is that many cases went unreported in the early days of the virus so that would have distorted the percentages.

I have heard the POTUS say that America is doing very well. He must be looking at some figures to which the general population has no access. Australia has done well, but we have a natural advantage of distance and a small population plus we have at various times locked down. The state of Victoria is at a high level and New South Wales is at a lower level. Here in Queensland we don't let any of those sickly types in ad they are stopped at the border or have to quarantine for two weeks in a hotel at their expense. Our politicians followed the best course of action, albeit reluctantly, from a health point of view, but had to be kicked and shamed into action.

Without any wish to be disrespectful, countries such as India may not be able to accurately record data and they would not be alone. It would be easy to imagine the pandemic to run completely out of hand in such countries. Having said that, life is really rugged in some of those countries and to survive you have to be tough. Perhaps they have more resilience (not really immunity) than we effete Western types.

Anyway, some food for thought. I hope everybody on the Forum is Covid-19 free even if you are suffering from the restrictions.

Regards
Paul

woodhutt

26th August 2020, 02:33 AM

Meanwhile, NZ has been taken to task following POTUS description of the "massive" re-emergence of the virus.
Someone overseas calling themselves 'No Lockdown' tweeted a description of NZ's condition as a "hellhole".
The link shows some of the responses.
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/kiwis-counter-hellhole-claimsâ€‹ (https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/kiwis-counter-hellhole-claims)

:U:U:U
Pete

D.W.

26th August 2020, 08:31 AM

no real change here. the levels of new cases are down some (School starts this week, though!! most schools still remote). I still don't know anyone who has gotten covid and tested positive - our family friends all came back negative. About 5% of symptomatic patients come back positive, the rest here have cold and flu or something else (food poisoning, etc).

What people are doing here is getting more back to normal except for outright dangerous stuff. No bars fully open, etc, but restaurants open to low capacity and most have adapted by greatly increasing outdoor seating. I go back into the office from time to time, but none of us would feel comfortable if everyone was there all in one day. Client meetings are mostly remote except for the few that have been on a golf course (that's not my role) where you're out in the open air.

As far as the herd immunity - it depends on your lens. I'm getting to the point thinking as a spatial thinker that it doesn't look like this virus is going to do anything but become part of society everywhere. I doubt the vaccines at this point will be that effective, and it sounds like there's bad side effect potential. The meningitis vaccine here is a good lesson - if you get meningitis, that's bad, you have a good chance of dying. So few people got it that the cost to society of the vaccine has probably been higher. but it satisfies the "we must do something" crowd.

If this covid is like other colds, etc, we're going to start seeing examples of people who get it a second time in the next year or so, and I'd imagine if they get two different strains so that it can be identified, they won't have much reaction to the second one. But like anything else, if they get it a 10th time when they're old, they may die from it (or from pneumonia).

My point is, if you're living somewhere that there's been no exposure to the virus, you're going to be in for a rough ride in the future in all likelihood. Efficacy of trial vaccines has been poor and honest disclosure of side effects, etc, has been muted because nobody wants to hear right now that nothing good is coming along.

I wouldn't be surprised if Sweden ends up better off than most places in the end. Nobody here is happy about the death levels, but it appears that all of the societies with some spread so far have about the same overall death rate as a % of population. This is not a surprise. Their diagnosed cases and % death as a % of diagnosed cases are pretty meaningless because there's no reason to believe anything is going on there when the total death rate as a % of the population is the same - except that more testing is done in some places than others.

The other truth that's becoming apparent here (and has been) is that the vulnerable population is almost entirely responsible for the death counts (word that differently if you'd like, but what I mean is that the scary stories of marathon runners being felled like trees left and right just really isn't what's happened. My pdoc said they haven't seen much severity except in vulnerable patients, and the deaths that have occurred in their practice, they've happened either in very old or already very ill patients. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people with heart disease or advanced age who have serious issues and don't know that they're that serious. ).

I'd put the odds on it being that those who went first will have a higher death count. But once we've got herd immunity, we will be reading stories about other societies continuing to be locked down or having waves of infections.

Bushmiller

26th August 2020, 08:53 AM

Thanks David. Good to hear you are alive and kicking.

This article I received on herd immunity may be of interest. It relates specifically to Australia, but with some variation dependent on medical facilities I think it would be similarly applicable almost anywhere:

One of the more sincere questions I get asked by people grappling with the CoVID-19 pandemic is: “if the mortality rate is so low, why don’t we just aim for herd immunity. Surely that would be better than locking us all down?”
Herd immunity is the concept that if enough people are immune to a particular disease, either through naturally acquired immunity or vaccination, that the spread of the disease in the community is arrested, hence protecting vulnerable individuals like the elderly, babies, pregnant women and those with chronic health conditions.
The percentage of people that need to be immune to a disease in order to establish herd immunity in the community varies depending on the disease reproductive number. For CoVID-19 the percentage estimated to achieve herd immunity would be 60% of the population.
The current case mortality rate of CoVID in Australia is around 1.7%. Worldwide case mortality is double this at 3.6%. But for the sake of simplicity let’s use the Australian case mortality rate.
If 60% of the community needs to catch COVID-19 to achieve herd immunity, that means that 14.4 million Australians need to be infected. No problem.
But.....
1.7% will die of the disease. That’s 244,800 dead Australians.
But hey, 98.3% will survive, right?
But international figures show 14% of patients require hospitalisation due to extreme symptoms and complications. That’s 1.96 million Australians that will need admission to hospital.
We only have 62,000 beds available Australia-wide. So what happens to the 1.9 million Australians who need beds but can’t get the medical care to pull through?
But forget them...what’s important is that the really sick Australians get a bed, right?
International figures show that 2% of infected patients require intensive care support. That would mean that 280,000 Australians will require ICU admission.
We have 2378 ICU beds. What happens to the 276,000 critically unwell patients that cannot get an ICU bed?
Aiming for herd immunity in Australia would hence result in:
14.4 million infected Australians.
1.9 million severely infected Australians unable to get a hospital bed.
276,000 critically infected Australians unable to get an ICU bed.
Oh, and the 244,800 Australians that are going to die because ‘it’s only a 1.7% mortality rate’.
But, hey, at least we’ll establish herd immunity, right?
Except for that fact that all evidence points to waning immunity following infection, with antibodies waning after 3 months.
Herd immunity is not an option. Stay home, and stay sensible.
EDIT:
From Elaine Stevenson, Australian Infectious Disease Epidemiologist, who contacted me and is aghast by the Swedish approach:
“Herd immunity is a concept which only applies to vaccine preventable diseases as a measure of program efficacy.
It does not apply to the situation that we are currently in vis a vis COVID-19
We do not have enough follow up on the virus to be anything other than extremely cautious”.
- Sara Hassan

The bold type is my emphasis. Also note the suspicion (for the moment) that immunity wanes rapidly, although this has yet to be proven. The caveat, of course, is that this is one view.

Regards
Paul

D.W.

26th August 2020, 09:02 AM

Those numbers are a bit off. It appears that the actual death rate is somewhere around 0.5% or a little less (it will probably turn out to be less).

That's still A LOT of people.

If anyone wants to know why you can't go head long into herd immunity, the only thing that keeps the death rate even that low is the ability to treat people in hospitals, on ventilators, etc. If the hospital system gets overwhelmed, all bets are off and the death rate goes up.

Herd immunity if attempted has to be with limited opening and management of the capacity in hospitals.

Personally, I think it'll turn out to be an OK long term option. But that's just a guess. I'm glad I'm not in charge.

And no worries about what the president says. Nobody listens to him. When biden is president, nobody will listen to him either. We haven't had an easy listening president since early reagan and if you could stand the lip biting, slick willie. The rest of the guys are smooth with no substance, or not smooth at all (and also often with no substance).

Glider

26th August 2020, 02:23 PM

A friend's 33 y.o. daughter who lives in London caught COVID in March. Six months down the track she still feels unwell and has just started regaining her sense of smell and taste.

We learned that the U.K. is only reporting cases which require admission to hospital. That would explain their high death rate.

mick

woodPixel

26th August 2020, 04:32 PM

I was looking at the link BushMiller provided. I saw this: New Cases of COVID-19 In World Countries - Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases)

The graph below shows an obvious decline in cases.

Without being rude, the USA has made a mess of it WRT people going out, partying, rioting, working and socialising.... Nobody wearing masks, etc....so WHY is it that it has not spread like it first did?

What has changed? It went up like a rocket, then sideways, a bit more up, now its dropping.

Lets assume the stats are right. That there are no fibs.

Why isn't this thing maintaining it geometric growth?

1 2 4 8 16 32 ..... noooo, its flapping around at 1... 1... 1.2... 1.3 .... 1... 1... (I just made this up)

Is it running out of steam? Has the virus changed?

Obviously all the "vulnerable people" have not been wiped out. I read that many ICU's in the USA are empty after being initially flooded.

What is going on?

479544

Bushmiller

26th August 2020, 04:43 PM

WP

Interesting comment on the apparent slowing of the virus. Percentages rely heavily on accurate information. Look at Glider's post immediately before yours. The UK's attitude provides a gross distortion on the figures. Which other countries are doing the same thing? Or something similar. I did make the caveat that we need to be mindful of how and what is reported before getting overexcited on an aspect.

One of the peculiarities of this virus is that it has behaved differently to other pandemics that have preceded it. It is uncharted territory, but after eight months we should be getting some sort of handle as to how best to deal with it. If I was sceptical on anything it is the prospect of a satisfactory vaccine in the near future.

Regards
Paul

AlexS

26th August 2020, 05:56 PM

We should remember that the USA is not a homogeneous place. My daughter is in Colorado, where everyone wears masks if they go into a shop and they practice social distancing pretty well. The city where she is is also a very techy place and a high percentage of people can work from home. Its all quite different to more crowded places, like NYC. Also, each state has a governor who makes a lot of the rules, and may or may not be relatively sane. We have 8 states & territories to wrangle; they have 50.

Glider

26th August 2020, 06:12 PM

What has changed? It went up like a rocket, then sideways, a bit more up, now its dropping.

Lets assume the stats are right. That there are no fibs.

Why isn't this thing maintaining it geometric growth?

Is it running out of steam? Has the virus changed?

What is going on?

479544

It's difficult to track the actions of 50 states' governors and their public health authorities, but I'm led to believe that border closures (mostly soft), lockdowns, public distancing and surgical masks have all been employed in varying degrees. Exponential growth hasn't continued for these reasons.

I use public transport a few times a week. My best guess is 50% of all commuters wear masks in Sydney.

I'm coming to the conclusion that people are not necessarily ignoring the safety recommendations, they are following the habits of a lifetime. The "new normal" will take time to become normal.

mick

26th August 2020, 11:19 PM

If anyone wants to know why you can't go head long into herd immunity, the only thing that keeps the death rate even that low is the ability to treat people in hospitals, on ventilators, etc. If the hospital system gets overwhelmed, all bets are off and the death rate goes up.

No, not wondering. We had that analysis back in Feb/March.

D.W.

27th August 2020, 01:03 AM

No, not wondering. We had that analysis back in Feb/March.

So did everyone. I gather from the "gotcha" way that you posted that that you've got a partisan "right answer". Some of these newspaper articles are extrapolation - on one side, you have a writer like the one in this article who is arguing against some false points or exaggerating. There is a very small group here in the states that says "open it all, who cares what the consequences are. I can go without a mask". It tends to be more vocal in areas where there's really no virus and no population (interior US, especially in farming areas - people don't have a whole lot of contact with others in a given day). So a writer comes along and writes an article against that on the false premise that all of the extreme points in one are the only opposing viewpoint, and then adds a dash of exaggerated death rate (probably knowingly) because of the conscious or subconscious thought that the real death rate of 0.25-0.5% isn't going to be good enough for the argument.

-1 to the writer for lack of diligence or honesty, whatever it is.

On the opposite end here, perhaps in focus for very narrow groups and taking money to cater to those groups, you have people writing the argument from the opposite side, stating that the death rate is 0.25-0.5%, or perhaps exaggerating lower and saying everyone has already had it (which isn't true) or that it's been around for years and everything should be open.

-1 or -2 for dishonesty, maybe -5.

The rest of the group here is in the middle. The average sentiment in the US is we'd like to have things as open as possible. When an area gets a dose of the virus, then that area shuts down and other than a couple of loudmouths on both ends, nobody says much.

Society here is different. We don't have the desire in general to shut down for one or two years and then perhaps have another version of this five years down the road. But we won't keep plugging on when hospital beds start to fill.

It's not a contest. There's two ways of going about it right now - the folks who the far end who want guaranteed safety at the expense of others when they themselves can reasonably have it (it's not that prevalent *anywhere* that a person who really wants to avoid it can't do so - don't let people in your house, wear N95 when you're out - you won't get it no matter what) -they're in the weeds. The folks who want to congregate in large groups in a closed air space and no masks, they're in the weeds in the other direction. The sentiment that there will be some fix in the near term isn't great, and the people who are claiming moral superiority right now have a chance of looking stupid in the end.

The reality is the rest of us in the middle here in the states aren't interested in holier than thou stuff, and we don't attach ourselves to what our politicians say like much of the rest of the world does. It's not a realistic picture of the average person, but what we're doing is about what people want here. It's not a contest for someone else to be better or worse off than we are (leave that to the politicians) or be like some other culture. If australia wanted to be like the US, you'd be like the US. If we wanted to be like australia, we'd be like australia.

Folks who are just so sure that they know everything about the best move right now (on either end) should be ready to be derided if they're really opinionated and turn out to be wrong.

D.W.

27th August 2020, 01:35 AM

It's difficult to track the actions of 50 states' governors and their public health authorities, but I'm led to believe that border closures (mostly soft), lockdowns, public distancing and surgical masks have all been employed in varying degrees. Exponential growth hasn't continued for these reasons.

That's a correct assessment here. The news makes whatever story they'd like because it's more interesting to exaggerate, but local health authorities generally talk a good game until an area gets a concentration of the virus, and then they shut down to whatever is reasonable. What's considered reasonable here may not be the same as elsewhere , and what's considered reasonable elsewhere may not fly here, at least in various regions.

The reality is that on the ground, the typical desires are "just a little more or a little less" on the lockdowns, and the extreme endpoints don't represent much. Also getting publicity are certain union mouthpieces. Teachers draw a negotiated salary here - the union representatives will do what they can to get the teachers out of exposure, but also out of having to work. If a rep can get the teachers full salary and an hour of work a day for the duration of this, then they'll get a vote. Those folks go to the news, and then someone follows them demanding that teachers get a pay cut until they're working full time again.

But - it doesn't really happen on the ground.

I understand that the biggest cost so far is that the folks who are mentally ill take what they see on the news to heart and those with OCD, etc, are being driven nuts. They don't have the same judgement as the average among us who say "this is what the world around us is like, and here's my reasonable effort to deal with it". I feel for them -I guess they can't resist turning the news on.

ian

27th August 2020, 01:50 AM

each state has a governor who makes a lot of the rules, and may or may not be relatively sane. We have 8 states & territories to wrangle; they have 50.
make that 9 for -- you have to include the Commonwealth in that count so it's 9 jurisdictions for us.

by my count the US has 57 jurisdictions -- the 50 states plus the White House (=51), then there's representatives for Guam, Washington DC, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Northern Mariana Islands -- taking the total to 57.
However, I don't really know how each of the US territories are governed. I know that Puerto Rico has a governor plus a bicameral legislature, and Guam has a governor plus a unicameral legislature. For the other four ???

D.W.

27th August 2020, 02:02 AM

However, I don't really know how each of the US territories are governed. I know that Puerto Rico has a governor plus a bicameral legislature, and Guam has a governor plus a unicameral legislature. For the other four ???

Most people in the US don't know either. I'm not sure what great benefit those territories get other than a pretty solid level of safety due to military threat of anything otherwise. That seems like it's getting antiquated, but maybe that's the case because of the lack of conflict that a couple of strong militaries with economic interests provides (i.e., imperialism is now much less profitable and more risky than is legitimate economic development).

I think most of the territories get "short straw" governing from the US.

D.W.

30th August 2020, 05:54 AM

Cases on the rise in europe, which is predictable. As places reopen, case numbers will go back up. With a combination of more testing and more awareness (for at risk people to stay out of risk, etc), the median or mean age goes down and initial deaths are low (we see the same thing here. I see an article in the paper today that says the new deaths and cases now are below june levels (which was the end of our initial shutdown).

Case numbers rise again in Europe but with fewer deaths - SFGate (https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Case-numbers-rise-again-in-Europe-15522078.php)

there will be a quiet follow up to this stuff as the deaths start to peak about a month later. But it's been quiet here, too. The number of cases were way up in our second outbreak, and the number of deaths have been about the same as the last outbreak, potentially fewer as there's a lot more screening now.

In regard to a wider measure, the CDC keeps death data here in the states. It lets us know how mortality goes, and helps detect where medical money should go (for example, until recently, efforts in reducing smoking paid off huge in expected increase in lifetime - heart and cardiovascular deaths are exacerbated by smoking -cancer is well known, but cancer has improved on a steady pace for decades with most improvement not in lower death rates, but in tolerability of treatment) - but things like dementia and Alzheimers have been climbing steadily - not a good thing.

At any rate, the CDC sees a slight increase in the number of deaths vs. their expected death rate. I believe the death rate overall is about 10 to 1 - as in, despite the covid outbreak, 9 out of 10 deaths are still something else. We shouldn't all forget that the two main causes are cancer and heart disease, and if avoiding covid has us picking up a sedentary lifestyle or doing things that increase cancer rates, we have to be vigilant.

I do believe that while cancer and heart disease may be contributory with covid, covid will have the dubious distinction by the end of the year of rising to #3 in the US (above alzheimers and accidental deaths, but well below cancer and heart disease).

Flu deaths in the US are generally about 55-60k per year. Covid is at 182k right now, one would guess that lagging (meaning if all new cases stopped, how many deaths would still occur) deaths would be a fair number more, maybe getting close to 200k when the dust settles.

And for the first time, I have at least seen in person someone else who I know has covid - an elementary school teacher here who lives across from one of the wife's friends. I don't know the teacher, I just could visually identify for the first time someone who I know who has had covid.

-----

The other interesting thing here is even community to community how different behavior is. In our county park (more conservative area, but suburban conservative, not MAGA-circus stuff) north of the city, we have seen exercising since day one (the park pools didn't open, large gatherings were banned, but nobody was prevented from running and masks have never been mandatory outside) and maybe one in 10 or 20 people wearing masks.

You go into a more affluent area in the middle of the city here, and 90% of the residents walking around outside have masks on. Friends of ours moved back from UK recently and are a little bonkers about how many people are in their community wearing masks all the time walking around outside. They were in the UK and had some neighbors die in the initial outbreak, and are pretty liberal, but for some reason, are put off by the number of people wearing masks outside (they didn't explain it, but I gather because it pressures them to wear them outside, too, so that they don't stand out).

-----
I know a farmer here several states away, further south and inland but affected weather-wise by the recent hurricane. He contracted covid after not thinking much about it, his three kids did and his wife is at risk. They've managed to all stay away from her thus far and she has tested negative. Unfortunately, he contracted covid during a multi-week harvest period and has chosen to work through it 13-15 hours a day. His account of it has been interesting to read - that's typical for farmers here - to have planting and harvest seasons where they work bonkers for several weeks to a month and then spend a fair amount of time between not particularly inundated with demanding work. This farmer has blogged for us (not public) his trials so far - even going as far as finding someone who had a private stash of hydrochloroquine ("fever broke the day after starting it and I feel a little better"), accounting for the extreme fatigue he's experiencing and the gigantic volume of sweat that he sweats at night ("not convinced I didn't pee the bed several times as much sweat as there is"), and has volunteered that aside from being difficult in terms of fighting the fatigue that self-isolation via combine cab is just about ideal.

(i'd bet his fever broke the next day because his fever was going to break the next day, but a moderate dose of hydrochloroquine is essentially a harmless placebo - higher doses, not so much).

allfix

30th August 2020, 02:59 PM

elanjacobs

30th August 2020, 03:04 PM

The water contamination issue was due to bad weather causing a power outage at one of the treatment plants. It was on the news on Friday. One of those "it's probably still fine, but just to be safe..." things.

allfix

30th August 2020, 03:24 PM

It was on the news on Friday

Thanks for the information, it was the council's obligation to inform all residents, they know how to do it like when they decided on the same gender referendum.

elanjacobs

30th August 2020, 03:32 PM

They also had weeks, if not months, to do it then. Unless the council has everyone's mobile number or email, informing people within hours is simply not possible. Perhaps you should take up your complaint with them.
Also, I suspect that it's the water suppliers' responsibility, not council's.

allfix

30th August 2020, 04:04 PM

Unless the council has everyone's mobile number or email, informing people within hours
My council got both e-mail, phone number and address, it's a matter of emergency so in my opinion they had the obligation to alert all residents.

I suspect that it's the water suppliers' responsibility, not council's.
I believe that but we are residents not share holders of the water supply's holdings so to say they may not divert the blame to each other but take responsibility.

elanjacobs

30th August 2020, 04:09 PM

Where did share holding come in to it? You're their customer. Council has nothing to do with water supply; they don't manage the infrastructure or collect payment for it.

allfix

30th August 2020, 04:19 PM

Council has nothing to do with water supply
Councils have the obligation to inform residents because it is an emergency, a collective HEALTH emergency when people get poisoned.
We are not talking about a "faulty" private service offering but an health emergency.

D.W.

30th August 2020, 09:32 PM

Lets add some information useful to local Australians rather than diverting this thread to a boring political black or white tirade.
About the Victoria state and specifically the northern suburbs, we had to sustain a harsh restriction because the government found threats originating from some facilities and then the stage 4 restrictions with curfew, like we are in war.
And that wasn't enough so we've had a water emergency poisoning issue since two days ago, the council didn't inform all residents (including me) and also we are still not clear on what "exactly happened.
ALL supermarkets's shelves were empty, no water, nothing left like during a war!
In the recent past we blamed (and stereotyped) the Chinese people because they were legally buying too much powder milk.
Then we "locals" rushed to buy "toilet paper" and we saw fighting scenes just for a toilet paper roll, this time no Chinese blame.
And now water emergency and empty shelves, again non blame on Chinese.
Pointing back to the title, I don't see good news here but again and still boring black or white political talking and numbers being read out.

The panic will blow over. People bought toilet paper here, then the government lied about it and said that diarrhea/cha chas wasn't a symptom. I had the trots awful in early march (plenty of TP here), but unlike most folks, I think I had the trots for a few days, not covid.

After about a month of toilet paper buying, people got tired of buying toilet paper.

After about a month of panic about all of the different places one could get covid, people realized the mail people weren't getting sick and the meat packing plants where covid was spreading, the average case was more mild and there were more asymptomatic people in those places.....the panic is pretty much over here except for the OCD folks.

Now it's something to face.

The supposed first person here in the states to get a second different mutation than the first had a tough road first go around and is asymptomatic the second, and the panic about antibodies not lasting has given way to the idea that the T cells remember it and it won't be the antibodies.

That's good news.

For folks who want a magic fix and a guarantee they'll never get it....well, good luck with that. There is good to do at your doorstep every day. don't let negativity kick in and eat you up - the local news stations will love the opportunity to latch on to that tit and feed you all you want as long as you watch ads. It's not that easy to pass from person to person unless you're sitting in an enclosed space with someone who has it. Minimize that and not much happens.

We found that the person (first person we know now) who got COVID is someone at our pool (private pool) who has flouted the rules from day one. When we were shut down, they were arranging play dates for their kids, and their kids have been full on with any activities they could find the whole time. It's only a matter of time. That person is a teacher - they couldn't shut down their behavior for two weeks before school started and now potentially will have spread to kids.

School here was one day in person, split into four different days (25% of the class each day) to get the kids initiated with the digital equipment they'll be using at home. Selfish teacher, but that's reality. We're human.

allfix

30th August 2020, 10:19 PM

We're human.

And that is why we have rules and institutions which are financially maintained by the community to protect us and to prevent illegal activities.
You might now know that Police used to give security licenses for long time (years?) to migrants all coming from a specific country who supplied false declarations and who worked at the hotels (for example) where they had to secure the quarantined area.
Some of these illegal migrants and scammers had sex with the same people they were securing, the same security went out and bought groceries then they went back in the hotels.
These security went to their homes and their families were free to go around.
These security scammers were never tested for Covid by falsifying documents (again) and declaring that they had the test.
Well, many people went to hospitals with Covid symptoms and the authorities restricted the areas were these people came from and did the Covid tests to the security scammers, many of them were found positive!
Now there are investigations going on and that won't fix anything because the damage has been done.
Years ago we had a scandal at the immigration department where the very top boss was investigated for corruption by facilitating migrants from a "specific" country (again) to illegally get visas and settle in Australia, the same people have gained monopoly in the security field, I can't say the country because blind people would label me racist but it's a fact that only people from ONE country work as security in Melbourne, well I believe at least 95% of them so I don't see multiculturalism.
And I can't feel relaxed nor safe because our incompetent politicians are telling too many lies about the Covid vaccine, they pretend that the community test trial (they don't say the word) something that doesn't even exist, they are even spreading rumors that the vaccine might be compulsory!
Russia has already a functional vaccine and it has beer registered to the world health organisation, many countries all around the world are making orders at exception of countries friendly with the US including Australia (of course) so I didn't ear a single word coming out of our incompetent (and bribed) politicians' mouths about this vaccine but only the one from Oxford.
The problem is that everything is always run but greed and personal interests and gains, we are experiencing a world pandemic situation while our politicians keep on profiting at our expenses, how could I see a good future?

elanjacobs

30th August 2020, 10:40 PM

1) The Russian vaccine HAS NOT been through all the required trials, HAS NOT been approved with WHO and no one has seen the data from any trials it has been through, so the claim that it's functional is dubious at best if not outright garbage.
2) Vaccines are basically compulsory here in general already. If your kids aren't vaccinated, they can't be enrolled in kindergarten or daycare.
3) The Oxford vaccine is not the only one being talked about (if you followed the news, you would have heard that we are doing local research as well), but the gov't has signed a deal with the UK to get access should they come up with something that works.

You obviously have an axe to grind, but I suggest you get things right if you're going to go on a rant about them.

woodPixel

30th August 2020, 10:43 PM

D.W.

30th August 2020, 10:48 PM

Be careful about what you believe regarding this or that vaccine from Russia. We had vaccines for covid here less than two weeks after there was official recognition. In my city health system (the one that developed the polio vaccine), they already had a sars sugar needle (sort of like velcro - the tips of the vaccine patch are absorbed in the skin) vaccine that took about two weeks to adapt into a covid vaccine making viable antibodies in mice.

What's less certain is everything else that goes along with the vaccine then. no clue if they ever got human trials, but there is a huge number of vaccines here that make antibodies for covid. It's not a lack of vaccines, it's the follow-up checking that counts:
* does the vaccine make an avenue for another virus easier (for example, some types of flu vaccines have a statistically significant increase in respiratory infections, possibly as much as 4 times. If you are susceptible to respiratory infections, then the vaccine for the flu can be worse for you than no vaccine).
* will the effect be lasting
* will mutation of the virus make it so that any lasting effect isn't useful against mutating strains?

It's easy for china or russia to trot out vaccines and boast about them and give an official message ignoring side effects or complications. If there was a universal viable vaccine without any risk, we'd have it already because someone would be getting wealthy off of it without fear of being sued out of business later if things went sideways with the vaccines.

You can find all kinds of exceptions to the "we're human" thing that aren't really exceptions. Corruption occurs everywhere. It's just a matter of the scale of it. It may be small at the local level like you're describing, but it's human nature. As things shape up here, it doesn't really appear that there's going to be any magic vaccine that really moves the needle any time soon, Russian or otherwise. If there is, then their covid cases will cease, but that hasn't happened. Human nature will continue to be observed.

Fair chance that the societies shutting down completely will just get to experience this later, after lecturing everyone about irresponsibility prior. There is a template to view, though - toilet paper supply, then meat at the super market (people will buy and hoard meet - creating a temporary supply issue), etc. Life will go on after that for most. You can be positive in the meantime and continue to move on, or get stuck in the mud about reality and point fingers. The latter is politics - verisimilitude.

We owe it to ourselves and others to point the needle toward the good, even if all you can scrape up is a little at a time. Turn off the media, go about your business, forget about who is at fault and work within the local environment reasonably - the panic is people ignoring what's going on in their own walls and presuming problems outside of them are more important. It's a cognitive trap that leads to no good.

allfix

30th August 2020, 11:10 PM

delete

allfix

30th August 2020, 11:15 PM

1) outright garbage, you're going to go on a rant about them

The news about the Russian vaccine are for real and came from the Russian side.
It doesn't look like a friendly nor a polite language towards people you don't know so from on I'm not going to waste more time with you.

elanjacobs

30th August 2020, 11:19 PM

The news about the Russian vaccine are for real and came from the Russian side.
Yeah...and no one else on the planet currently believes them.

I make no apologies for what I said or how I said it, I believe it was completely fair. If you're going to make big claims, expect them to be fact checked. If you can't handle that, maybe don't start a discussion on a controversial topic.

Cgcc

30th August 2020, 11:22 PM

allfix

30th August 2020, 11:30 PM

I make no apologies for what I said or how I said it, I believe it was completely fair. If you're going to make big claims, expect them to be fact checked. If you can't handle that, maybe don't start a discussion on a controversial topic.
I don't pretend apologies nor I need any especially from you but you keep on being unfriendly and rude instead of just keeping shut.

allfix

31st August 2020, 11:12 AM

This vaccine development has became a political fight between western and eastern countries so that is why I prefer to search information from both sides.
This is a world pandemic and all counties should set aside their political rivalries and goals and work together but from what I understand the outcome of the vaccine is one of the biggest business opportunities we have ever seen in decades so that is why there is a lot of political talking.
I even found news about Russia offering and asking America to work together in the development of the vaccine but the offer was rejected, why?

"On August 11, Russia became the first country in the world to register a coronavirus vaccine named Sputnik V"
Most countries interested in Russia’s coronavirus vaccine despite information war - fund - Russia - TASS (https://tass.com/russia/1192093)

elanjacobs

31st August 2020, 11:19 AM

Yes people are interested in learning about the Russian vaccine, but Russia isn't releasing any data, they just expect people to trust them. Given their history of distributing misinformation, it's quite understandable that no one does.

I'd take any article published by Russian state media with a healthy dose of salt for the same reason

Sturdee

31st August 2020, 11:31 AM

Concerns me that people don't take this seriously.

5% of people who catch it die.

You can catch it more than once...and again and again and again.

I'm beginning to feel there is a certain percentage of the population that doesn't care about the impact they have on others.

Perhaps it is time to take sterner measures. Focus their minds on the implications....

One dude in Melbourne has been fined 24 times for breaching restrictions.

How is this not treason?

and 30 % of the aged or frail or people with underlying health problems will also die.

When will they ever learn that it really is a matter of life and death until a vaccine is widely available.

Peter.

Sturdee

31st August 2020, 11:42 AM

The problem is that everything is always run but greed and personal interests and gains, we are experiencing a world pandemic situation while our politicians keep on profiting at our expenses, how could I see a good future?

I presume you are wearing the famous Ubeaut Foily cap.:U

Peter.

woodPixel

31st August 2020, 12:10 PM

Bushmiller

31st August 2020, 03:51 PM

I've been talking about this since December.... there has not been, to my knowledge or research, a vaccine against ANY coronavirus, ever.

Why does the media and politicians STILL talk about it as if its some magic bullet? This is not a dollars-solves-everything problem....

A very quick DDG confirms the fact there IS NO coronavirus-family vaccine. Given that a huge number of people die every year of the cold and flu is absolute proof of this.

MERS and SARS - super lethal. Same virus. ZERO VACCINE.

Pinning our hopes on a magic solution is pure fantasy. The illusion we are being sold is vapourware. It is hope.

e.g. Will There Be a Coronavirus Vaccine? Maybe Not (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/will-there-be-a-coronavirus-vaccine-maybe-not.html)

We need to prepare ourselves for a big change in the way we act as a society, or else 5% of us might pull the pin with concerning regularity.

WP

I think the polies are clutching at straws and the media are struggling to sell copy. All we can say for the moment is there is a deal of activity to find some solution, but there are no slam dunks here. We are merely bouncing the ball in the centre of the court hoping an opportunity will present. I was looking up why MERS and SARS stopped. It seems that it was social distancing and public health and eventually it went away. I think it may be equally hopeful to think the same thing will happen with Covid-19.

Sorry to be pessimistic, but I do think it is more pragmatic to be realistic and recognise that for the moment the outcome is an unknown quantity. This is as global deaths have exceeded 846,000 ( compared to Sars and Mers at 812 and 858).

Regards
Paul

allfix

31st August 2020, 04:15 PM

This is as global deaths have exceeded 846,000 ( compared to Sars and Mers at 812 and 858).

I believe that everyday influenza deaths toll added to road deaths caused by drug and alcohol abuse, deaths and diseases caused by the consumption of tobacco, alcohol and prescribed medicinal is far higher than what we are experiencing right now.
And I'm not an expert nor a Doctor but I do believe that the majority of deaths by Corona virus are from aged or fragile people (the majority).
What I can't understand is why there is an emergency now (rightfully) and we're being punished with strong restrictions including a curfew like during a war time and nothing was done before for the above cited diseases?

Bushmiller

31st August 2020, 08:14 PM

I believe that everyday influenza deaths toll added to road deaths caused by drug and alcohol abuse, deaths and diseases caused by the consumption of tobacco, alcohol and prescribed medicinal is far higher than what we are experiencing right now.
And I'm not an expert nor a Doctor but I do believe that the majority of deaths by Corona virus are from aged or fragile people (the majority).
What I can't understand is why there is an emergency now (rightfully) and we're being punished with strong restrictions including a curfew like during a war time and nothing was done before for the above cited diseases?

Allfix

You have raised relevant points.

Part of the problem is that Covid-19 is in addition to those other causes of death, not instead of. Also with distancing etc. etc. it is possible to curtail the outbreak. We are seeing that now in Victoria: Unfortunately the death toll lags the outbreak of cases and right now we see the effect of those early days (of the second wave). These too will diminish but could arguably take a couple of weeks and that assumes no further escalation of cases. I think there are less than 100 per day now, but I have not really been counting other than to hear there are improvements.

There is little we can do regarding the other causes of death. People continue to die on the roads, drug users overdose and alcoholics eventually run out of liver capacity. It is not really relevant to compare to such other life threatening diseases. Influenza is interesting in that deaths from that I believe are down: Social distancing I think is responsible. :)

If people were responsible, and I am not for one moment suggesting you are not a responsible person, we would not need the curfews and the lockdowns. Unfortunately that is not the case as we have seen with people attempting to cross the borders illegally and others leaving their homes for no good reason. This is why there are curfews. I am sure there are no good reasons for any politician implementing such draconian measures unncessarily. It is completely against their own interests.

I have to say I find it reprehensible that the federal government comes down hard on the labour states (Victoria & WA) when the area greatest hit, as you have identified, the elderly and the fragile, are in fact the commonwealth responsibility. I don't think you have to have a Phd in philosophy to see an anomaly there. To my mind the political parties should be bi-partisan in these times. Clearly some politicians are putting their own futures above the well being of the populace. I don't think that Daniel Andrews is one of those. My extended viewpoint of that, and I know this will seem harsh, a little fanciful and idealistic is that if you take public office you should fall on your sword for the greater good. If that is unpalatable, don't put up your hand in the first place. Too many are there for their ego.

Whew! I hadn't intended to get into that.

Regards
Paul

allfix

31st August 2020, 08:59 PM

Whew! I hadn't intended to get into that.

If you mean about politics then in this Covid pandemic you can't avoid talking about it.
I always try my best to avoid talking politics, religion, sport and anything that get people always fighting each other because they don't respect each other's opinions and choices.
I already said in my previous posts what happened with security, police and politicians so I think that that is enough.
I just hope that in September we will be free because I'm tired already of these war style rules.

31st August 2020, 10:29 PM

I feel kind of glad right now that I am "stuck" in a country that never seemed to be flustered by the idea of "do whats best for the many". Can we believe the official numbers? I'm not entirely sure, but at the same time everyone went early into face masks all the time, a lot of offices shut down - wfh - schools closed early, graduations, outdoor events cancelled, etc. Most of it happened with a simple "please" from the government. The fact that Vic, a relatively sparsely populated state outran Tokyo, a super dense city almost equal the entirety of Australias population, suggests something very interesting.

Things are pretty much back to normal here, as far as you'd know, but of course there are no tourists, and everyone continues to wear a mask all the time. It's almost like universal co-operation and thinking of others works or something :wink:

elanjacobs

31st August 2020, 10:39 PM

31st August 2020, 10:46 PM

Yep, it's quite something. Nobody here likes it any better than anywhere else, but its more like "well we need to deal with this now."

Apparently there is a law on the books that would have given the government the power to force closures if this was a strain of influenza. But as it is distinct and different from influenza, it doesn't apply and they can't use it. Wild, eh?

So they simply asked everyone to help.

Sturdee

1st September 2020, 11:10 AM

I have to say I find it reprehensible that the federal government comes down hard on the labour states (Victoria & WA) when the area greatest hit, as you have identified, the elderly and the fragile, are in fact the commonwealth responsibility.

Paul

Don't forget that quarantine on incoming people from overseas is also a Commonwealth responsibility, in fact one of the reasons we federated.

In this responsibility they failed and left it up to the states to organize for which they were never prepared.

In the rush to contain the virus coming from overseas mistakes were made and the states get blamed whilst it is the Commonwealth fault in failing, as usual, their responsibilities.

Peter.

poundy

1st September 2020, 11:15 AM

elanjacobs

1st September 2020, 12:14 PM

Don't forget that quarantine on incoming people from overseas is also a Commonwealth responsibility, in fact one of the reasons we federated.

In this responsibility they failed and left it up to the states to organize for which they were never prepared.

In the rush to contain the virus coming from overseas mistakes were made and the states get blamed whilst it is the Commonwealth fault in failing, as usual, their responsibilities.

Peter.

Thought this was appropriate :p

https://youtu.be/1hc-gwyQS7A

Bushmiller

1st September 2020, 01:53 PM

Elan

That video is absolutely pertinent.

I believe it is galling (euphemism on my part so I don't get booted off the Forum) that the federal government is so quick to cast aspersions on individual states when arguably they (the federal government) have committed the greatest travesties in quarantine of persons entering Australia and abysmal failure with the aged care.

A disgrace.

Regards
Paul

AlexS

1st September 2020, 06:19 PM

Hadn't heard from a friend in Chicago for a while, so checked her FB page, to find that she had died in July from COVID. Older (59) but not old and certainly not fragile. In our last communication in June, she was complaining that her boss wouldn't let her work from home. Apart from that, she had locked down and wore a mask everywhere.

This thing is serious, folks. Don't complain about little inconveniences.

ian

2nd September 2020, 01:50 AM

I believe it is galling (euphemism on my part so I don't get booted off the Forum) that the federal government is so quick to cast aspersions on individual states when arguably they (the federal government) have committed the greatest travesties in quarantine of persons entering Australia and abysmal failure with the aged care.
"galling" is not IMO an euphemism

to my mind a very apt description of the Federal government's "responsibility" shifting and the like

D.W.

2nd September 2020, 02:13 AM

D.W. - it seems worth mentioning that in terms of comparisons to the flu - the numbers are with (perhaps belated and undercooked) but fairly extreme efforts made to contain the virus that are not done each year with the flu. It also kicked off in the US in earnest well after winter.

It obviously has not died down in the summer. Whether or not it goes up in the winter, it is still only about 6 months into the year for the US.

Chris

No efforts are made in that statement to put covid on equal footing with the flu. If we did the same as we do now, I would guess that we would have fewer respiratory infections and fewer flu cases.

Death due to flu is sort of a foreign thing for most of us on the ground. I've lost relatives in their 90s when they got the flu and pneumonia or something and pneumonia, but we don't generally ever consider day to day issues with the flu here other than the misery that it causes, especially when it goes through elementary schools.

Just before covid came this year, there was an influenza outbreak. It went through daughter's school like a sickle mower knocking the kids out. My Mrs. volunteers a day a week in the cafeteria (something they didn't do when I was a kid), which entails helping the very early age kids manage their lunches (opening things, calming kids having meltdowns, etc). In early march, one of the lunch splits (maybe 100 kids at a time) had three kids in the same lunch throw up in their lunch boxes.

That's what we think of the flu. It does kill a lot of people, but not the garden variety 55 year old diabetic who ends up on a ventilator with covid.

That said, I did actually know someone who died during the last swine flu outbreak - it was a girl in her late 20s. She was pregnant, and died with no other conditions or complications (you may recall that outbreak was, for some reason, really hard on pregnant women and didn't seem to have much overall effect otherwise). Since it only happens once, it's a horrible thing but nobody pays much mind to it later "well, yeah, there was ____, but nobody else we know of even got sick".