OT: Corona virus

[RangerJoe]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Any thoughts as to why Germany's doing so well? Is it a demographic thing, a countermeasures thing, a medicine thing, a reporting thing (or more than one)?

A few weeks ago, there was news that Austria and Denmark would be easing countermeasures, starting a few days ago. I haven't seen any updates, so don't know if they postponed that action or proceeded. It'll be interesting to see how that turns out.

Culturally, the Germans are much more reserved and not into hugging acquaintances.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel
U. Wash. projection for UK mortality increased significantly to 37.5k from about 23k.

I noticed that, within the last 4-5 days or so that they're climbing quickly on the Deaths/M row on the ledger. I think they'll probably wind up being up there with France before all's said and done. [:(]

Sweden really increasing lately too.

Canada's done a very respectable job staying down on the Deaths/M, as has Germany and Denmark. Ex-NY/NJ, the United States would be in this ballpark, but that's our lumps.

I think it is early yet for Canada. Canada is not a huge air transportation hub as the US is - few tourists come here in the winter or early spring and the skiers from Europe can get to the Alps a lot faster and cheaper than coming to Canada. What we do have is a lot of Chinese immigrants (centered in the Vancouver area), Chinese students (scattered to every University in the country) and immigrants from the Middle East - including Iran who are mostly in the Toronto area. These people go back to their home countries to visit relatives or their relatives come here.

So these populations started early hot-spots in Vancouver and Toronto and our Federal Government made soft recommendations for people to practice social distancing. Little was known at that time (January) about how quickly the virus could spread so no one knew what threat level to give it. But the government did start planning to handle and contain the outbreak.

But recently, just before the border with the US was closed, millions of Canadian snowbirds returned from their vacations or months-long stays in the Southern USA, Mexico, and the Caribbean Islands. This brought the first broadly spread contamination to every major community in the country. But the planning was in place and the stay-at-home orders came quickly. Canada ordered PPE and test materials before the major US orders started so we started out well on that foot.

Now, a few weeks after border closure, larger cities are dealing with (we hope) peak hospital demand. So far so good - elective surgeries were cancelled long before this and shuffling of patients to free up beds in the hospitals dealing with COVID helped a lot. AFAIK, there has not been a call to bring in recently retired medical staff yet.

Where we are not ready is in the Seniors Care homes and the Indigenous peoples reservations. The latter are mostly remote, have no hospital care and the populations live in overcrowded houses. Add that to the poor health of many Indigenous people (diabetes, obesity, alcoholism, drug addictions, lack of fresh fruits and vegetables) and the danger is clear. Not sure how it will be dealt with, but infection in those two communities could drive up the deaths/MM quickly.

[Canoerebel]

[Re: Ranger's input:] I don't have a feel for what's going on there, but could being reserved really explain the disparity? Are Belgians and the Dutch markedly different, in that regard?

On a related note, a quick google search indicated that Denmark proceed with the easing of countermeasures. Monitoring how that goes will offer some insight into easing.

[geofflambert]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

It's been pretty locked in for the USA (but not for Europe). Three weeks ago, when all the talk was about 100k to 200k mortality, U. Wash. had US projected at 93k mortality. About two weeks ago that dropped to about 83k. Then a few days later it dropped to about 61k. Then a few days later, up to 68k. Now down to 60k. So it's been pretty tight for the past week or ten days, and fairly stable for the past three weeks (compared to so many others). From what I've seen, U. Wash. projections for states have been pretty darned on target - even with the sudden re-calculations on 4/14 to count mortalities differently per CDC guidelines.

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel
The University of Washington projections were updated again today (or yesterday). For the US, mortality projected at 60k (down from 68k).

It seems to be yoyo-ing around a bit. Wasn't it saying 48k just 3 or 4 days ago? 40% daily adjustments seem to be antithetical to reliable modeling IMO.

Question is, are those numbers how many dead who were tested before they died or how many they think will have died from this virus. There still isn't enough testing. We are truly never going to know exactly how many will have died (either from this SARS-2 virus, or that and those who "died of something else" while infected with SARS-2), perhaps we'll have better estimates through time, like how the number of Confederates who died in the war keeps going up (not necessarily of lead poisoning but also yellow fever, malaria etc. and so forth).

[Canoerebel]

But as I read Chickenboy, testing isn't the answer at this point.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: warspite1

Now, if someone wants to post a picture of the Danish or Spanish - or any other world leader that has agreed to relax lockdown - then I can say exactly the same thing because the same applies. Not an attack, just an observation.

No problem with posting pictures of world leaders, but please don't post the Belgian Health Minister's picture again, even if she does lift the restrictions on threesomes or moresomes!

[BBfanboy]

Here's an interesting article on how the Mafia is taking advantage of the COVID situation to act as if it is a government in areas of Italy. RFalvo warned that this would happen.

https://www.newsweek.com/italy-mafias-c ... rt-1498726

EDIT to add: this sounds a lot like drug cartel leaders doing nice things for the population living nearby so that they will not cooperate with police.

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Any thoughts as to why Germany's doing so well? Is it a demographic thing, a countermeasures thing, a medicine thing, a reporting thing (or more than one)?

A few weeks ago, there was news that Austria and Denmark would be easing countermeasures, starting a few days ago. I haven't seen any updates, so don't know if they postponed that action or proceeded. It'll be interesting to see how that turns out.

Culturally, the Germans are much more reserved and not into hugging acquaintances.

Meh. It's not like the Swiss are known for their ostentatious or salacious interpersonal behavior either. They're not Belgians, for goodness sake [;)]. I think it's something different than just cultural mannerisms for the German difference from the rest of continental Europe.

[Sammy5IsAlive]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Any thoughts as to why Germany's doing so well? Is it a demographic thing, a countermeasures thing, a medicine thing, a reporting thing (or more than one)?

A few weeks ago, there was news that Austria and Denmark would be easing countermeasures, starting a few days ago. I haven't seen any updates, so don't know if they postponed that action or proceeded. It'll be interesting to see how that turns out.

The simplest explanation would be that they were ahead of most other European countries in terms of testing in the early stages of the outbreak.

A more speculative explanation - their biggest population centre is Berlin at 3.3M people. London is 9M, Lombardy 10M, Madrid 6.5M, Ile-de-France 12.2M. In addition to that Berlin is tucked up in the Northeastern corner of Germany and as such is not a central transport hub in the way that London/Milan/Madrid/Paris are.

[Alfred]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Any thoughts as to why Germany's doing so well? Is it a demographic thing, a countermeasures thing, a medicine thing, a reporting thing (or more than one)?

A few weeks ago, there was news that Austria and Denmark would be easing countermeasures, starting a few days ago. I haven't seen any updates, so don't know if they postponed that action or proceeded. It'll be interesting to see how that turns out.

Culturally, the Germans are much more reserved and not into hugging acquaintances.

Meh. It's not like the Swiss are known for their ostentatious or salacious interpersonal behavior either. They're not Belgians, for goodness sake [;)]. I think it's something different than just cultural mannerisms for the German difference from the rest of continental Europe.

There are several factors in play.

1. The high number of tests allows the denominator to be larger and therefore the death rate automatically is lower.

2. Testing allows contact tracing. I don't know if Germany is specifically doing this on the quiet but in Australia testing is being used specifically for this purpose. A positive test here results in a telephone contact to every person who has been exposed to the positive testee and a determinati9on is made whether they too have to be tested. This allows for COVID-19 clusters to be identified earlier and quarantined/treated. It slows down the spread rate amongst the rest of the community.

3. There is much we don't know about this corona virus. Some experts suggest ethnicity is a factor. Certainly population density does seem to be relevant for ease of transmission. Although Germany has a population of about 84 million (about a third more than the UK, France, Italy) it is more widely dispersed. There is nothing in size comparable to London or Paris. This lower density would be particularly relevant if the virus had already arrived in Germany (and elsewhere) well before people became aware of its significance.

4. Germany is not rushing to use ventilators. It is very easy for hysterical politicians and journalists to demand more and more ventilators without admitting they are not a panacea. Firstly the recovery rate of those put onto ventilators is not good. Secondly, prolonged reliance on ventilators can easily damage the lungs permanently. Thirdly, you need trained staff to monitor and manage ventilators, who are ipso facto, not available for other tasks. Not to mention the wear and tear on such staff.

5. One can't dismiss the likelihood that Germany is using a different metric to record its statistics compared to that used by the UK, France, Italy etc. Every country is using different metrics which is the fundamental reason why all these case and death graphs provide no meaningful country on country comparison. The fact that a graph is put up by John Hopkins or anyone else, no matter how "prestigious" that institution is held to be, does not change the fact they are merely repeating whatever data is officially released by a country. There is no adjustment of data to apply a common metric. This is why China has such a low death number compared to Western countries.

Alfred

[Alfred]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy


There will need to be accountability from all quarters when this is said and done. Those 'doom and gloomers' that said there would likely be 2,000,000 deaths or "50-70% of the population infected" in the United States based upon their 'models' need to be called to task and discredited if their predictive modeling is so abundantly flawed as to lead to breathtakinly bad public health advice.

While we're at it, I'd like the leaders of aforementioned countries (the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg and France) to come out and explain how they utterly failed their people in dealing with this thing. Hopefully we'll have some resignations en masse, heartfelt mea culpas and pleading for forgiveness. But I think we'll get assignation of blame, passing the buck, bureaucratic machinations and the usual distractions from personal responsibility.

When this period is calmly assessed in the future, I think you will find a timeline which shows that all the Western governments relied very much on the WHO advice that there was no evidence existed for human to human transmission. Without that particular transmission mechanism, the very costly to society steps since implemented could not be justified.

There is a vert strong argument to be made that the reason why countries like Taiwan and South Korea have done comparatively better than the West is because at no stage did they pay any attention to what WHO said. Having directly experienced the earlier pandemics which originated in China, immediately they heard of the situation in Wuhan, they activated their pandemic plans which had been developed in response to those earlier pandemics.

Alfred

[fcooke]

Have not followed the full thread - so apologies in advance for plowing into any already turned soil.

To Alfreds's point - the data on this one will be interesting, and normalizing it will likely never happen. Which will make it more difficult for the data to be interpreted correctly.

In the US already hearing this hurts XYZ population more than ABC population. But no science at all behind it. IIRC correctly, some data from Italy shows that the 'closer family unit' helped to spread the virus. I just wish the yapping heads on the telly would shush speculation without actual data.

When the better half turns on the 'news' I social distance myself to a different part of the house.

Rant off.....

[fcooke]

And more happy to have sold the place in Hoboken last year. This thing has given new meaning to 'Heaven, Hell, or Hoboken'......

Do really feel for the friends still down there and the City. They all have an open invite to come stay with us. But then they would be stuck with me.......

[Alfred]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

... The Conference Board is also the determining body for whether we have, or have had a recession. A common (but mistaken) belief is that a recession is two consecutive quarters of economic contraction. It's not. These guys call the ball...

This is my number 1 irritant when I hear or read economic analysts/commentators referring to a "technical recession" being 2 consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.

1. Unlike the USA, most nations do not have an official mechanism to determine whether they are in recession, or the forgotten (because it has such bad connotations) depression. Chickenboy is quite correct in stating the USA is considered to be in a recession (or depression) only if it is officially declared. Private opinions don't come into it at all.

2. The reason why the term "technical recession" has come into popular usage is the usual reason, misrepresentation of an academic paper. Many years ago a couple of American economic historians studied C19th USA economic downturns (aka official recessions/depressions) and their published conclusion was that in all instances, GDP had declined for at least two consecutive quarters. From that conclusion stems the lazy takeup which is referred to as a "technical recession".

3. To demonstrate the nonsense of the widely held "technical recession" view consider this simple example, which occurs all the time. A country experiences 0.5% negative growth in Q!, 0.1% positive growth in Q2, negative growth of 0.5% in Q3, and positive growth of 0.1% in Q4. According to the "technical recession" proponents, as the country did not experience two consecutive quarters of negative growth, it was never in a recession. Yet over the entire year, that country's economy did shrink. Guess which metric politicians prefer to use.

4. The repercussion of the exemplar in $3 above are actually even worse than at first glance.

(a) quarterly GDP figures are based on survey data, they are not based on census data. As such they are subject to statistical error. The miniscule positive growth of 0.1 % in quarters 2 and 4 fall within the margin of error. This is why all economic indicators are subject to later revision.

(b) the economic indictors deal with aggregates, they are rarely discussed on a per capita basis by economic pundits, even though the per capita data is often available, provided one does a bit of digging. Assume a country runs a positive net immigration program. This population increase, ceteris paribus, will automatically increase aggregate economic activity (aka GDP), yet per capita GDP may stagnate or even decline. It is a very rare economic pundit who draws attention to a to a "technical per capita recession".

Alfred

[obvert]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Any thoughts as to why Germany's doing so well? Is it a demographic thing, a countermeasures thing, a medicine thing, a reporting thing (or more than one)?

A few weeks ago, there was news that Austria and Denmark would be easing countermeasures, starting a few days ago. I haven't seen any updates, so don't know if they postponed that action or proceeded. It'll be interesting to see how that turns out.

It's very hard to keep up with all of the info in this thread, but I've posted extensive articles and comments on Germany's approach.

Early on extensive testing, allowing regional labs to process tests early and dispersing the load, but also doing extensive early contact tracing and isolation. Especially vulnerable groups. On top of that the early infections were of a significantly younger population than say Italy. About 2-3 weeks ago when I posted this the average positive case there was 46 years old, so significantly lower chance of mortality.

On top of that I found a very interesting article highlighting perhaps the most significant tactic to keep mortality low. The German medical system enlisted doctors in training to do case monitoring, continually checking anyone known to have Covid symptoms by moving through cities and seeing if their case was worsening, especially in the critical second week. By finding deteriorating cases early, they kept most form needed ventilation and reduced the impact on hospitals, but also getting them treatment early meant most without other problems were able to recover more quickly. Notice how many listed as recovered in Germany, too. If a case doesn't need a vent, they're out of the hospital much more quickly and without nearly as much impact form being vented or severe damage from cytokine storms or other organ damage done by the virus.

This simple case monitoring system was highlighted in an article in the Guardian which said the UK didn't have anything of the kind and many potential cases were just sitting at home getting so bad that by the time they got to hospital there was little hope to save them, and/or they simply died at home.

[obvert]

ORIGINAL: Alfred

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe




Culturally, the Germans are much more reserved and not into hugging acquaintances.

Meh. It's not like the Swiss are known for their ostentatious or salacious interpersonal behavior either. They're not Belgians, for goodness sake [;)]. I think it's something different than just cultural mannerisms for the German difference from the rest of continental Europe.

There are several factors in play.

1. The high number of tests allows the denominator to be larger and therefore the death rate automatically is lower.

2. Testing allows contact tracing. I don't know if Germany is specifically doing this on the quiet but in Australia testing is being used specifically for this purpose. A positive test here results in a telephone contact to every person who has been exposed to the positive testee and a determinati9on is made whether they too have to be tested. This allows for COVID-19 clusters to be identified earlier and quarantined/treated. It slows down the spread rate amongst the rest of the community.

3. There is much we don't know about this corona virus. Some experts suggest ethnicity is a factor. Certainly population density does seem to be relevant for ease of transmission. Although Germany has a population of about 84 million (about a third more than the UK, France, Italy) it is more widely dispersed. There is nothing in size comparable to London or Paris. This lower density would be particularly relevant if the virus had already arrived in Germany (and elsewhere) well before people became aware of its significance.

4. Germany is not rushing to use ventilators. It is very easy for hysterical politicians and journalists to demand more and more ventilators without admitting they are not a panacea. Firstly the recovery rate of those put onto ventilators is not good. Secondly, prolonged reliance on ventilators can easily damage the lungs permanently. Thirdly, you need trained staff to monitor and manage ventilators, who are ipso facto, not available for other tasks. Not to mention the wear and tear on such staff.

5. One can't dismiss the likelihood that Germany is using a different metric to record its statistics compared to that used by the UK, France, Italy etc. Every country is using different metrics which is the fundamental reason why all these case and death graphs provide no meaningful country on country comparison. The fact that a graph is put up by John Hopkins or anyone else, no matter how "prestigious" that institution is held to be, does not change the fact they are merely repeating whatever data is officially released by a country. There is no adjustment of data to apply a common metric. This is why China has such a low death number compared to Western countries.

Alfred

Just commented to answer this as well.

To your point #3 there has been a correlation between severe cases and blood types in Wuhan. This was discussed probably a month ago. Seems to have been lost in the shuffle for most though as in the UK and US there seems to be a more severe response in ethnic minority populations (here labelled BAME) and in the US black and brown minorities. There are also significantly different health profiles due to systematic historically related poverty of these populations, especially in the US, but not as much in the UK where these populations are also experiencing high proportional losses in health professionals especially.

I would doubt that population density is as much a factor considering the early Italian outbreak was in smaller towns and cities, but individual behavioural distance could certainly be a factor, and has been mentioned in some of the articles I've read. Germans do not move as close to speak, do not often use the kiss as a greeting, and have been in a more cold weather climate during early stages of this outbreak than Southern Europeans.

To your point #2, yes, they did not only contact tracing but islolation of contacts with monitoring, especially early. They also closed some factories where outbreaks occurred.

Here is a newer article on this I just found.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKCN21R1DB

[RFalvo69]

As I predicted... [8|]

The Mafia is poised to exploit coronavirus, and not just in Italy

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/19/euro ... index.html

[obvert]

This could be another reason Germany's case mortality rate seems lower than other areas currently. More and more research is postulating that the actual number of cases is very significantly higher than is being measured currently. See bold.

As of Thursday afternoon (April 8), Florida Department of Health reported 16,364 coronavirus cases and 354 deaths. That included 106 cases in Brevard and two deaths. But if the German researchers' premise that only 1.6% of U.S. cases are being detected holds true for Florida and Brevard, the state could already have some 1 million infections and the county in excess of 6,600.

Case death rates ranged from 1.1% in Germany to 11.7% in Italy, the German researchers note, suggesting vast differences in the quality of countries’ case records. So confirmed fatality rates may be "a very poor proxy for the true infection fatality rate if a high number of infections remain undetected," the researchers wrote.

About two weeks ago I was calculating possible case counts by using different figures for mortality. If they are indeed much lower, like 0.3-0.5%, then cases in the most affected regions in places like Italy and the US would be much higher.

https://eu.floridatoday.com/story/news/ ... 120978002/

[MakeeLearn]

Coronavirus: Currently 'no evidence' that COVID-19 survivors have immunity, WHO warns
Epidemiologists warn there is no proof that antibody tests can show if someone who has been infected cannot be infected again.

19 April 2020


https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus- ... s-11975011


"ere is no evidence that people who have recovered from coronavirus have immunity to the disease, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said.

The UK government has bought 3.5 million serology tests - which measure levels of antibodies in blood plasma.

But senior WHO epidemiologists have warned that there is no proof that such antibody tests can show if someone who has been infected with COVID-19 cannot be infected again."

[Cap Mandrake]

ORIGINAL: Alfred


When this period is calmly assessed in the future, I think you will find a timeline which shows that all the Western governments relied very much on the WHO advice that there was no evidence existed for human to human transmission. Without that particular transmission mechanism, the very costly to society steps since implemented could not be justified.

There is a vert strong argument to be made that the reason why countries like Taiwan and South Korea have done comparatively better than the West is because at no stage did they pay any attention to what WHO said. Having directly experienced the earlier pandemics which originated in China, immediately they heard of the situation in Wuhan, they activated their pandemic plans which had been developed in response to those earlier pandemics.

Alfred

Agreed. The January 14 pronouncement by the WHO that there was "no clear case for human to human transmission" is the worst scientific advice of the 21st century (so far). The only question in my mind is, was it simply scientific caution or was the WHO leadership coddling China? The evidence for the latter is very strong. There were several cases of severe pneumonia among doctors and nurses in Wuhan IN LATE DECEMBER. They had cared for the same type of patients AND they had no connection to the Wuhan wet market. This should have set off alarm bells in the WHO but it seems the Chicoms were not being totally honest. [X(][X(] I'm shocked I tell you! Even so, the locals had ALL figured it out.

The Taiwanese clearly have not the slightest concern about hurting Beijing's feelings. They have extensive business with PRC (Foxcom for example) but they have a tripwire mentality regarding potential epidemics or a Chicom attack. They also had already identified the WHO head as a Beijing call girl well before COVID.

In order for containment to work...there needed to be a total, universal ban on flights from China by early January. The thermometer check at the airport thing was complete bullshit.