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Thread: So here's the deal on this virus

  1. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by Burney View Post
    No. It almost certainly isn't. In terms of deaths per million, we currently compare similarly or better with countries where the lockdown was earlier and much more severe.

    The fact is that it is way, way too early to start drawing conclusions about the numbers of deaths or why they did or didn't occur. Reporting criteria vary, as does methodology.

    And comparing NZ - an incredibly sparsely-populated country thousands of miles from anywhere - with pretty much anywhere else on earth is totally meaningless.
    depends how you also compare how each country decides what a covid death is or isn't..... look at Belgium who have included deaths in hospital and outside and also included deaths that they think are likely to be covid even if they weren't tested.

    you can't compare any country with another country accurately unless they have identical reporting methods etc
    Northern Monkey ... who can't upload a bleeding Avatar

  2. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by AFC East View Post
    The point of lockdown has to be related to the curve of cases, rather than the date. You've just broken your own good advice about not jumping to conclusions. Epidemiology suggests that how and when is important, but it's way too early to make conclusions. The data is far too messy.
    No, the only thing I'm saying is that pointing to the death rates of other countries who locked down earlier as proof that we ought to have done similar just doesn't work. There are too many other factors at work to draw that conclusion.
    Equally, there has been a fundamental failure to understand what lockdown is for. As you say, all lockdown can do is flatten the curve to avoid preventable deaths due to overwhelmed health services. In and of itself, it cannot protect those who are likely to die from this from doing so. Without a vaccine or effective treatments, the majority of those people are going to contract it and die sooner or later. All lockdown can affect is when and how well the health service can cope.

  3. #33
    Quote Originally Posted by Pokster View Post
    depends how you also compare how each country decides what a covid death is or isn't..... look at Belgium who have included deaths in hospital and outside and also included deaths that they think are likely to be covid even if they weren't tested.

    you can't compare any country with another country accurately unless they have identical reporting methods etc
    Yes, but equally, there's strong evidence that deaths from Covid-19 here are being over-reported among the elderly. As things stand, the numbers are nothing but a guide to the reality - and not a terribly good one at that. All of which should make anyone sensible shy away from concluding that one country has done 'well' or another 'badly' based on those numbers.

  4. #34
    Quote Originally Posted by Burney View Post
    Yes, but equally, there's strong evidence that deaths from Covid-19 here are being over-reported among the elderly. As things stand, the numbers are nothing but a guide to the reality - and not a terribly good one at that. All of which should make anyone sensible shy away from concluding that one country has done 'well' or another 'badly' based on those numbers.
    every country will have done some things badly...not that they will admit it. It's learning lessons for next time, and there will be a next time
    Northern Monkey ... who can't upload a bleeding Avatar

  5. #35
    Quote Originally Posted by Pokster View Post
    every country will have done some things badly...not that they will admit it. It's learning lessons for next time, and there will be a next time
    I don't think such judgements are necessarily helpful. The world hasn't faced anything like this since 1919, so it was impossible for most governments to know bad from good and I wouldn't judge any of them too harshly.
    Although I think we can all agree that China suppressing the data; bullying the WHO into compliance; lying about human-to-human transmission; and allowing it to spread worldwide is probably the exception to that rule.

  6. #36
    Quote Originally Posted by AFC East View Post
    I suspect your first statement is the closest to a universal truth that we may see in this thread.
    Hi AFC East. How is it meaningless to use the current data, not what existed a month ago, to become more knowledgeable as how this particular virus works? What I've been looking at is current analysis and studies like the one Stanford did in Santa Clara county. There have been other anecdotal occurrences where a whole population was tested, like the Boston homeless testing, not just who took themselves to a hospital or testing site. It reveals many who acquired the virus and didn't know it. It also uncludes those who felt sick for a time but did not get tested and then got better. Those are not included in the CFR ratio that is widely quoted and is being used to determine societal restrictions and behavior. Simply, the numerator (deaths) is known. The denominator, number of people who acquired it, is UNKNOWN and is many many times higher. the Santa Clara study indicates the denominator could be 55 times higher.

    Second, who is dying? Look at the data, AFC East. About 80% of the deaths are in this subset: Over 70 and/or those with co-morbidities. Nobody knows the true CFR, granted, but using this data we have now (again, not a month ago or longer) it looks like around 0.5%. I think it's actually lower but let's use that. that means 5 out of 1000 that acquire it die. 4 out of those 5 are in the HIGH RISK subset described. the high risk subset population should be restricted. They should be wearing masks, avoiding crowds, etc. That is the way a quarantine used to work.

    Please explain to me and other readers why this is meaningless. I do not want to be wrong. We already did the lockdown and there will be many analyses done as to whether that was appropriate. I'm concerned about the present and what we advise from here.

    This article is helpful and with many embedded links showing the appropriate data.

    https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/29/...alth-concerns/

    This was sent to me after I posted Friday, in case anyone was wondering.
    Last edited by Chief Arrowhead; 05-04-2020 at 12:47 PM.

  7. #37
    Quote Originally Posted by Chief Arrowhead View Post
    Hi AFC East. How is it meaningless to use the current data, not what existed a month ago, to become more knowledgeable as how this particular virus works? What I've been looking at is current analysis and studies like the one Stanford did in Santa Clara county. There have been other anecdotal occurrences where a whole population was tested, like the Boston homeless testing, not just who took themselves to a hospital or testing site. It reveals many who acquired the virus and didn't know it. It also uncludes those who felt sick for a time but did not get tested and then got better. Those are not included in the CFR ratio that is widely quoted and is being used to determine societal restrictions and behavior. Simply, the numerator (deaths) is known. The denominator, number of people who acquired it, is UNKNOWN and is many many times higher. the Santa Clara study indicates the denominator could be 55 times higher.

    Second, who is dying? Look at the data, AFC East. About 80% of the deaths are in this subset: Over 70 and/or those with co-morbidities. Nobody knows the true CFR, granted, but using this data we have now (again, not a month ago or longer) it looks like around 0.5%. I think it's actually lower but let's use that. that means 5 out of 1000 that acquire it die. 4 out of those 5 are in the HIGH RISK subset described. the high risk subset population should be restricted. They should be wearing masks, avoiding crowds, etc. That is the way a quarantine used to work.

    Please explain to me and other readers why this is meaningless. I do not want to be wrong. We already did the lockdown and there will be many analyses done as to whether that was appropriate. I'm concerned about the present and what we advise from here.

    This article is helpful and with many embedded links showing the appropriate data.

    https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/29/...alth-concerns/

    This was sent to me after I posted Friday, in case anyone was wondering.
    Firstou're operating on a false premise - namely that all the deaths attributed to Covid are all the deaths there are that were caused or occasioned by it. Since we don't even know when it started, that is not a valid conclusion to draw. Also, what were the criteria for attributing a death to Covid? Having it or dying from it? How many deaths were misattributed either way? The point is, the numbers are screwed before you even begin. That's not anyone's fault - it's simply that there isn't the quality of data at this point to start drawing any serious conclusions here.
    What you've got there is raw, local data - not something you can undertake a serious public health initiative with.

  8. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by Burney View Post
    No, the only thing I'm saying is that pointing to the death rates of other countries who locked down earlier as proof that we ought to have done similar just doesn't work. There are too many other factors at work to draw that conclusion.
    Equally, there has been a fundamental failure to understand what lockdown is for. As you say, all lockdown can do is flatten the curve to avoid preventable deaths due to overwhelmed health services. In and of itself, it cannot protect those who are likely to die from this from doing so. Without a vaccine or effective treatments, the majority of those people are going to contract it and die sooner or later. All lockdown can affect is when and how well the health service can cope.
    Delaying infection gives you more time to create a vaccine or a treatment. It can also provide data to inform a future relaxing of the lockdown. A strict enough lockdown, over a suitable period of time could eradicate the disease, but I doubt there is appetite for that.

    It may also give time to improve the clinical guidance, which leads to more effective treatment (e.g. ventilators were the big thing, evidence now suggests they aren't). It could also give time to ramp up PPE production.

  9. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by Chief Arrowhead View Post
    This article is helpful and with many embedded links showing the appropriate data.

    https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/29/...alth-concerns/

    This was sent to me after I posted Friday, in case anyone was wondering.
    The article you shared is written by someone who either doesn't understand or is wilfully ignoring the principles of science.

    "All the science indicated that existing measures, encouraging the public to observe basic hygiene and limit interactions with vulnerable people, was working, as C19 followed the normal bell curve of any viral disease in a population."

    Utter cobblers, I am afraid. I can't think of a single scientific domain where all 'science' (whatever that means) has ever totally agreed on something. It's just a series of hyperbolic/completely ungrounded statements that no data analyst would ever make.

    As Burney has repeatedly said, the data is a mess. Science relies on data. Anybody drawing conclusions is a fraud. By all means, share a hypothesis that you can start to support with some data, but don't draw conclusions. It's silly.

  10. #40
    Quote Originally Posted by Burney View Post
    Firstou're operating on a false premise - namely that all the deaths attributed to Covid are all the deaths there are that were caused or occasioned by it. Since we don't even know when it started, that is not a valid conclusion to draw. Also, what were the criteria for attributing a death to Covid? Having it or dying from it? How many deaths were misattributed either way? The point is, the numbers are screwed before you even begin. That's not anyone's fault - it's simply that there isn't the quality of data at this point to start drawing any serious conclusions here.
    What you've got there is raw, local data - not something you can undertake a serious public health initiative with.
    Hi Burney. Don't get me started on the numerator! I fully expect to see the headline "Chute fails to open, Skydiver killed by Covid-19." I deliberately omitted that to focus on the denominator. Did you know that hospitals here receive more federal compensation if the cause of death is listed as Covid-19?

    Data is always raw, it's how you apply it to determine policy and action. So we now have more data, raw data, that indicates the the denominator (# of cases) is way way low. Some anecdotal, yes, but the Stanford study is clinical. I'll spare you the report and link a news article:

    https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/0...d-study-finds/

    Even Gov. Cuomo is finding out that NYC has many times more "cases" than he has used to lockdown the whole state.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/n...s-test-ny.html

    There are several admittedly anecdotal occurrences like the Boston Homeless one.

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/17/us/bo...eak/index.html


    Our decision to lockdown the whole country was based on raw data, but was imperfect as you said. WE have better data now. Let's base our policy and action on what we know now, not what we had a month ago. Open it up. Tightly restrict who goes in Senior retirement villages or any plce with over 70's. Raise awareness of high risk folks who have co-morbidities and let them know what precautions to take. That's my opinion based on what we know on May 4th.

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