Coronavirus Is Fake News

[exchemist]

But you don't know it wasn't the flu. We all need to remember this is the flu season and people are still getting the flu.

 

I had the flu myself, earlier this year. If I had it now I would probably assume it was covid. Just human nature, but not scientific.

We do not have proof it is not 'flu' of course, but the evidence is consistent with the prediction made by the science that it is highly likely to be Covid-19. Major London hospitals do not get suddenly overwhelmed by seasonal flu, for example.

 

It's like climate change: how much evidence does one need before one accepts it is - probably - what's happening?   

[exchemist]

Yes, then in the UK maybe several hundred thousand. That brings the death rate down dramatically, but we just don't have enough data.

 

Not enough to cause the panic we are seeing, surely!

Depends what you mean by "panic". 

 

Let me reiterate: the issue is not the death rate per se, it is the overloading, and the possible collapse, of the health system due to the predicted incidence of severe cases if everyone is allowed to get it all at once.

 

If the health system is overloaded, a lot more people - young and old -  will die of all the other conditions that hospitals will no longer have capacity to treat. 

[OceanBreeze]

We do not have proof it is not 'flu' of course, but the evidence is consistent with the prediction made by the science that it is highly likely to be Covid-19. Major London hospitals do not get suddenly overwhelmed by seasonal flu, for example.

 

It's like climate change: how much evidence does one need before one accepts it is - probably - what's happening?   

 

Is the evidence inconsistent with the flu?

 

The symptoms can be indistinguishable. Only a test for the specific virus can make the determination.

 

I was tested and confirmed to have the flu, down to the specific strain. My symptoms of fever and cough and congestion etc fit covid very well.

 

You are a scientist. Is "probably" really good enough for you?

[OceanBreeze]

Depends what you mean by "panic". 

 

Let me reiterate: the issue is not the death rate per se, it is the overloading, and the possible collapse, of the health system due to the predicted incidence of severe cases if everyone is allowed to get it all at once.

 

If the health system is overloaded, a lot more people - young and old -  will die of all the other conditions that hospitals will no longer have capacity to treat. 

 

I agree that overloading the health system is the major concern. That is why I do agree with measures to flatten that curve.

 

But, there is a point where the cure is worse than the disease.

 

One of the defining statements that came out of the Vietnam War: "We needed to destroy the village to save the village"

[exchemist]

Is the evidence inconsistent with the flu?

 

The symptoms can be indistinguishable. Only a test for the specific virus can make the determination.

 

I was tested and confirmed to have the flu, down to the specific strain. My symptoms of fever and cough and congestion etc fit covid very well.

 

You are a scientist. Is "probably" really good enough for you?

"Probably" is good enough for action on climate change, as far as I'm concerned, due to the risks of being wrong.

 

Do you recommend we act, in London, as if it could still be just seasonal flu, when the model says we should expect a steep rise in hospital respiratory admissions, within a month, to a level beyond capacity?  

[OceanBreeze]

"Probably" is good enough for action on climate change, as far as I'm concerned, due to the risks of being wrong.

 

Do you recommend we act, in London, as if it could still be just seasonal flu, when the model says we should expect a steep rise in hospital respiratory admissions, within a month, to a level beyond capacity?  

 

I don't want to get drawn into the climate change argument, and don't see the relevance anyway.

 

As for your question, good grief, no! I have said, to the point of exasperation, that we need to take common sense measures to flatten that curve.

stay home if you are sick and don't rush off to the hospital if you don't really need to

leave the hospital beds for those who are in dire need of them

practice extra careful hygiene

stay away from people who appear to be sick

stay away from old people who you may make sick

increase the hospital bed capacity

increase the ventilator capacity

wear a mask if you are sick or around sick people etc etc

 

Don't shut the entire country down and put millions out of work

Don't tell all people, including the young and healthy, they must stay at home indefinitely because you wish to play at being a dictator.

Don't destroy the country to save the country

[sanctus]

Unfortunately, yes, the flu has done that and far more (1918) but nobody can draw any comfort from that fact.

 

One thing that many people miss in all this is the wording being used in the corona reports: “XXX amount of people have died after testing positive for coronavirus”

 

Notice that does not say “XXX amount of people have died from coronavirus”

 

I think that is an important distinction that needs to be made, but nobody seems interested in making, because panic is all the rage right now. Just because somebody tests positive and then dies, does not automatically mean that person’s death was caused by, or can be attributed exclusively to coronavirus.

 

That is obvious if that person gets hit by a bus but not so obvious if it is a heart attack or a stroke or any number of other serious health issues in an elderly person.

 

I really do think there is a lot of fake, or at least very exaggerated, news being reported about this. It is like some sort of mass hysteria that, once started, will be difficult to stop; even more difficult than the virus itself. The freedoms that we are willfully ceding to governments around the world now, may not ever be fully returned. To me, that is a bigger concern than catching a cold.

Notice I said people are saying "flu kills XXX per year", not that there never was a flu which did it. The spanish flu was also a pandemic, not you normal winter flu. So in this case my argument still holds: the normal seasonal flu never kills 800 in a day.

Speaking of the Spanish flu, it was the second strain a mutation of the first which was the deadliest (altough the hardcore strain survived and spread thanks to WW1, usually natural selection prefers a mild strain cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Deadly_second_wave). A such mutation could still happen, viruses mutate the whole time. Some study I read somewhere cited that in Iceland 40 mutations of Corona were found...

 

Yes, it is true that it does not say "died from corona", just that they had been tested positive for it. But again 800 dead in a day, no place in hospital and overflown morgues (saw the army trucks living Bergamo with the dead? Just google that in case or go here: https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-italy-army-transport-coffins-bergamo-morgue-crisis-video-2020-3?r=US&IR=T).

Most of the people dying going to the corona-death statistics (just because they test positive for corona and/or have all the symptoms) have underlying illnesses, so you cannot say died of Corona, but without CORONA you would not have overflown hospitals and morgues. So Corona is to blame...

 

Over here in Europe I do not worry about ceded freedom given to governments, for you guys over in the so-called "land of the free" I would worry a bit more, see for instance Patriot Act.

 

Ocean, would have been curious to hear your input also on the first part of my post (http://www.scienceforums.com/topic/36534-coronavirus-is-fake-news/?p=382842), the part about flattening the curve.

 

 

Sanctus, I think you are mixing up cases with death rates. Of course, there are many cases of people under 50 catching it, but there is a low fatality rate in that age group.

 

I know you are not doing that deliberately, but that is an example of the sort of inaccurate reporting that is out there now.

All of it true, did mix up, not on purpose (but resulting from quick search) and a lot of that out there.

[exchemist]

I don't want to get drawn into the climate change argument, and don't see the relevance anyway.

 

As for your question, good grief, no! I have said, to the point of exasperation, that we need to take common sense measures to flatten that curve.

stay home if you are sick and don't rush off to the hospital if you don't really need to

leave the hospital beds for those who are in dire need of them

practice extra careful hygiene

stay away from people who appear to be sick

stay away from old people who you may make sick

increase the hospital bed capacity

increase the ventilator capacity

wear a mask if you are sick or around sick people etc etc

 

Don't shut the entire country down and put millions out of work

Don't tell all people, including the young and healthy, they must stay at home indefinitely because you wish to play at being a dictator.

Don't destroy the country to save the country

I only raised climate change as another example in which policy makers have to decide whether or not to act, before a nice tidy scientific study can be completed. 

 

That is what we have here. So we can argue the toss about how confident I am that I and those I know have really had Covid-19 or not, but the government needs to act according to what the signs appear to show, if those signs are in line with the model, which they are.  

 

The problem is that the feedback from China, Korea, Italy etc, has convinced the Imperial College modellers that the list of measures you support will not bring the reproduction number down from 2.5 to 1 or below. This is obviously what we need if we are to avoid a runaway increase in hospital admissions. That conclusion is what is informing the government's decision. It is not "panic". 

 

Have you read about this "Hammer and Dance" strategy that is being talked up now? If not I commend it. I don't know if the guy has a good handle on the numbers or not, but he does seem to offer a way out that allows a resumption of economic activity before we all become paupers. But first, we have to get the bloody thing under control or (according to the modelling) we will be playing catch up and getting left further and further behind. 

Edited March 24, 2020 by exchemist

[OceanBreeze]

Lol

 

not a laughing matter damnit

[OceanBreeze]

No! and the Chinese figures will not include all those infected and recovered either.

 

Never the less here are the current figures from China https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/

81171 cases with 3277 deaths

 

3277/81171 x 100 = 4% which is a bit better than we are seeing in the UK at the moment.

 

I think the Chinese have passed the peak at the, unless they have another outbreak.

 

Do you accept the Chinese figures as being representative, or do you want to wait until the end of the outbreak and all the figures are available globally.

 

I do take on board your comments regarding restrictions and stopping the economy working.

 

In an effort to stop/slow the virus spreading, what would you suggest as a solution? 

 

Edit America is looking like it is going to become the global covid-19 epicenter at the moment. 

 

 

No I don’t accept the Chinese numbers, but it does not matter what I think about those numbers as I’m not an infectious disease analyst.

 

But here is a study done by people who do have the required expertise.

 

According to the study: “Using public and published information, we estimate that the overall symptomatic case fatality risk CFR (the probability of dying after developing symptoms) of COVID-19 in Wuhan was 1.4% (0.9–2.1%), which is substantially lower than both the corresponding crude or naïve confirmed case fatality risk (2,169/48,557 = 4.5%) and the approximator of deaths/deaths + recoveries (2,169/2,169 + 17,572 = 11%) as of 29 February 2020”

 

Notice the wording here (the probability of dying after developing symptoms). That doesn’t say the probability of dying after testing positive! These are people who developed symptoms. Please let that sink in for a moment.

 

Further down in that report: “One largely unknown factor at present is the number of asymptomatic, undiagnosed infections. These do not enter our estimates of CFR, but if such asymptomatic or clinically very mild cases existed and were not detected, the infection fatality risk would be lower than CFR”

 

When you consider that 98% of the people who test positive in the US have anything from very mild symptoms to no symptoms at all, you can begin to see how the CFR can be significantly lower than 1.4%

 

In fact, again quoting from that report: “Indeed, as of 29 February 2020, the crude case fatality risk in areas outside Hubei was 0.85%, which is ~23–41% lower than our sCFR estimates of 1.2–1.4% for Wuhan”

 

Of course, the report does include a number of caveats, and the authors do agree on using measures to flatten the curve.

 

But, showing some like-mindedness to myself, the authors say: “estimates of both the observed and unobserved infections are essential for informing the development and evaluation of public health strategies, which need to be traded off against economic, social and personal freedom costs. For example, drastic social distancing and mobility restrictions, such as school closures and travel advisories/bans, should only be considered if an accurate estimation of case fatality risk warrants these interventions, which seriously disrupt social and economic stability “

 

I really don’t like playing this numbers game when we are talking about people’s lives, but I can’t stay quiet while the numbers are being played with, in the media, in order to portray only the worst case possible.

 

It really does seem (to me) that the media will only tell people bad news, while an encouraging report, like this one, goes either totally unnoticed or disparaged and disregarded.

 

Call me an optimist; I am happy to accept that label any day.

[OceanBreeze]

 

Ocean, would have been curious to hear your input also on the first part of my post (http://www.scienceforums.com/topic/36534-coronavirus-is-fake-news/?p=382842), the part about flattening the curve.

 

 

 

Sanctus, please read my other posts in this thread. I have written a lot about the need to flatten the curve.

[Avy213]

not a laughing matter damnit

Of course it isn't

[Thoth101]

No! and the Chinese figures will not include all those infected and recovered either.

 

Never the less here are the current figures from China https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/

81171 cases with 3277 deaths

 

3277/81171 x 100 = 4% which is a bit better than we are seeing in the UK at the moment.

 

I think the Chinese have passed the peak at the, unless they have another outbreak.

 

Do you accept the Chinese figures as being representative, or do you want to wait until the end of the outbreak and all the figures are available globally.

 

I do take on board your comments regarding restrictions and stopping the economy working.

 

In an effort to stop/slow the virus spreading, what would you suggest as a solution? 

 

Edit America is looking like it is going to become the global covid-19 epicenter at the moment. 

And I am still searching for anybody who even knows anybody in the US who has or had Corona. Nobody seems to know anybody. I have friends in IN,WI,CA,PA,CO. And nobody knows anybody. Only thing I got was my friend in CA thinks she and her son had it. She says she wasn't tested so she didn't know for sure. But she said they got better.

[Thoth101]

I dont think I said I dont believe you. I picked some links of the internet as you appear to be trivializing the predicted death rates. You are denying that covid-19 is worse than the flu. You have produced no justification for this, many older people who might be enjoying their golden years @Hazelm might not like the idea of being collateral damage in the fight against corona virus. Letting the virus run its course, will cost a lot more lives unnecessarily when simple measures can be implemented to reduce the infection rates.

 

What the world governments seem to be trying to achieve is to minimise the number of deaths via implementing preventative measures. Do you disagree with these measures, or is your concern more for the economy than human life?

 

You will notice the age groups worst affected are your 60 + many of these are unhealthy politicians. Perhaps this motivates them to try and minimise the effects of the disease, and forget the effects on the economy. If everyone carried on going about their business as normal, many more would die would they not?

 

A world economic collapse is a serious possibility. Governments are putting in place funding to try and support the economy. If these measures dont work a new world order might appear once the Corona virus has subsided, with China being the safe place to put your money, instead of America or Europe. The dollar may lose its reputation as a safe haven in favour of the yen.

 

Maybe Donald Trump will meet his demise, but hopefully not before his insanely religious vice president, who might decide faith healing will cure the sick.

I remember back during the Swine Flu and that was way worse and I even know a few people that got it. Yet they didn't lock everything down. I think their is different motivation for locking everything down. One to send the economy into a world spin. I would say this has been a calculated plan by the Global Cabal. But that is my conspiracy theory and what my intuition says. But anybody can believe what they want. Only time will tell what is really going on.

[OceanBreeze]

That is 1.4% over the entire population, it does not focus on age groups. 

 

I am optimistic, in that it isnt going to affect me much. I do know a lot of people in the older age groups who have good reason to be extremely concerned. Attempting to protect them is likely going to cost all of us a lot of money. If the measures dont work perhaps you will get an inheritance sooner than expected :(

 

 "If the measures dont work perhaps you will get an inheritance sooner than expected"

 

 

That's an extremely unpleasant thing to say.

[exchemist]

These exchanges make me feel the thinking in the USA is following a similar path to that taken in the UK, but with a time lag of about 3-4 weeks. Once the full medical crisis hits in New York, the tone of the discussion will change, I suspect.   

[exchemist]

Did Churchill say something about that https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/11/exhaust-alternatives/ Americans always do the right thing after exhausting all other alternatives :)  

That wasn't what I intended to imply. In the UK we have gone through similar stages of growing understanding. No doubt they did in Italy as well.

 

I myself thought at the start it was little worse than a bad "flu'. It has only been as the data started to emerge about the proportion of patients needing hospital care (~5%) and the mismatch between the number of ventilators available (5000) vs. the number forecast as required at the peak (150,000) that it dawned on me and the rest of the population that it wasn't so much the number of deaths, as the rate at which people would go to hospital that was the issue. It has taken a while for that to sink in. Now, however, the public information campaign, intelligently, stresses this is about saving the health system, as well as "saving" patients. And of course we now have ample evidence, from from Spain and from Italy, that health services can easily be overwhelmed by this epidemic, which we did not really have a month ago. 

 

My reading of the US is they are not there yet. You still get people worrying about erosion of personal freedoms, or pointing out the undeniably huge economic damage, but without offering an alternative course of action.

 

But, it is true this is not helped by Trump making idiotic pronouncements about full churches for Easter, and the far-right misinformation machine gearing up to blame city mayors and state governors for the health disasters that will probably unfold, instead of uniting the country for collective action. That is a feature of US society that mercifully we do not really suffer from.  

Edited March 25, 2020 by exchemist