Just to keep track of the nonsense that has wrecked our economy and generally made our politicians run around as if their fool heads were on fire, each day I publish the corona virus total death toll in the US based upon the latest data I can find. A single death is an immense tragedy if you love the person. However, we are not talking about love, but rather public policy, which should always involve a sober analysis of risk and cost. Please recall that in a bad normal flu year our death toll in the US can be as high as 90,000.
Note: this will be a total death toll since the beginning of this bad farce, and not a daily toll. As of the beginning of April 2 the death toll is 5,112. May the Perpetual Light shine upon them.
Good article:
APRIL FOOLS: China Coronavirus Insanity by the Numbers – Data Makes No Sense as Entire Industries and Millions of Lives Are Destroyed
By Jim Hoft
Published April 1, 2020 at 8:12am
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/april-fools-china-coronavirus-insanity-by-the-numbers-data-makes-no-sense-as-entire-industries-and-millions-of-lives-are-destroyed/
Beware the Ides of March!
Not good to compare this to a bad flu season. Flu vaccines are available to the general public each year and a 0.1% death rate (roughly) would keep numbers relatively low. Lack of immunization for Coronavirus, plus a death rate of even 1.0% (10x higher) could make 90,000 deaths look like a walk in the park. There are unreported cases (the denominator), but wouldn’t this be true for any flu season or pandemic? How many do NOT go to the doctor when they have minor symptoms; I don’t.
A serious mitigation strategy makes sense, but I do wonder if certain “non-essential” businesses could stay open with strict rules. For example, restaurants seat no more than a party of “X”, all parties must be 6 feet apart from other parties, tables & chairs disinfected between guests, no large groups huddled in the waiting area, etc.
If the data I’ve seen out of Italy is true and representative, 95% of the people felled by this ailment are over 60. I’m wondering if the right thing to do would have been to isolate the old and have everyone else carry on but make use of masks, gloves, &c, especially in the presence of elderly relatives. One problem has been that there just has not been enough protective equipment in the supply chain, and when you ramp up production (which paper manufacturers have said they’re doing), you still have to distribute the stuff.
The next two (2) weeks will be key-
We’ll also be able to observe the performance of other country’s methods:
Sweden who are not shutting down, only social distancing. Panama segregating men and women to shopping on different days, thus keeping fraternization to a minimum. And Belarus, where the President has said that vodka and sitting in a sauna will keep the virus away.
My problem with the daily stats is that they throw these big numbers at the wall, but don’t break them down. They don’t compare them. They say cases or deaths went up by X, but they don’t dwell on how that compares, what trends, who is getting what, demographics or anything. Just big numbers.
There are unreported cases (the denominator), but wouldn’t this be true for any flu season or pandemic?
I did find a purported literature review in Emerging Infectious Diseases which said estimates of the share of influenza infections which are (1) asymptomatic or (2) subclinical in their severity is all over the map. The middling value of the various soft-data estimates appears to be 25% for the first and 35% for the second. The CDC’s estimate of the number of influenza cases varies by the year, but bounces around 30,000,000. If 50% of the infextions are asymptomatic or subclinical, that would suggest 75 million infections. If 1/3 of the public is vaccinated, that would suggest the number of potential infections is 112 million, or about 1/3 of the population. The Icelandic data suggest that about 1/2 of all coronavirus infections are asymptomatic. So, we have 69 million adults over 60; 23 million are infected; 11.5 million have symptoms. The experience of the Diamond Princess passengers suggest that the case fatality rate for people over 60 with symptoms is 4.6%. That’s 556,000 people. If they account for 95% of the deaths, that’s 585,000 deaths in toto. In raw numbers, that approaches the Spanish flu pandemic, albeit in a country with a population more than 3x as large. That’s actually about 12x what you’d expect from seasonal flu deaths.
That’s a layman’s daisy chain, to be sure. This particular ailment seems to be sensitive to seminal events and to climate. Warm weather zones like the Arabian peninsula have had the virus as long as Europe, but have 1 and 2 digit death tolls. Ditto tropical Southeast Asia. In the Far East, well organized societies like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan seem to have been effective at containing this ailment. Japan had the virus a week before the United States did, but their crude death rate thus far is < 5% of ours. North America’s still doing better than a menu of European countries. Europe itself is heterogeneous. Italy and Spain are off the charts. Britain, France, the Low Countries, and some others are troubled. Eastern Europe, Germany, and Portugal have much more modest problems.
My problem with the daily stats is that they throw these big numbers at the wall, but don’t break them down. They don’t compare them. They say cases or deaths went up by X, but they don’t dwell on how that compares, what trends, who is getting what, demographics or anything. Just big numbers.
I have a suspicion reporters are pretty uniformly innumerate, when they’re not spinning for political reasons. Gina Kolata has a background in mathematics and biology, but I doubt anything resembling that is at all common. Carl Zimmer’s made a satisfactory living as a science reporter while having no science background at all.
“If 60% are asymptomatic or subclinical”
I agree with AD, from the beginning it was obvious that the elderly and those with co-morbidities were the most in danger, but the powers that be decided to shut down entire nations instead of protecting the vulnerable. Kids should have stayed in school, are the teachers really that old? This would have spread the herd immunity more quickly; just keep the kids away from granny. Of course after this granny will have to live with you because her IRA has been destroyed.
I still want to see year over year death totals. My guess is the number will be up for this year, but a lot of people who dies from Wuhan flu would have died from other forms of the flu.
Well, what do you know. The print edition of the USA Today has this for a headline “Caregivers on the Sidelines.”
Pull quote “By June, an estimated 60,000 family practices will close or significantly scale back, and 800,000 of their employees will be laid off….”
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This does not include dentists, dermatologists, PTs, general surgeons, allergists.
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I do not see the article online, but this will not be the last.
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At this point, I think the only real non essential jobs are politicians. My local barista and winemaker do far more for Michugan in than our Governor
Ken, a friend from Belgium said (2 weeks ago) that in northern Belgium they decided to keep the schools open since the children were at very low risk. If the children stayed home they would be more likely taken care of by a grandparent who would be more exposed to any illness BY the children.
Belgium’s death rate is somewhat over 1/3 Italy’s, but nearly 5x ours. They’re suffering.
Most of the numbers are hard to compare– from some reports (which means I don’t have solid proof on all of these) you’ve got Italy reporting everyone who dies with a positive test as COVID-19, Germany not reporting them unless there wasn’t any other big problem, France not counting deaths that happen in nursing homes (they just lock down the facility), Korea being all open and scientific including double-checking positive results (and if the check comes back negative, checking it again) and the US being all over the map.
I’m pretty sure that at the very least, New York city is doing the Italy trick, possibly combined with the test-people-who-are-already-dead number padding. I know Washington WAS reporting stuff pretty much the day they got results, but I heard their system crashed when the ratio of positive to all tests got high (per the guy complaining, they were only at hundreds, not even thousands).
Something to remember for the flu is that on a good year, the vaccine is 50% effective, and that it’s not a reportable illness. That is, the CDC doesn’t ask all the states to send in numbers. The ones we get are estimates.
I’ve been saying from the start that I’m pretty sure the “unusually bad flu season” that they wiggled out of the excess mortality numbers after Thanksgiving was actually the first wave of the kung flu.
Robert Kraft and the Patriots organization had an idea, took the initiative and sent the Patriots team plane to pickup 1.2 million N95 masks in China with an incredible 3 hour turn around on the tarmac.
(I can hear it already. “They cheated!”… “The plane’s tires weren’t at the proper inflation!”… apologies to anyone who is not a Patriot fan. I live near Foxboro.
Go Pats! Great out-of-the box thinking.)