Wuhan Flu

Wuhan Flu 88 Comments

A sobering thread on the possible downstream effects of combating the Chinese virus.

As for the speculation that COVID deaths are being inflated by attributing deaths from other causes to the virus, it just doesn’t hold up.

But this may be useful for tracking the direction the infection rates are moving. (thread here).

While I’m sure some of you would prefer posts jumping on bad studies and anecdotal miracle cures, but I’m as naturally skeptical of those as I am most “early reports”. Forewarned is forearmed. Where good news looks legit, I’ll share it.

In the meanwhile, I’ve found Dr Zoe Hyde (Australia) to be a useful follow on Twitter for developments, retweeted information and opinions, and newly released studies. Balanced and generally apolitical.

This seems to be the average: @EricTopol — What does Iceland and Vo, Italy have in common for #COVID19? A 43% rate of asymptomatic infections

New symptoms being identified in youth and children than may have implicatons for heart health.

Your related content is welcome in the comments, but keep the chatter to a minimum. Off topic comments will be deleted.

88 Replies to “Wuhan Flu”

  1. Based on the graphs of infection rates, Australia seems to have completed or nearly completed its curve while we appear to be at or around peak infections. I believe the Ozzies were first to ban flights from China.

    1. I believe the Ozzies were first to ban flights from China.

      They were certainly amongst the first if not the first, and it was attributed (at the time) to the Aussies being deeply suspicious of the WHO’s pronouncements on the subject.  A suspicion which, subsequently, seems to be well-founded.

    2. Actually, Australia and the U.S. did so at almost exactly the same time….notwithstanding the arm waving by the Washington Post.

  2. In the NYC excess mortality chart, a commenter notes that there has been a significant uptick on excess non covid related deaths during the lockdown period.

    Seems odd, since lots of traffic and workplace deaths should be down.

    1. Ward, stress would cause undetected underlying problems to rise to the surface soon , and add to the non-covid-19 death rate

      1. Perhaps NME but there must be a huge amount of these stress death cases to offset the reductions of outside the homes deaths.

        So if your hypothesis is correct I would say that the increase in stress deaths is a very large number indeed.

        So how many net deaths are we saving by lockdown, since it is increasing inside the home deaths so significantly.

        1. ward, the lock down is what is causing the stress, that can cause more deaths due to underlying ailments. Sorry for not being clear on that in my previous post

  3. Sorry. Any analysis that takes data from China seriously is suspect. That garbage needs to be removed from any chart, otherwise it’s garbage out.

  4. No worries Kate – CBC has some really good advice for Canadians on how to deal with contrarians in your family – just saw this at Treehouse.

    “April 19, 2020 at 12:24 am
    CBC instructs children on how to deal w/ parents and relatives who post “conspiracy theories” about COVID19:

    Is uncle Bob spreading COVID-19 misinformation in the family group chat? This doesn’t have to be awkward. pic.twitter.com/SxX5HVqY9a

    — CBC News: The National (@CBCTheNational) April 15, 2020”

      1. Same modus operandi. Tout simplistic models with tons of built in assumptions, feed with inadequate and doctored data, et voila, a prime time mass hysteria. I notice the Liberals are missing no opportunity to funnel pallets of cash to their favorites.And no end in sight to the looting.

      2. Sounds more like the Stalinist government introduced to encourage children to report their parents for anti-Soviet comments.
        I’m getting very uncomfortable by how this situation is turning out.

    2. Next up, is mommy or daddy critical of Justin Trudeau? Call 911 kiddies and we’ll take them off to a covid camp for re-education.

  5. Before COVID, I believe our system was pretty close to capacity. I have friends where non-critical surgeries were delayed or have deferred even simple trips to the doc.

    It is interesting to think about the downstream impacts from converting our entire health care system to virus support (and terrifying the populous).

    I believe it will take years and significantly more public funding (where it may not exist) for us to catch up on elective surgeries, delayed health care, and the coming spike in mental health care.

    This while we should be starting to work on bringing our health care supply chain back from China, so it could be a time of ongoing shortages in health care.

    1. A month ago I was on a gurney prepped and gowned outside the operating room for major cancer surgery (second time around). It was cancelled and now I have to wait. Praying the damned creature does not spread. There are no ICU`s available and will not be for a long time but then do I really want to be in a Hospital ICU at this time, and at my age I am definitely at the bottom of the list. Dr. Ott is correct, there will be a back up once the virus crisis has past. Not a comforting thought. I have an appointment next week that will be conducted over the telephone, just like the last one.

    2. Agreed. The backlog is going to be enormous. I’ve been in hospital and urgent care facilities twice within the last four weeks. My mother and my father-in-law have macular degeneration. My mother’s doctor operates a clinic out of a hospital and my father-in-law’s doctor operates a clinic out of an urgent care facility. Both of their doctors have cut back on who they see. Right now they are only taking appointments with patients who are in the greatest danger of completely losing their sight. My mother and father-in-law both fall into this camp because they only have some sight in one eye.

      The usual wait time for my mother when we arrive at the clinic is two hours, for my father-in-law it’s one-and-a-half hours. My mom’s appointment took just under 15 minutes from the moment I dropped her off to when I picked her up at the door (I wasn’t allowed in). My father-in-law took 17 minutes. There were one or two other patients in the clinic sign-in area which is shared with elective day surgery operations. There are usually at least 30. The parking garage only has a few cars parked in it when it’s normally full.

      So yes, doctors and patients have been putting procedures off. The backlog will hit like a tidal wave.

  6. We don’t know what the infection rates are. We only know the rate of those who have been tested having the virus, and of those, who died. Mny in the old folks homes, apparently, we only tested after they were dead. And, given the limited and totally inadequate testing we are performing, we are completely ignorant about the progress of this disease. So when do we know we can all come out again? Whoever told the government that a strategy of wait and isolate the entire popualtion until it is all over is criminally stupid. You cannot isolate an entire population from itself; you CAN isolate the infected and infirm and vulnerable, which no government in Canada has done, taking its lead from the feds and the deplorable Tam.

    Grrrrraaaagggeerraannntt aaaagggghhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  7. I too laughed at CBC’s ‘Uncle Bob’. We’re supposed to just accept the greater wisdom of our juniors, because….

    For we seniors, this ain’t our first crisis rodeo. Nor is it our first exposure to media hysteria and low information Gen X, Y and millennials. Talking with the son-in-law yesterday, 45 yrs old, two degrees, works for regional government in management.

    Spoke with him regarding China being a threat. He had never heard of ‘Belt and Road’ or international concern regarding 5G networks. Never heard of the 5Eyes collaboration – Australia, New Zealand, Britain, USA and Canada. Never heard of China’s economic takeover of ports in Sri Lanka and airports and infrastructure in African nations. Unaware of China’s military footprint in the South China Sea.

    But apparently it’s important that not just he, but HIS kids should lecture me on ‘fake news’ and misinformation. Got it.

    2. No Guff….no guff:-)))))And it ain’t just the 45 year old either, my brother is over 60, and just as poorly informed!

  8. “Dutch study suggests 3% of population may have coronavirus antibodies”

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-netherlands-study-idUSKCN21Y102

    Also in Denmark: “Mortality should probably be counted in thousands: Danish blood tests shed new light on the coronavirus” (Google Translate of Title. I can’t find an English article for this, yet)

    “Antibodies are formed when an infection with the virus is over. And it turns out that 22 of the 1,487 blood donors have formed antibodies. However, there have been cases where the test has failed to capture that the donors have been tested positive for coronavirus in the past.”

    https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/doedelighed-skal-formentlig-taelles-i-promiller-danske-blodproever-kaster-nyt-lys

    1. For fuck sake don’t confuse PLL with accumulated measurements over 120 days… It is insignificant when compared to the infection rate which is collected Daily using a absolute Stable Methodology….

      You have to look at the rate of increasing numbers Vs a set duration, The Power Spectrum produced on Analog power systems (spectrum Analyzer) is near identical to the Virus daily data collection. California & NY peaked ~ 2 weeks ago & is heading down…Don’t feed stupid speculation

  9. Re tracking total deaths;

    https://mobile.twitter.com/J_CD_T/status/1250815361366274051

    I have commented several times that all countries should be tracking total deaths.

    Now what is wrong with the data in the tweet?

    a) it most likely under reports total deaths. How much I don’t know, but researchers have noted that it can take weeks for the data to filter in

    b) Past years are combined into one average. In my opinion showing the average of the last 10 years, along with the lowest and highest years, would provide more useful information.

    If COVID-19 really is worse than the “flu”, then comparing COVID-19 to the worst flu year in the last 10 years, should make that very transparent.

    Failure to compare to the worst flu year begs the question why are you hiding it (the data provider, not Kate).

    Note, I personally think that COVID-19 is worse than a bad flu year, but I have yet to see clear evidence. It should be simple for governments to track and show this data.

    Why is transparency important? Too much bad information coming from “experts” like the WHO, Dr Tam, etc.

    Why else is transparency important? And collecting total death data? There is likely to be a second wave. We won’t have the financial resources to deal with it, so we’d better understand who the most vulnerable people are, so we can protect them as best as possible.

    1. Founders1791 says.. paraphrased.

      Never once did they shut down the world.

      Flu Season… U.S.Deaths… U.S.Cases…
      2019-2020…. 24,000… 39,000,000
      2018-2019…. 34,157… 35,520,883
      2017-2018…. 61,099… 44,802,629 <— whoa!
      2016-2017…. 38,230… 29,220,523
      2015-2016…. 22,705… 23,504,319
      2014-2015…. 51,376… 30,165,452
      2013-2014…. 37,930… 29,739,994
      2012-2013…. 42,570… 33,679,171
      2011-2012…. 12,447… 9,315,621
      2010-2011…. 36,656… 21,286,119

      2020 – Flu vaccine 45% effective in U.S.
      (CDC) https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6907a1.htm

      High Plains Drifter (1973)
      Mordecai: “What do we do when it’s over?”
      Eastwood: “Then you live with it.”
      https://www.citizenfreepress.com/breaking/im-old-enough-to-remember-march-4th/

    2. The problem with tracking death is that it’s a lagging indicator that must calculate the efficiency of the Doctors & Nurses… You can use it to detect fraudulent/false input manipulations.. It should have a consistent lag that matches the inverse of Hospital efficiency…When hospital efficiency goes up……Death will go down

      JMHO

  10. I look at the results from the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship in which the Wuhan Virus wrecked havoc on. It’s a good environment for a study on the spread of the virus in an enclosed environment.
    – departed from Yokohama, Japan on 20 January 2020 for a round-trip cruise
    -80-year-old passenger onboard from Hong Kong, China disembarks in Hong Kong on 25 January.
    – Feb 1 this 80 yr old visits hospital in Hong Kong and is diagnosed with the virus.
    – Feb 4 2020 Diamond Princess already returned from cruise, and preparing for next cruise announces delay for Japanese authorities to screen and test passengers and crew still on board. On the same day authorities announced positive test results for the Wuhan virus for ten people on board, the cancellation of the cruise, and that the ship was entering quarantine.
    -A total of 3,711 passengers and crew were quarantined for what was expected to be a 14-day period, off the Port of Yokohama.
    – Feb 7 2020 infections grew to 61.
    – Feb 8 2020 3 more test positive.
    – By late March 712 of 3,711 people on the Diamond Princess, or 19.2% had been infected by the Wuhan virus.
    – A preliminary report based on the first 184 cases by Japan’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID) estimated that most of the transmission on the ship had occurred before the quarantine. Food service workers were found to have likely been the main early route of spread.
    And here is the important bit; “46.5% of the infected passengers and crew members had no symptoms at the time of testing.
    That is a huge number. It leads me to believe there is a huge portion of the population walking around with no symptoms and probably unaware they even have it.
    When you plug that into models, the lethality of this virus goes down to flu like levels. Couple that to the fact this virus has basically no effect on the young and babies, which the flu does by the way, kind of puts it into context for me. Sure its bad for those that are already hanging on the health precipice, but the hysteria and fear that has shut down the world economy is unwarranted. Like I posted earlier, shelter in place those vulnerable, and let the rest of us get back to our lives.

    1. Around 1 in 50 of the infected on the Diamond Princess died. Why didn’t you mention that? That’s way higher than “the flu.”

      1. I would guess TIM, that there is a large number of over 65 and lots of over 80.

        We should have realistically seen many more deaths on the ship. Pretty much kills 20% of the over 80 crowd.

        1. Over 65s are now expendable? I didn’t know. That’s sad. I have five siblings over 65, and one who is 62 who is always in and out of the VA hospital with his heart.

          1. Tim Please point to where I said over 65 – or anyone else for that matter was expendable. That not only a cheap shot its dishonest.
            My point was simply that we know that the Wuflu kills a very significant number of the elderly – and very few under 60. The older you get the greater percentage chance you have of dying.

            Depends where you are of course, but some of the data I have seen shows up to 20% of those over 80 die.
            Typically cruises skew more towards older people – with quite a large number in the elderly category.

            So simple math would say that we should expect a significantly higher death rate on cruises.
            If the number had been 10% of the infected dead, it would not seem out of the ordinary, based on the data we have seen on who this kills.

            And no that does not mean anyone is expendable.

          2. I’m 67 and I’d rather die than wreck the economy my children and grandchildren will have to live with if this over-protective madness continues.

      2. Way higher than the flu? Perhaps not. Because the median age of the population on the Diamond Princess is nowhere near representative of the U.S. population which is 38.2. On the Diamond Princess there were 1,045 crew and 2,666 passengers. The median age of the crew was 36 while the median age of the passengers was 69. I believe that all deaths were passengers.

      3. Tim in Vermont: Here’s something you didn’t mention. All but one of the people who died on the Diamond Princess were over 70 (my age group.) The one exception was in her 60s. We already know the disease is more deadly among older people so why am I telling you this? It’s because the age distribution of the 3711 passengers on the ship was nothing like the general population:
        1546 passengers were aged 0 – 59. 2165 passengers were aged 60 – 99.
        The general population distribution is the opposite. Here’s a rough estimate of 3711 in the general population:
        About 2881 Americans/Canadians would be 0 – 59. 830 Americans/Canadians would be 60 – 99.

        Thus in the general population the fatality rate of those infected would be about .375% in 50, not 1 in 50. (.75% as opposed to 2% on the ship). Of course, it isn’t that simple since there are many other variables. However, my point is that, all things being equal, the fatality rate in the general population should be considerably lower than on the ship.

        This is still a nasty disease, probably worse than the ordinary flu (not the Spanish one), but exaggerating its lethality is counter-productive.

        1. Wow. A reasoned answer.

          Yes, that rate among the older set would leave a lot of Thanksgiving tables looking forlorn and make for a lot of depressing Christmases. I am amateur guesstimating that the rate is probably slightly less than 1% for the general population, but I am not going to lard my estimates with assumptions that get that number lower because it’s comforting to think so. The deaths in NYC (spare me the conspiracy theories) are already higher than if the city was 100% infected with the flu.

          1. The deaths in NYC (spare me the conspiracy theories) are already higher than if the city was 100% infected with the flu.

            Tim, that’s a very interesting take and a way of framing how deadly the virus is that I haven’t seen before. How do the numbers look to support that.

          3. Remarkable that New York has almost half the US covid deaths with 6% of us population.

  11. The global death toll for the Asian Flu was estimated to be around 2 million. In 1957, the Asian flu pandemic resulted in about 70,000 deaths in the United States. The Dow Jones lost 15% of its value in 1958.

    The official toll of the 2019-2020 influenza season won’t be known for months. Flu season in North America, which runs from October through May, claims tens of thousands of lives every year. This season CDC estimates that, as of mid-March, between 29,000 and 59,000 have died in the US due to influenza illnesses. Add to that the misery of hundreds of thousands of flu-related hospitalizations and millions of medical visits for flu symptoms this season.

    It doesn’t hurt to know some of these numbers that we live with every year to keep things in perspective.

    If we had the media telling us every night on the news, the numbers of people testing positive to the seasonal flu and the number of hospitalizations and the daily death toll, we’d be in our houses for ever and never leave.

    Don’t get me wrong. This is a very serious virus and needs to be dealt with. I just think that some calm needs to be encouraged and we’ll get through it.

    2. CDC estimates 1957 pandemic flu deaths at 116,000. That’s in a population of 172 million. I’ve also seen he 70 000 deaths and +100 000 deaths in several different sources.

      CDC shows 116 000 deaths from 1957 flu. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1957-1958-pandemic.html

      If we extrapolate to today’s population of 337 million deaths that would be equivalent to 227 000 today.

      One big difference between 1957 flu and today? The 1957 flu killed the very young (44% of deaths were 0-4 years old) and the old (35% of deaths were over 65)

  12. Let’s assume, which is about what the scientists are doing, the COVID-19 mortality rate is three times seasonal flu rate.
    Which I understand is .1%, so COVID-19 mortality is .3%. IOW divide rate into current deaths, in US for instance, heading to 40,000.
    Let’s say it tops out at 60,000. So 60,000 divided by .003 equals 20 million exposed.
    Over 60m Americans were infected with H1N1. I think COVID-19 exposure is far more prevalent than the experts “believe.”
    This sucker could have been infecting humans as early as October by some estimates, certainly into November.
    But the Chinese government, in their all too familiar paranoid intransparancy, tried to cover it up, including blaming US military.
    Then massive travel ensued, including Christmas, the World Military Games in Wuhan, and the Chinese New Year.
    I bet it’s higher, iow mortality estimate too high. I did this without a research lab, or staff or Chinese misinformation.
    Then again I can look out the window and do a better job of predicting climate change than these technocratic kleptocrats.

    1. At the moment it’s running at 6% of tested/probable cases. Early surveys of general population suggests about half of cases are asymptomatic. There isn’t much testing available right now to make those determinations as most are still being reserved for sick people, but the notion that there have been tens of millions of undetected cases in the US is certainly false. With a capital F.

      1. Hmmm…maybe not but it is MUCH higher than the official rate. According to the recent Stanford study done in Santa Clara county, the true infection rate is 50 to 80 times higher than the “official” rate…..2.49% to 4.16% of the population there. That would equate to between 8 and 14 million. There is, of course, no way to know if the rate in Santa Clara is the same across the nation, and if we take the current number of “official” infections in the U.S. which is 760,000 (heavily skewed to the New York experience) and use the 50 to 80 factor from the Stanford study, we get 38 to 61 million. Pretty wide band. Time will tell.

        1. The recent Stanford study is less than worthless. It’s Hockey Stick all over again with no apparent understanding stuff people learn in a basic statistics course.

          False positive paradox[edit]
          One type of base rate fallacy is the false positive paradox, where false positive tests are more probable than true positive tests, occurring when the overall population has a low incidence of a condition and the incidence rate is lower than the false positive rate. The probability of a positive test result is determined not only by the accuracy of the test but by the characteristics of the sampled population.[2] When the incidence, the proportion of those who have a given condition, is lower than the test’s false positive rate, even tests that have a very low chance of giving a false positive in an individual case will give more false than true positives overall.[3] So, in a society with very few infected people—fewer proportionately than the test gives false positives—there will actually be more who test positive for a disease incorrectly and don’t have it than those who test positive accurately and do. The paradox has surprised many.[4]

          It is especially counter-intuitive when interpreting a positive result in a test on a low-incidence population after having dealt with positive results drawn from a high-incidence population.[3] If the false positive rate of the test is higher than the proportion of the new population with the condition, then a test administrator whose experience has been drawn from testing in a high-incidence population may conclude from experience that a positive test result usually indicates a positive subject, when in fact a false positive is far more likely to have occurred.. – Wikipedia

          They can’t be sure that they had a singe genuine positive based on the data that they provided.

  13. I guess we’ll have to wait for Greta to tell us when it’s safe to go outside again.

  14. I can’t speak to what I haven’t experienced and with the exception of a full recovery, I’d rather die at home or with my boots on than in a hospital.

  15. Kate, this whole situation has blown completely out of proportion because, like the Climate Change ideology, governments have got involved far too deeply.

    Those governments think they can save the day.

    But they do NOT know WHEN to stop slapping on more rules and regulations. They have NO idea what will work and they are PANICKING.

    And they’re like a 5-year old at the wheel of a Mac truck.

    Every time I go to a grocery store or a big box store, it’s yet more rules and/or waiting in queue for an hour to simply ENTER the store.

    (One big-box store assistant manager told me that a government Health inspector would close his store if he had too many people in the store for the store’s square footage.)

    And I am just besieged by messages about the virus in one way or another EVERYWHERE: Web sites, TV ads, newspapers, even driving down the street (city display sign).

    Something is going horribly wrong and I put the blame SQUARELY on our governments.

    And when I see that, I get very suspicious of all the messaging about the virus, how many are infected, how many died, how many will die, all those graphs we see, etc., etc.

    Like Dan Crenshaw said to Bill Maher, panic breeds panic.

    Enough already. Stop with the panic and fear-mongering and let’s get back to business.

    1. It’s possible to believe a) the growing evidence that this virus is far, far more deadly than the “flu” and requires serious measures to contain it, and b) that governmental restrictions in many cases are inappropriate and have little measurable benefit.

      We can hold both those thoughts in our minds at the same time. Too many of you are making the logical error of treating them as contradictory.

      2. Exactly. I have no idea why people seem to refuse to think clearly about this. The stakes are very high on both sides and closing one’s eyes to the threat is exactly the wrong thing to do. But I am sure it’s comforting.

      3. The resulting backlog, when ever this is over months from now, in our health care system will kill many more than the China virus. Our health care system was struggling to keep up before this virus came along. Good luck with getting a hip or knee replacement. Folks needing cancer surgery are just going to have to die. Yes the china virus is serious business for some people and just another flu for others. Our governments have no idea how to balance the reaction.

      4. At some point, very soon, hopefully, the present cohort of those colloquially known as adults, will grow up and realize a decision must be made in the face of uncertainty – infinite lockdowns, or 20 or more years of economic trauma, and its attendant premature deaths. The first best option is not available, It’s time to decide; no more dithering or hand-wringing.

    2. Just saw a cute joke: Has anyone noticed “pandemic” is dem surrounded by panic?

  17. I am the beginning stages of prostate cancer, and we have an excellent urologist who was scheduled to have meetings with us, about what strategy to take. But now we cannot book an appointment with her.

  18. It’s also worth remembering there may be additional waves of this bloody virus in the coming months, and the strain on hospitals my go on for quite some time.

    Social distancing is indeed a burden but without a lot more capacity to test and contact trace, opening things up will just precipitate another wave of infections. This is where years of under-investment by all parties has hurt us.

    Conservatives have to be careful about putting the economy before lives. If we can make a calculation that a certain number of deaths are acceptable so long as the stock market performs well, then what would be wrong with a woman getting an abortion because of poverty? Human life has more value, even if you have to go without.

    1. “Conservatives have to be careful about putting the economy before lives.” Unfortunately, this implies that supply lines that feed the overwhelming majority of us aren’t part of the economy. Not only making money to buy food (and all other products), but the infrastructure needed to get them to where we can buy them.

      My job is very early in the supply chain, it would take months to years for the ripples of cancelling my industry to work their way through the system. But everyone in the free world would be affected, and made poorer if that were to happen. Right now my industry is in a slow-down, but there are enough reserves to augment production and last several months more.

      The question isn’t an on/off switch. It’s a balancing act – at what point do the measures to keep us “safe” cause our system to degrade to the point that the weaker economy starts killing us? I view it as similar to the old line about “your right to wave your fist around stops at my nose.” The balance between “don’t go to work because you’re risking my life” and “no food delivery today because the truck broke down, and we can’t get replacement parts” is very real.

      1. Good point that it is a balancing act. Poverty increases social problems, that lead to more deaths, so keeping things shut down indefinitely is not a realistic option. But opening things up too soon would directly put people’s lives at risk. What I’m complaining about are people who don’t seem to care.

        1. “What I’m complaining about are people who don’t seem to care.”

          They will deny they don’t care then act like they don’t care all day long. Or they will deny that there is a real threat and make up stats and assumptions to “support” that opinion.

          This is really changing my view on politics. Scott Adams used the word “sociopath,” I won’t, but I understand what he meant.

          1. As they say, people use statistics the way a drunk uses a lamp post: more for support than illumination.

        2. None of the models on Covid 19 have been anything but garbage, it is only accurate to say that discredited models claim lifting lockdowns would directly put lives at risk.

    2. According to a study by the University of Calgary last fall for every 1% increase in the unemployment rate, the suicide rate increase by 2.8%. Are those not lives? As for attempting to put this to “under-investment by all parties”, that is simply false. This scourge in Canada right now can be laid RIGHT at the feet of Trudeau and Tam.

      Also, it’s not a matter of “caring” but being pragmatic and looking at the whole picture and the simple reality that you don’t commit suicide to avoid death.

      1. You are incorrect by laming only Trudeau. SARS hit in 2003, remember? It should have been a dry-run for something more serious because pandemics are inevitable. Why are we worried today about ICU capacity? Why don’t we have and N95 mask and PPE production in this country? Why are we worried about having enough ventilators? Trudeau failed to prepare, and so have all our previous leaders. It could have hit under Harper and I seriously doubt the death tool would have been any lighter. This pandemic was completely predictable, and had been predicted years ago, but nobody listened. Anyone who tells you this was a surprise is gaslighting you.

        1. The average Canadian taxpayer has a near-zero chance of dying of COVID-19.

          His chances of losing his house, his livelihood and his life savings (through a bank failure or roaring inflation) increases every single day this goes on.

          If you were a policy maker who cared about the welfare of the Canadian public, and not putting off being held accountable for hundreds of thousands of deaths for as long as possible, your recommendation would be unequivocal. Send everybody back to work. Tomorrow.

          1. There are a lot of Canadian tax payers who have a very real chance of dying from COVID-19. What about them? Deaths are as low as they are because of the shut-down. They would go up, maybe way up, if it were ended too soon. So on the one hand you have lives in immediate danger, and on the other, a wooly notion of harms due to economic disruption. Thing is, there are more things the state can do to remedy economic matters than it can do about a novel virus.

            And you are delusional if you think that any leader from any party cares for you any more than a farmer for a pig.

        2. What isn’t a surprise is Trudeau’s pathetic politically correct (and deadly)”response” to the pandemic….in sending tons of “surplus” medical supplies to China. And the reality is, Trudeau was busy playing footsie with Greta about an absolute fraudulent “emergency” when a real one was just around the corner.

    3. What strain on hospitals? Most hospitals have seen a decrease in patients since the covid outbreak. Two months ago Aunt Martha the hypochondriac would be at the hospital every other day with a new imagined illness. Now she is too scared to go the hospital.

      1. Don’t put the cart before the horse. There is no strain at the moment because of the shutdown. We avoided a situation like in Italy where they had to pick who got a respirator, and who was left to die.

  19. Another small sample size, but encouraging in results. Not a study by any means, but it adds to the knowledge base.

    “Between March 22 and April 4, 2020, a total of 215 pregnant women delivered infants at the New York–Presbyterian Allen Hospital and Columbia University Irving Medical Center . All the women were screened on admission for symptoms of Covid-19. Four women (1.9%) had fever or other symptoms of Covid-19 on admission, and all 4 women tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 (Figure 1). Of the 211 women without symptoms, all were afebrile on admission. Nasopharyngeal swabs were obtained from 210 of the 211 women (99.5%) who did not have symptoms of Covid-19; of these women, 29 (13.7%) were positive for SARS-CoV-2. Thus, 29 of the 33 patients who were positive for SARS-CoV-2 at admission (87.9%) had no symptoms of Covid-19 at presentation.”

    https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2009316

  20. I dont think mass lockdowns or quarantines are the solution, just like I dont think we should ban anything peanut from schools because 1 in a hundered kids are allergic. Carry an epi pen and make sure everyone is aware of the status of that paricular child.

    The left absolutely loves the power the covid gives them- and the democrats, media, hollywood – all are willing to burn down the economy just to get rid of Trump while bringing in gun control and mail in voting.

    Given that this virus is now hyper politicized, its tough to figure out just how bad this is/could be. We alreaday know that many “scientists”, government agencies and journalists etc are wholly corrupt – and are going to run with any angle that keeps this lockdown going and in full force. So they will present data that supports that.

    Any potential positive developments are discredited. Anything bad is amplified.

    Based on the fact that death estimates have been dramatically reduced downward, I think we can say that its not as bad as was predicted, and that those early predictions set the table for mass lockdowns – which the Liberals in Canada (and other govts) will not let go to waste.

    I think Trump would like to get the USA back to work – but of course its easy to see how that will play since the left is controlling the narrative – so despite the fact he is in power, the left still control the agenda.

    We do know that this virus kills the elderly pretty effectively.

    So if we are going to have lockdowns, lockdown the elderly and for a few billion, you can ensure they get the medicines and food they need.

    We cant shut the economy down while we wait for a vaccine – which is not likley going to eradicate the virus, just help some with immunity. But its easy to see why Fauci and those that desire the lockdowns to continue promote that as the only alternative – because it allows the lockdown to continue.

    So I’m all for taking this serioulsy – and my family will continue with our lockdown – but I think we should be very cautious in validating the lefts narrative on this.

    I often see many pundits who don’t buy into the fake AGW narrative, but still refer to taking steps to reducing their carbon footprint – or refer to CO2 emissions as polution. All that does is help validate the lefts AGW narrative, and allows them to run as fast and as far with it as they can in terms of implementing their policies.

    At this point Trump is about the only world leader I trust. If they get rid of him, I sure dont like what that holds for my future or my kids. In my opinion this one is for all the marbles- the left has never been so close to their goals and desires – they have to succeed in using the covid scare to get rid of Trump. If they don’t, I think you are going to see a real swamp draining and some pretty prominent people get charged – which will bode well for everyone (whether they realize it or not).

    That doesn’t mean the covid is not dangerous as a virus – it is, but it is likely more dangerous if we allow the left to use it to gain or maintain power.

    1. Exactly. Its the Lowest Common Denominator (LCD) syndrome we see applied again and again. Peanut products are a great example. Gun laws are another.
      And the medical professionals know this. They go hunting after syphilis, TB and HIV infection contacts all the time as part of solving the spread.
      Anyone for a lockdown of the masses rather than supported isolation of those at risk are enemies of individual freedoms.

    2. “So if we are going to have lockdowns, lockdown the elderly and for a few billion, you can ensure they get the medicines and food they need.”

      That’s been my position all along, who is funding that? Who is organizing safely getting food and medicines to seniors? I am locked down, but I am very well fixed, thank you very much, I am more worried about people who aren’t, and can’t really avoid contact with outside people right now.

      But young people are dying of it at a much higher rate in the US at least, than they did in Europe. I won’t speculate why here but I am sure we all have our theories.

    3. Ward, I’v said it before, tho I’m not sure if in here, but they need to check and see if there was direct, or back channel ,contact between dims and china, and if there was it would probably explain piglosi holding back the articles of impeachment>

  21. German Bild newspaper editor does a slam dunk on the Xi guy. Rather surprising.

    “China’s Open Letter Slamming a German Journalist for Holding the Country Accountable for the Coronavirus Completely Backfired”
    https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbaumann/2020/04/19/watch-german-journalist-julian-reichelt-takes-china-to-task-over-their-responsib-n2567195

    “China enriches itself with the inventions of others instead of inventing on its own. The reason China does not create and innovate is that you do not let the young people in your country think freely. China’s greatest export, that nobody wanted to have, but which has nevertheless gone around the world, is corona[virus],”

    The whole article is just wow.

  22. If we are reasonably astute.. The Democrat (Communist) States have proven they are stupid or deliberate in spiking their results… Absolute Accuracy is Not the issue… Accumulated data MUST be corrected to the period
    of Measurement… If we assume 100 days that means that 4% is .04 daily risk (bullshit noise)

    Resist & obstruct cried Nancy.. while people died… The perfect example of Communism evil

  23. Watching the entire world lose it’s mind over something our immune systems are more than equipped to handle is nothing new. Y2K, H1N1, SARS, Global Warming et al demonstrated to just how gullible people can be. If you do not believe as they do, you are the dumb one, as they have anointed themselves as the bearers of wisdom and prophecy.

    Anyone with a passing acquaintance to mathematics or statistics would tell you we’ve seen a lot worse, and many more influential events. This hysterical panic, as they are truly the only words that describe this nonsense, will yield far more deaths due to delayed surgeries, suicides, foreclosures, bankruptcies, depression, and poverty than any virus could ever muster.

    The idea that the entire society should shut itself down to preserve a statistically insignificant number of people has been rejected time and again by most logical people. Why is this different? Oh, it’s a virus is the response, and it could spread, like the icebergs melting and flooding the coasts analogy. Ice melts and consumes less volume than before, viruses come and go and continue to improve the health of our species. We are more prepared for viruses than at any point in our history. We have warm homes, clean water, good access to diet and nutrition, hygiene, and we’re aware of the need to get proper sleep. This virus claims the obese, who avoid common sense and prefer to live as though their physiology is different than the rest of humanity, and it also claims the old, who often times are also among the obese.

    If this disease threatened the youth by some substantial margin, or the future of humanity, I might agree, but this is just another tree pruning virus that will affect those ill equipped to combat. The funny part of all this, is the stay at home crowd often says there is no god and preaches Darwinism, and then when you say let Darwinism proceed, they want to play God and interject.

    1. If this disease threatened the youth by some substantial margin, or the future of humanity, I might agree, but this is just another tree pruning virus that will affect those ill equipped to combat. The funny part of all this, is the stay at home crowd often says there is no god and preaches Darwinism, and then when you say let Darwinism proceed, they want to play God and interject.

      Sigh. This is the kind of comment that GatineauGuv was talking about.

  25. It’s curious, the disappearance of the idea that there are two forms of the Covid 19 virus. You would think that required follow up. But, no, it’s dropped like a lesser toy on Christmas day. The debate above would be remarkably different if there were two strains.

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation