Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

On a scale of 10 for stupid, this ranks an 11. It even made the ProgrammingHorror sub-reddit. This is major league facepalm.

 

In Germany, many labs send positive results to local health departments (that do the contact tracing) per fax..Hence, lots of delay in Corona hotspots.

Not so much due to stupidity but due to data security laws.

Still, you'd think there would be better preparation for a pandemic.

 

Will wonders never cease? We now have a report that Rosstat, the Russian statistics agency, says there was a serious undercount of COVID-19 deaths earlier this year. Keep watching for changes. In many places the future is uncertain. In Russia the past is also uncertain.

 

Surely the future is uncertain everywhere, outside of a singularity anyway (and that's only because it is theorised that there is no flow of time there).

 

Covid-19 updates: One in 10 worldwide may have had virus, WHO says

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-54422023

 

Where are these cases supposed to have occurred? China? Indian subcontinent? Or are they claiming that western countries have also undercounted cases by 10 times?

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1313564695886880768

 

And to add to this, the CDC offered to do contact tracing and it was turned down.

 

The Great Barrington Declaration for herd immunity.

Edit to add:

"An international group of scientists has called on governments to overturn their coronavirus strategies and allow young and healthy people to return to normal life while protecting the most vulnerable.

The proposal, drawn up by three researchers but signed by many more, argues for letting the virus spread in low-risk groups in the hope of achieving “herd immunity”, where enough of the population is resistant to the virus to quell the pandemic."

I'm wondering, doesn't such a strategy necessarily lead to "underprivileged" people (jobs with no homeoffice -> more exposure) being the ones "sacrificed" first for the greater good of herd immunity?

 

What is the significance of the "Great Barrington" mansion in the Berkshires (in Massachusetts) I wonder?
https://gbdeclaration.org/

 

Behind herd immunity is the thinking that the people dying are sick and old while the young and productive have mild disease. This completely ignores the threat of longcovid to the economy.

Looking at the cold equations of their economics, the old are are drain on the system using resources and needing care so if they are gone there is more money to go round everyone else so if they are sacrificed to keep commerce going there si no loss.

But if a mass of people in there 20s, 30s and 40s become sick and need care for decades that is a major threat. Not only is their expertise lost to society they will need support, yet that is being ignored or they do not even know about it.

The neglect and misinformation around ME may push a worse recession on us.

And, of course, compassion and morality demand another approach.

 

Code:

https://twitter.com/devisridhar/status/1313733782235680768

https://twitter.com/user/status/1313733782235680768


Rest of thread in quotes.

 

I disagree on the "immunity too short" bit - immunity will last years. But people seem to forget that herd immunity literally requires a large majority of the population to be infected - herd immunity is the worst case scenario for mortality and morbidity.

 

Herd immunity can last for years ... to prior strains of the virus. It may or may not offer partial immunity to new strains.

Severe morbidity can have greater economic impact than mortality. While good epidemiology on long term outcomes seems to be still lacking, largely because this virus is still too new even now, this will take years, its looking increasingly like there is risk of huge long term morbidity, at enormous cost. Herd immunity strategies will maximize that cost. If it turns out that nearly all long Covid cases resolve in a year or two, then this cost will not be as great as some of us are concerned about. However if what we are seeing is a very high percentage of disability then the costs might be beyond what the world can handle.

Not locking down, not doing the responsible things, also has costs, both direct and indirect financial costs, and potential long term costs.

I really hope that future accountants and economists will look very deeply at all the costs and be better prepared for future epidemics ... and there will be future epidemics.

When assessing long term strategies its important to look at all risks and costs, not just the immediate financial costs.

 

Coronavirus could act like a painkiller to mask illness, study finds

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/med...tudy-finds/ar-BB19QcOy?li=BBoPWjQ&ocid=ASUDHP

Sneaky little blighter, if true, but it would certainly help explain its ability to spread so fast:

 

Hmmm....2 days ago I asked my local council (via it's coronavirus web info service) how many people in my area were infected, per 100,000.

The answer was 19.4.

However the page, which is supposed to be updated weekly, hasn't been updated in nearly 3 weeks.

Things have moved on a little in the last 3 weeks, and tonight the page still hadn't been updated, so I dug a little further.

I found the official gov.uk page, which breaks down various things, by local authority area, down to individual wards/towns.

This says that, as of yesterdays figures, the rate per 100,000 in my town is 1047.

A 5394% increase in under 3 weeks.

My maths isn't good (well...not my maths persay, my ability to work out what maths would give me the answer I seek...is unresponsive), but this might suggest that total viral saturation of the free range local population could occur within weeks.

There can't be all that many 5000% increases needed to get from 1% to 100%

We have no 'local' restrictions, all that's in place is the national rule of 6.

 

But until now there doesn´t seem to occur a comparable rise in new covid-19 disease in any area which experienced a significant rise of infections.

I would find it plausible tough that in the autumn excess mortality may be a bit higher. Ironically, this may be due to too much protection from low level spread of any viruses due to measures.