Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

Ioannidis' friend, Peter Gotzsche thinks this is an epidemic of mass panic. https://www.deadlymedicines.dk/corona-an-epidemic-of-mass-panic/

https://twitter.com/user/status/1242709960523382784

 

Dear Lansbergen, do you recall a link to this? I would be interested to read more about the virus being found in sewage.
A question: does high heat, as in cooking, kill the virus? How about freezing temperature?
As I posted elsewhere, a recommendation I read in La Presse (montreal) was to wash vegetables with dish soap.

 

Yes, and divorces, and battered wives...so they are saying here in Quebec.

 

Not unless all these people have the equipment required for in vitro shenanigans.

It's probably difficult to make babies any other way whilst maintaining at least 2 meters separation.

Clearly no one, no matter how bored, would needlessly break 'advoice' from our leaders, or risk creating such clear evidence that they have - a coughing baby in 9 months time

 

There is no evidence for our draconian measures, which cause a lot of harm, incl. increasing suicides.

And the evidence for those suicides?

 

??? (I am a non-native speaker, maybe you can give an example?)

 

'advice' with a posh/upper class accent.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1242700623704817664

 

In view of this - not this very point in particular - but the point that we have been captured and probably still are captured by our sort to organize things, this statement is even not without some wisdom (though I am not necessary a fan of whom who said it).

We will see how the situation will turn out to be in some weeks. We need to organize farming for food (here in Germany already new problems need to be solved), asf. At it worst the market will not function anymore, or we might not be able to fix a new situation. Who knows.

On the short run, the next week, I suppose, will already be a catastrophy for hospitals also in the Netherland, England, and a bit later in Germany. In Russian tv Putin was told by a director that "we will get where Italy is." Putin said that "we should not hold to our Russian spirit that things don´t matter." (I saw it in a translation).

It is of course not without being cynical to say that economy (or better, the way to organize our material reproduction) is part of the equation. But also hospitals are part of our material reproduction indeed, and are in need of many things (and we know that in the past or elsewhere in the world the material reproduction does not function that still well as e.g. in England.). In order to overwhelm the virus we might cause other harm that might be more severe, even on the long run. - I don´t want induce any discussion about this subject, maybe walking around like on the moon.

 

And I was concerned you referred to breaking rules ...

 

This is a very ignorant question from me, but is a single particle of virus enough to get infected, or not? And if not, why not?

I'm wondering how to interpret the advice about 'close contact' being 15 minutes at less than a metre etc. and the idea that less intense contact is probably less dangerous. I'm wondering if that's to do with the amount of virus you'd be exposed to, or the probability that you'd be exposed to at least a single particle of it.

 

I read s4me every single day since years now (but do not write as much as I would like), and this group has been a source of comfort and courage and knowledge of the best kind to deal with ME challenges. And today in this baffling covid-19 era, even though the whole planet is tackling it, I still find this group to be the best place to go to in order to keep up and stay strong with this new misfortune. - Who should I thank? Everyone, I guess! Yes, thanks, to every one here, for never giving up on seeking facts and truths related to health and well-being.

 

I have always been surprised at this.

My interpretation is they told the media something general, which probably related to risk but the media just repeat it with no idea of what they are saying.

I would say its entirely based on probability and perhaps related to contact tracing, but I would have thought one second of close contact is enough to catch the virus.

 

Some of these comments from "experts" seem plain wrong.

I came across this earlier:
"David Spiegelhalter puts the risks of Covid-19 into perspective.
Referring to the Imperial College study:
[do nothing scenario] - "600,000 would die"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gwy8

Surely do nothing would result in the deaths of approximately 5 million [EDIT on reflection 2.5 million deaths i.e. 5% of 50 million people (assumes 80% of the 66 million people become infected and 5% need ventilators - the figure requiring ventilators may be lower)] people in the UK?

 

Just tracking the number of deaths UK has had due to Coronavirus, compared to Italy.

I found this data of deaths in Italy vs UK at different times.

Up until 4 days ago, the UK and Italy were very much on a similar track. However over the last few days, that seems to have diverged quite a lot. The deaths were around 40ish for a few days, then 80, and then today around 30.



On cumulative deaths, Italy 7th March is similar to U.K. 21st March. But 4 days later, on 11th March, Italy had 827 deaths. 4 days later for the UK, we have ~ 450 I think. Nearly half.

Does this represent a trend? And if so, why would that be? If anything, people in the UK have been out and about, socialising as much as people in Italy I would’ve thought, lots of big events happened, also generally there wasn’t much restriction or social distancing 10-14 days ago. Up until 4 days ago the trend was similar. So what can explain this difference? Is it just too early to tell?

 

Gøtzsche says:

The high death rates in Italy could be due to a variety of factors like testing protocols, median age, gregariousness, air pollution, criteria for "death by coronavirus", lack of ventilators, and other things. To what degree each of these contributes to the death rates is not clear. We don't have evidence and are in a situation where the evidence is being gathered but decisions must be taken before we know the best course of action.

What I hear is that a portion of cases stay at home and die because after some time being ill, they suddenly deteriorate quickly and help may not arrive in time. That seems inconsistent with Gøtzsche's idea that overcrowed hospitals are the main cause of high mortality (as he apparently believes).

There is no doubt that it's worse than the flu because doctors keep telling us they have never seen anything like this before (that's also a piece of evidence).

One cannot exclude that there might be something about northern Italy that makes the virus more lethal. Or maybe the Italy scenario is the norm in unprepared countries and the virus just happened to arrive in Italy before it arrived elsewhere.

 

Hi, Hip.

Thanks for your clear explanation, as always. I've just done this calculation myself using today's data (25th March), and notice that the interval for deaths to double from 233 (on the 22nd) to 465 (on 25th) was 3 days. So inputting that data I get a figure of 2,362,052 people infected in UK today. Or 67,000,000 / 2,362,052 = 1 in 28.3 people. So keep washing your hands people!