Author Topic: Epidemics: Bird Flu, TB, AIDs, Superbugs, Ebola, etc  (Read 255913 times)

DougMacG

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Re: Glyphosphate theory
« Reply #550 on: April 12, 2020, 08:43:27 AM »
https://jennifermargulis.net/glyphosate-and-covid-19-connection/

Very interesting.  I don't find it persuasive but it is good for someone to raise a number of those question.  Strange that someone so credentialed and published writes something so speculative.

The connection of glyphosate and COVID is evident because it follows out rivers and rural areas where the herbicide is used, and it is evident because it is hitting our biggest urban areas the hardest.  Hmmm.  Reminds me of global warming causing droughts - and record rainfalls.

If biofuels are the problem, then why not switch to clean fossil fuels, cleanest is natural gas? And why not switch to nuclear, the cleanest and safest of all.  SIlence of course from that side of the discussion.

Most of the comments attached to the article are supportive, but I excerpt from one here that questions the science and logic:

"Wow, lets break this argument down.

Quote: The United States has stood out as the country hit the hardest by COVID-19. We also consume more glyphosate per capita than any other country in the world.

* I don’t know if the claim is true that the US “consumes” more glyphosate per capita. Notice how they chose the word “consume” (to imply eating) rather than use? People do not consume glyphosate any more than they consume trace elements of uranium, arsenic… But if people did consume glyphosate, we actually have the MSDS for glyphosate and we know what the LD50 is… >5000mg/kg of body weight.

* There is no possible connection between this virus and a glyphosate. It isn’t even a correlation much less a causation. They operate in different biological kingdoms on different biological scales.

* If more Glyphosate equals more Covid19, then why are urban area rather than agricultural regions the center of the spread of the virus.

* The death rate per capita in the US is lower than MANY countries around the world where glyphosate isn’t used…. but you don’t see people making the insane suggestion that glyphosate prevents covid19.

Quote: It will be a tragic irony if it turns out that our attempts to reduce carbon emissions through the use of extracts from glyphosate-exposed food crops and trees as a source of fuel in cars, trucks, buses, ships, airplanes—and as heating oil for buildings—turn out to be one of the primary causes of the COVID-19 epidemic.

* I don’t even know what this sentence means…. Is she really saying that ethanol created from corn is a contributing factor in covid19? That is anti-scientific nonsense on so many levels.

* Lets take the most charitable interpretation first, that glyphosate use on crops increases its presence in the environment and this is a cause of COVID19. Again, if this were the case then agricultural workers and people in rural areas would be disproportionately effected by covid19. We would also see a lower death rate in countries that didn’t use it… but there isn’t even a correlation. Glyphosate doesn’t bio-accumulate either so this argument is totally bunk.

* Does the author actually believe there is high concentrations of glyphosate in wood people are using to burn to heat their houses? And that this glyphosate doesn’t breakdown over the period of time the wood is drying and then miraculously survives the burning process of the wood… and then is more toxic then using a wood fire stove?

* Assuming the worse interpretation. Does this author actually believe the chemical “glyphosate” survives the distillation process into ethanol? They seem to imply this…. hint, it cannot in decomposes at relatively low temperatures and certainly will not survive the processes of corn into ethanol. See chemical properties of glyphosate.

Quote: I cannot claim to have proven that glyphosate is causing the weakened immune system and lung damage that sets up a susceptibility to an acute response to COVID-19. Science is a process of inquiry and we must keep inquiring. However, the circumstantial evidence is compelling and more research is needed. I hope I will inspire scientific researchers who have the necessary skills to further explore this hypothesis.

The “just asking a question” tactic over every dishonest propagandist that ever existed.

There is no connection between glyphosate and “weakened immune system and lung damage”

There is no correlation between (much less causal relationship) glyphosate and death rate of covid19

There is no possible mechanism to glyphoste to be in ethanol.

There is no reputable scientific body who would support this dishonest and irresponsible claim made by the author."


DougMacG

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Pandemic: George Gilder speaks up
« Reply #552 on: April 13, 2020, 07:04:04 AM »
https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-need-politicians-in-a-pandemic-11586710824?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

We Need Politicians in a Pandemic
The conceit that everyone must bow to ‘science’ is not only undemocratic but dangerous in its own right.
By George Gilder
April 12, 2020

The U.S. economy has been cratered less by the coronavirus than by the response to it—driven by the undemocratic idea that “science” should rule, even when much of the science and the data behind it remain in dispute.

We’re told in this plague year that politicians have no role—in essence, that the people have no real rights against consensus science, which can demand that we forfeit our liberties and suspend the Constitution. Political leaders, elected to exercise judgment on our behalf, must defer to doctors, because the viral threat is addressable only through medical expertise.

Yet since many liken fighting the coronavirus to war, we should remember that in war admirals and generals defer to civilian authority—to the president, as commander in chief, on matters of strategy and to Congress on matters of budget. This is not a design flaw but how a free people governs itself, even in a perilous crisis. It is how we bring the largest possible perspective to decision-making.

The demands of health-care experts are not greater than the demands of the economy, for a very simple reason: The health-care system is not separate from the economy but a crucial part of it. The health-care system saves lives; the economy provides everything we need to live. The damage being done to the economy—if sustained—could easily cost more lives world-wide than the coronavirus.

There are not, and never will be, scientific answers to all public problems. Scientific expertise and specialization inform good policy, but they should never be the final word. To navigate successfully between competing interests or competing calamities, between war and peace, and even between deadly pandemics and deadly economic depressions, we need politics—and politicians.

The American system of government asserts these truths: that the people have an ineradicable right to govern themselves, that politics is how we exercise our free will, and that rather than reflexively deferring to experts, we should defer as much as possible to the principles of freedom and common sense.

Common sense says that if a disease threatens to kill millions of elderly people already afflicted by disease, those people should be sequestered and protected. But the rest of us should proceed with our work, taking prudent precautions, even if some of us die anyway.

Anthony Fauci is undoubtedly a fine physician, but he is not in a position to cure what ails us. We are beset by more than a virus; we are beset by bad ideas about what government can and should do, and about who should be making crucial decisions.

It may be a hard truth for many to grant, especially because so many in the media hate the president with a fever that itself seems a contagion, but an optimistic, patriotic, practical-minded politician like Donald Trump, who over the past few years presided over a period of singular economic success, is exactly the man to provide the correct, if undoubtedly painful, cure for the current crisis. We may not envy him his decisions, but he is in the best position to make them.

Mr. Gilder is author of “Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy.”

DougMacG

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Chi-Comm Virus stats in one state, median CV death age in MN is 88
« Reply #553 on: April 13, 2020, 07:52:24 AM »
As I am reading it, this is a particularly nasty virus that gets your auto immune system to attack your own lungs, and I wish that on no one, especially me and people I know.

But the death count is misleading.  In these deaths, CV is not necessarily the cause or sole cause of death and the median age of these reported deaths (in MN) is now 88.  It is hitting men harder than women.  The life expectancy of men in America is 76.3; in MN it is 78.7.  The median death age is 10 years older for coronavirus victims than for non-coronavurs victims.  Some of these people dying would have died from the next nasty virus they caught, whether it was corona virus, pneumonia, bronchitis or a new case of last year's worst flu strain stressing their system past its fragile limit, and some in their late 80s and 90s die of old age without a virus.  We aren't tracking death causation very well, IMHO.  The numbers as reported imply 100% causation in those patients and that is most certainly not the case.


Hat tip: Powerlineblog
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/coronavirus-in-one-state-11.php
« Last Edit: April 13, 2020, 07:54:32 AM by DougMacG »

ccp

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Re: Epidemics: Bird Flu, TB, AIDs, Superbugs, Ebola, etc
« Reply #554 on: April 13, 2020, 08:46:35 AM »
AS for Doug MacG post

yes I agree the death count may well be exaggerated
in many elderly especially in NH even a simple common cold can knock them off
"
they have no reserve"

On GG I agree with him.. on Trump response but

on his book I disagree :  "Mr. Gilder is author of “Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy"

at this juncture in time it appears to me the corona thing is only going to increase the power of "big data"
and the master of it.

That said as usual perhaps I am jumping the gun as I have not read his book

ccp

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as for Fauci. and the media mob
« Reply #555 on: April 13, 2020, 08:59:33 AM »
Jake Tapper got exactly what he wanted

got Fauci to say more lives would have been saved if more done earlier

AND

of course, the immediate Trump tweet " your fired to Fauci"

I assume Trump will now berate his  as well  which no one needs.

Can anyone tell me what the Obama Cuomo Biden or anyone Democrat including Chuck and Nance have done to avert this.

And the most amazing thing is the extrapolated death toll which was in several hundred thousand and some in many millions , is now dow to ~ 60 K
and NOT ONE in the leftist media MOB giving Trump ANY credit.

Crafty_Dog

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Sen. Dr. Bill Cassidy: The Young Will Reopen America
« Reply #556 on: April 13, 2020, 04:38:26 PM »


The Young Will Reopen America
Widespread, frequent antibody testing will help them know when they can hug grandma again.
By Bill Cassidy
April 13, 2020 6:53 pm ET


The novel coronavirus has caused a medical crisis that in turn created an economic crisis. The situation involves severe trade-offs. Currently, public health predominates; the economy is largely shut down, schools closed, 401(k)s battered. Can a fair equilibrium be established between health and economic well-being? Antibody testing may hold the key.

It is likely, but not yet proven, that antibodies in the blood of those who have recovered from Covid-19 confer immunity to the disease. This is the case for many other viruses and also the principle behind therapies that treat severely ill Covid-19 patients using plasma donated by patients who have recovered. In the absence of countervailing evidence, the U.S. government should assume that antibodies confer immunity to the coronavirus and plan accordingly. That way, if in the coming weeks evidence emerges to support this assumption, appropriate procedures and programs would already be in place.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for instance, could integrate coronavirus immunity status into an immunization registry currently in use and compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This would be similar to the registries states use to track childhood vaccine records. British, German and Italian leaders are likewise considering issuing certificates of immunity. The principle is the same: Those with antibodies can return to the workplace.

Some are suggesting that younger people, who have a lower risk of developing severe Covid-19 symptoms, could soon be allowed to return to work and school. This would help the economy. But because the virus is already widespread, it will likely continue to circulate, and more freedom for young people would make them likelier to infect older people at risk of severe complications and death. Widespread, frequent antibody testing would help them make wise decisions. Until grandchildren know that they have Covid-19 antibodies, for example, they should refrain from hugging their grandparents.

We know from experience with other diseases that immunity in young people contributes greatly to communitywide immunity, or “herd immunity.” Administering hepatitis A vaccines to young children, who when infected rarely show symptoms, dramatically decreases symptomatic infections in older siblings and adults. Childhood pneumonia vaccinations dramatically decrease related diseases in the elderly.

If younger people are allowed to return to the benefits of a freer society, they will inevitably acquire immunity over time. A collateral benefit of letting the young return to work and school is that their immunity will help protect the more vulnerable.

Nothing in medicine is 100%. But society could reopen through the combination of personal responsibility to reduce coronavirus transmission and documenting who acquires naturally occurring immunity in the registry system currently used for immunizations. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs, scientists and civil servants will work toward effective vaccines, therapies and nonpharmaceutical measures. All this will help us to strike the fair and proper balance between physical health and financial health.

Dr. Cassidy, a gastroenterologist, is a Republican U.S. senator from Louisiana.





ccp

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one study shows chloroquine did not help in more advanced corona
« Reply #561 on: April 15, 2020, 01:52:37 PM »
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.10.20060699v1

still too early to say about mild cases.


Crafty_Dog

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ChiCom Cooties also affects the brain
« Reply #562 on: April 15, 2020, 02:23:09 PM »
Coronavirus Ravages the Lungs. It Also Affects the Brain.
As Covid-19 cases mount, doctors are seeing patients who are experiencing symptoms like seizures, hallucinations and loss of smell and taste

Paramedics taking a coronavirus patient to an emergency center at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Monday.
PHOTO: ANDREW KELLY/REUTERS
By Daniela Hernandez
April 14, 2020 4:28 pm ET

A patient in Japan had seizures. An airline worker ended up in a Detroit hospital, where doctors diagnosed her with a rare form of brain damage. Others reported auditory and visual hallucinations or losing their sense of smell and taste.

What they share: presumed or confirmed coronavirus infections.

As the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases worldwide reaches 2 million, clinicians are realizing the disease doesn’t just ravage the lungs and hurt the heart. It also can, in a significant proportion of cases, affect the nervous system in myriad little-understood ways.

Through a growing number of papers, doctors around the globe are chronicling Covid-19’s lesser-known neurological manifestations including brain inflammation, hallucinations, seizures, cognitive deficits and loss of smell and taste. It is unknown whether these are caused directly by the virus infiltrating the nervous system, or by the body’s immune response to infection.

The hope is these reports could speed up diagnosis. Some patients say they were going out in public, potentially exposing others, due to lack of awareness of these symptoms. The reports could also open avenues of research that elucidate whether the virus gets into the brain, how long neurological symptoms might persist, and whether a full recovery can be expected.

In late March, while keeping quarantine, Dwantrina Russell noticed she couldn’t smell the bleach she was using to sanitize her Houston bathroom. Since then, most of the 47-year-old business owner’s symptoms of Covid-19, including fever and a violent cough, have receded. But she said she can only smell things like cleaning products or food if they are close by.


The range of effects could take decades to play out. Some epidemiological studies and lab experiments with other viruses suggest severe infections could set in motion molecular events that might increase the risk of developing neurodegenerative disorders, like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, many years later. The links are a matter of debate among neurologists and neuroscientists.

Last Friday, Chinese doctors published a study of 214 hospitalized patients in Wuhan showing that more than a third had neurologic symptoms. The most common included dizziness, headaches, impaired consciousness, skeletal-muscle injury and loss of smell and taste. The paper—published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the largest to date on the disease’s impact on normal nervous-system function—also documented rare, but more serious, effects including seizures and stroke, which occurs when a blood clot hits the brain.

“When this virus first came out, the general feeling was that there wasn’t much in the way of neurological manifestations. This was a pulmonary process,” said S. Andrew Josephson, chair of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. “This article should open up everyone’s eyes that this disorder affects the brain as well.”


The novel coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2, isn’t the only virus known to affect the nervous system. Research in humans and animals has shown that non-coronaviruses such as HIV, measles and certain influenza strains can infect the brain or affect its function through inflammatory responses elsewhere in the body. Laboratory studies have shown that other coronaviruses can infect nerve cells.

Some neurologists hypothesize, based on results from animal studies, that the sometimes fatal breathing problems seen in severe Covid-19 cases might be in part due to direct infection and subsequent malfunction of the brainstem, which is involved in coordinating breathing.

“We are certainly on a learning curve in terms of understanding what the neurological manifestations would be” of SARS-CoV-2 infection, said Florian Thomas, chair of neurology at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey.


On April 4, Cobain Schofield, a 25-year-old lighting technician based in Liverpool, said he realized that he couldn’t smell a pungent brand of garlic bread he likes. He consulted government-run health sites, but these didn’t list anosmia, the medical term for the condition, as a Covid-19 symptom, so he figured he was coronavirus-free.

Days later, he developed in his nose a “burning sensation while breathing,” he said, and a nurse at a nearby clinic told him several patients with confirmed Covid-19 diagnoses also had anosmia. He has been in quarantine since.

“Knowing now that I could have been spreading it, it’s quite a horrible feeling,” he said, adding that he had probably been experiencing anosmia for days before he noticed.

Whether a coronavirus infection affects the ability of receptors in the nasal cavity to detect odorants or the nerves that shuttle the odor-containing signals to the brain is unknown. Loss of smell and taste are common during other respiratory infections. (Much of what humans perceive as taste is related to smell.)


A growing number of hospitals are investigating antibody testing and blood plasma therapy as a way to combat the new coronavirus in sick patients. WSJ’s Daniela Hernandez explains. Photo illustration: Laura Kammermann
In the U.S. and elsewhere, policy makers and public-health officials have asked patients to avoid going to the hospital unless suspected Covid-19 symptoms like fever and cough don’t improve, or if they have trouble breathing. Critical-care neurologists said the messaging should expand to make patients more aware of brain-related symptoms.

Symptoms like confusion, trouble speaking or numbness on one side of the body should also be red flags. Those symptoms can signal an impending stroke, which, if not treated within a certain time window, can lead to permanent brain damage, they said. Covid-19 patients are at higher risk of stroke due to the virus’s impact on blood clotting.

For already hospitalized patients, doctors are running standard neurological exams that include low-tech tests like asking patients to follow simple commands, in conjunction with more high-tech diagnostics like brain imaging as needed, neurologists said.

Northwell Health, a health-care system in New York, plans to soon start using portable MRIs to monitor the brains of very sick patients, some of whom are sedated and on ventilators, according to Richard Temes, Northwell’s director of neurocritical care.

The hospital system is also using another type of brain-monitoring test, known as an electroencephalogram, to ensure patients aren’t having silent seizures, he said. Catching problems early increases the chances that patients’ brains can fully recover.

“As we fight this illness, we’re saving the lungs. We’re saving the heart and we’re saving the kidneys. But the brain is who we are,” said Dr. Temes.


G M

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Re: ChiCom Cooties also affects the brain
« Reply #563 on: April 15, 2020, 02:36:18 PM »
It just keeps getting better...


https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/04/researchers-report-wuhan-coronavirus-could-attack-immune-system-like-hiv-by-targeting-protective-cells/

Coronavirus Ravages the Lungs. It Also Affects the Brain.
As Covid-19 cases mount, doctors are seeing patients who are experiencing symptoms like seizures, hallucinations and loss of smell and taste

Paramedics taking a coronavirus patient to an emergency center at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Monday.
PHOTO: ANDREW KELLY/REUTERS
By Daniela Hernandez
April 14, 2020 4:28 pm ET

A patient in Japan had seizures. An airline worker ended up in a Detroit hospital, where doctors diagnosed her with a rare form of brain damage. Others reported auditory and visual hallucinations or losing their sense of smell and taste.

What they share: presumed or confirmed coronavirus infections.

As the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases worldwide reaches 2 million, clinicians are realizing the disease doesn’t just ravage the lungs and hurt the heart. It also can, in a significant proportion of cases, affect the nervous system in myriad little-understood ways.

Through a growing number of papers, doctors around the globe are chronicling Covid-19’s lesser-known neurological manifestations including brain inflammation, hallucinations, seizures, cognitive deficits and loss of smell and taste. It is unknown whether these are caused directly by the virus infiltrating the nervous system, or by the body’s immune response to infection.

The hope is these reports could speed up diagnosis. Some patients say they were going out in public, potentially exposing others, due to lack of awareness of these symptoms. The reports could also open avenues of research that elucidate whether the virus gets into the brain, how long neurological symptoms might persist, and whether a full recovery can be expected.

In late March, while keeping quarantine, Dwantrina Russell noticed she couldn’t smell the bleach she was using to sanitize her Houston bathroom. Since then, most of the 47-year-old business owner’s symptoms of Covid-19, including fever and a violent cough, have receded. But she said she can only smell things like cleaning products or food if they are close by.


The range of effects could take decades to play out. Some epidemiological studies and lab experiments with other viruses suggest severe infections could set in motion molecular events that might increase the risk of developing neurodegenerative disorders, like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, many years later. The links are a matter of debate among neurologists and neuroscientists.

Last Friday, Chinese doctors published a study of 214 hospitalized patients in Wuhan showing that more than a third had neurologic symptoms. The most common included dizziness, headaches, impaired consciousness, skeletal-muscle injury and loss of smell and taste. The paper—published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the largest to date on the disease’s impact on normal nervous-system function—also documented rare, but more serious, effects including seizures and stroke, which occurs when a blood clot hits the brain.

“When this virus first came out, the general feeling was that there wasn’t much in the way of neurological manifestations. This was a pulmonary process,” said S. Andrew Josephson, chair of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. “This article should open up everyone’s eyes that this disorder affects the brain as well.”


The novel coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2, isn’t the only virus known to affect the nervous system. Research in humans and animals has shown that non-coronaviruses such as HIV, measles and certain influenza strains can infect the brain or affect its function through inflammatory responses elsewhere in the body. Laboratory studies have shown that other coronaviruses can infect nerve cells.

Some neurologists hypothesize, based on results from animal studies, that the sometimes fatal breathing problems seen in severe Covid-19 cases might be in part due to direct infection and subsequent malfunction of the brainstem, which is involved in coordinating breathing.

“We are certainly on a learning curve in terms of understanding what the neurological manifestations would be” of SARS-CoV-2 infection, said Florian Thomas, chair of neurology at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey.


On April 4, Cobain Schofield, a 25-year-old lighting technician based in Liverpool, said he realized that he couldn’t smell a pungent brand of garlic bread he likes. He consulted government-run health sites, but these didn’t list anosmia, the medical term for the condition, as a Covid-19 symptom, so he figured he was coronavirus-free.

Days later, he developed in his nose a “burning sensation while breathing,” he said, and a nurse at a nearby clinic told him several patients with confirmed Covid-19 diagnoses also had anosmia. He has been in quarantine since.

“Knowing now that I could have been spreading it, it’s quite a horrible feeling,” he said, adding that he had probably been experiencing anosmia for days before he noticed.

Whether a coronavirus infection affects the ability of receptors in the nasal cavity to detect odorants or the nerves that shuttle the odor-containing signals to the brain is unknown. Loss of smell and taste are common during other respiratory infections. (Much of what humans perceive as taste is related to smell.)


A growing number of hospitals are investigating antibody testing and blood plasma therapy as a way to combat the new coronavirus in sick patients. WSJ’s Daniela Hernandez explains. Photo illustration: Laura Kammermann
In the U.S. and elsewhere, policy makers and public-health officials have asked patients to avoid going to the hospital unless suspected Covid-19 symptoms like fever and cough don’t improve, or if they have trouble breathing. Critical-care neurologists said the messaging should expand to make patients more aware of brain-related symptoms.

Symptoms like confusion, trouble speaking or numbness on one side of the body should also be red flags. Those symptoms can signal an impending stroke, which, if not treated within a certain time window, can lead to permanent brain damage, they said. Covid-19 patients are at higher risk of stroke due to the virus’s impact on blood clotting.

For already hospitalized patients, doctors are running standard neurological exams that include low-tech tests like asking patients to follow simple commands, in conjunction with more high-tech diagnostics like brain imaging as needed, neurologists said.

Northwell Health, a health-care system in New York, plans to soon start using portable MRIs to monitor the brains of very sick patients, some of whom are sedated and on ventilators, according to Richard Temes, Northwell’s director of neurocritical care.

The hospital system is also using another type of brain-monitoring test, known as an electroencephalogram, to ensure patients aren’t having silent seizures, he said. Catching problems early increases the chances that patients’ brains can fully recover.

“As we fight this illness, we’re saving the lungs. We’re saving the heart and we’re saving the kidneys. But the brain is who we are,” said Dr. Temes.

ccp

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Re: Epidemics: Bird Flu, TB, AIDs, Superbugs, Ebola, etc
« Reply #564 on: April 15, 2020, 02:57:43 PM »
"hallucinations "

like Chris Cuomo

who is now having hallucinations during sleep and more recently
that CNN might some BS political propaganda outfit.

He now denies any of this.

and thanks zucker "for the record"

G M

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Six key days
« Reply #565 on: April 15, 2020, 04:58:24 PM »
https://apnews.com/68a9e1b91de4ffc166acd6012d82c2f9

China didn’t warn public of likely pandemic for 6 key days
By The Associated Press
today

1 of 11
In this Tuesday, March 10, 2020, photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, Chinese President Xi Jinping talks by video with patients and medical workers at the Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province. Top Chinese officials secretly determined they were likely facing a pandemic from a novel coronavirus in mid-January, ordering preparations even as they downplayed it in public. Internal documents obtained by the AP show that because warnings were muffled inside China, it took a confirmed case in Thailand to jolt Beijing into recognizing the possible pandemic before them. (Xie Huanchi/Xinhua via AP)
In the six days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, the city of Wuhan at the epicenter of the disease hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people; millions began traveling through for Lunar New Year celebrations.

President Xi Jinping warned the public on the seventh day, Jan. 20. But by that time, more than 3,000 people had been infected during almost a week of public silence, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and expert estimates based on retrospective infection data.

Six days.

That delay from Jan. 14 to Jan. 20 was neither the first mistake made by Chinese officials at all levels in confronting the outbreak, nor the longest lag, as governments around the world have dragged their feet for weeks and even months in addressing the virus.

But the delay by the first country to face the new coronavirus came at a critical time — the beginning of the outbreak. China’s attempt to walk a line between alerting the public and avoiding panic set the stage for a pandemic that has infected more than 2 million people and taken more than 133,000 lives.


“This is tremendous,” said Zuo-Feng Zhang, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “If they took action six days earlier, there would have been much fewer patients and medical facilities would have been sufficient. We might have avoided the collapse of Wuhan’s medical system.”

Other experts noted that the Chinese government may have waited on warning the public to stave off hysteria, and that it did act quickly in private during that time.

But the six-day delay by China’s leaders in Beijing came on top of almost two weeks during which the national Center for Disease Control did not register any cases from local officials, internal bulletins obtained by the AP confirm. Yet during that time, from Jan. 5 to Jan. 17, hundreds of patients were appearing in hospitals not just in Wuhan but across the country.

It’s uncertain whether it was local officials who failed to report cases or national officials who failed to record them. It’s also not clear exactly what officials knew at the time in Wuhan, which only opened back up last week with restrictions after its quarantine.

But what is clear, experts say, is that China’s rigid controls on information, bureaucratic hurdles and a reluctance to send bad news up the chain of command muffled early warnings. The punishment of eight doctors for “rumor-mongering,” broadcast on national television on Jan. 2, sent a chill through the city’s hospitals.

“Doctors in Wuhan were afraid,” said Dali Yang, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Chicago. “It was truly intimidation of an entire profession.”

Without these internal reports, it took the first case outside China, in Thailand on Jan. 13, to galvanize leaders in Beijing into recognizing the possible pandemic before them. It was only then that they launched a nationwide plan to find cases — distributing CDC-sanctioned test kits, easing the criteria for confirming cases and ordering health officials to screen patients. They also instructed officials in Hubei province, where Wuhan is located, to begin temperature checks at transportation hubs and cut down on large public gatherings. And they did it all without telling the public.

The Chinese government has repeatedly denied suppressing information in the early days, saying it immediately reported the outbreak to the World Health Organization.

“Those accusing China of lacking transparency and openness are unfair,” foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Wednesday when asked about the AP story.

_________________________

The documents show that the head of China’s National Health Commission, Ma Xiaowei, laid out a grim assessment of the situation on Jan. 14 in a confidential teleconference with provincial health officials. A memo states that the teleconference was held to convey instructions on the coronavirus from President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, but does not specify what those instructions were.

“The epidemic situation is still severe and complex, the most severe challenge since SARS in 2003, and is likely to develop into a major public health event,” the memo cites Ma as saying.

The National Health Commission is the top medical agency in the country. In a faxed statement, the Commission said it had organized the teleconference because of the case reported in Thailand and the possibility of the virus spreading during New Year travel. It added that China had published information on the outbreak in an “open, transparent, responsible and timely manner,” in accordance with “important instructions” repeatedly issued by President Xi.


Full Coverage: Virus Outbreak
The documents come from an anonymous source in the medical field who did not want to be named for fear of retribution. The AP confirmed the contents with two other sources in public health familiar with the teleconference. Some of the memo’s contents also appeared in a public notice about the teleconference, stripped of key details and published in February.

Under a section titled “sober understanding of the situation,” the memo said that “clustered cases suggest that human-to-human transmission is possible.” It singled out the case in Thailand, saying that the situation had “changed significantly” because of the possible spread of the virus abroad.

“With the coming of the Spring Festival, many people will be traveling, and the risk of transmission and spread is high,” the memo continued. “All localities must prepare for and respond to a pandemic.”

In the memo, Ma demanded officials unite around Xi and made clear that political considerations and social stability were key priorities during the long lead-up to China’s two biggest political meetings of the year in March. While the documents do not spell out why Chinese leaders waited six days to make their concerns public, the meetings may be one reason.

“The imperatives for social stability, for not rocking the boat before these important Party congresses is pretty strong,” says Daniel Mattingly, a scholar of Chinese politics at Yale. “My guess is, they wanted to let it play out a little more and see what happened.”

In response to the teleconference, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing initiated the highest-level emergency response internally, level one, on Jan. 15. It assigned top CDC leaders to 14 working groups tasked with getting funds, training health workers, collecting data, doing field investigations and supervising laboratories, an internal CDC notice shows.

The National Health Commission also distributed a 63-page set of instructions to provincial health officials, obtained by the AP. The instructions ordered health officials nationwide to identify suspected cases, hospitals to open fever clinics, and doctors and nurses to don protective gear. They were marked “internal” — “not to be spread on the internet,” “not to be publicly disclosed.”

In public, however, officials continued to downplay the threat, pointing to the 41 cases public at the time.

“We have reached the latest understanding that the risk of sustained human-to-human transmission is low,” Li Qun, the head of the China CDC’told Chinese state television on Jan. 15. That was the same day Li was appointed leader of a group preparing emergency plans for the level one response, a CDC notice shows.

On Jan. 20, President Xi issued his first public comments on the virus, saying the outbreak “must be taken seriously” and every possible measure pursued. A leading Chinese epidemiologist, Zhong Nanshan, announced for the first time that the virus was transmissible from person to person on national television.

If the public had been warned a week earlier to take actions such as social distancing, mask wearing and travel restrictions, cases could have been cut by up to two-thirds, one paper later found. An earlier warning could have saved lives, said Zhang, the doctor in Los Angeles.

However, other health experts said the government took decisive action in private given the information available to them.

“They may not have said the right thing, but they were doing the right thing,” said Ray Yip, the retired founding head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s office in China. “On the 20th, they sounded the alarm for the whole country, which is not an unreasonable delay.”

If health officials raise the alarm prematurely, it can damage their credibility — “like crying wolf” —and cripple their ability to mobilize the public, said Benjamin Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong.

The delay may support accusations by President Donald Trump that the Chinese government’s secrecy held back the world’s response to the virus. However, even the public announcement on Jan. 20 left the U.S. nearly two months to prepare for the pandemic.

During those months, Trump ignored the warnings of his own staff and dismissed the disease as nothing to worry about, while the government failed to bolster medical supplies and deployed flawed testing kits. Leaders across the world turned a blind eye to the outbreak, with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson calling for a strategy of “herd immunity” — before falling ill himself. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro sneered at what he called “a little cold.”

_________________________

The early story of the pandemic in China shows missed opportunities at every step, the documents and AP interviews reveal. Under Xi, China’s most authoritarian leader in decades, increasing political repression has made officials more hesitant to report cases without a clear green light from the top.

“It really increased the stakes for officials, which made them reluctant to step out of line,” said Mattingly, the Yale professor. “It made it harder for people at the local level to report bad information.”

Doctors and nurses in Wuhan told Chinese media there were plenty of signs that the coronavirus could be transmitted between people as early as late December. Patients who had never been to the suspected source of the virus, the Huanan Seafood Market, were infected. Medical workers started falling ill.

But officials obstructed medical staff who tried to report such cases. They set tight criteria for confirming cases, where patients not only had to test positive, but samples had to be sent to Beijing and sequenced. They required staff to report to supervisors before sending information higher, Chinese media reports show. And they punished doctors for warning about the disease.

As a result, no new cases were reported for almost two weeks from Jan. 5, even as officials gathered in Wuhan for Hubei province’s two biggest political meetings of the year, internal China CDC bulletins confirm.

During this period, teams of experts dispatched to Wuhan by Beijing said they failed to find clear signs of danger and human-to-human transmission.

“China has many years of disease control, there’s absolutely no chance that this will spread widely because of Spring Festival travel,” the head of the first expert team, Xu Jianguo, told Takungpao, a Hong Kong paper, on Jan. 6. He added there was “no evidence of human-to-human transmission” and that the threat from the virus was low.

The second expert team, dispatched on Jan. 8, similarly failed to unearth any clear signs of human-to-human transmission. Yet during their stay, more than half a dozen doctors and nurses had already fallen ill with the virus, a retrospective China CDC study published in the New England Journal of Medicine would later show.

The teams looked for patients with severe pneumonia, missing those with milder symptoms. They also narrowed the search to those who had visited the seafood market — which was in retrospect a mistake, said Cowling, the Hong Kong epidemiologist, who flew to Beijing to review the cases in late January.

In the weeks after the severity of the epidemic became clear, some experts accused Wuhan officials of intentionally hiding cases.

“I always suspected it was human-to-human transmissible,” said Wang Guangfa, the leader of the second expert team, in a Mar. 15 post on Weibo, the Chinese social media platform. He fell ill with the virus soon after returning to Beijing on Jan. 16.

Wuhan’s then-mayor, Zhou Xianwang, blamed national regulations for the secrecy.

“As a local government official, I could disclose information only after being authorized,” Zhou told state media in late January. “A lot of people didn’t understand this.”

As a result, top Chinese officials appear to have been left in the dark.

“The CDC acted sluggishly, assuming all was fine,” said a state health expert, who declined to be named out of fear of retribution. “If we started to do something a week or two earlier, things could have been so much different.”

It wasn’t just Wuhan. In Shenzhen in southern China, hundreds of miles away, a team led by microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung used their own test kits to confirm that six members of a family of seven had the virus on Jan. 12. In an interview with Caixin, a respected Chinese finance magazine, Yuen said he informed CDC branches “of all levels,” including Beijing. But internal CDC numbers did not reflect Yuen’s report, the bulletins show.

When the Thai case was reported, health authorities finally drew up an internal plan to systematically identify, isolate, test, and treat all cases of the new coronavirus nationwide.

Wuhan’s case count began to climb immediately — four on Jan. 17, then 17 the next day and 136 the day after. Across the country, dozens of cases began to surface, in some cases among patients who were infected earlier but had not yet been tested. In Zhejiang, for example, a man hospitalized on Jan. 4 was only isolated on Jan. 17 and confirmed positive on Jan. 21. In Shenzhen, the patients Yuen discovered on Jan. 12 were finally recorded as confirmed cases on Jan. 19.

The Wuhan Union Hospital, one of the city’s best, held an emergency meeting on Jan. 18, instructing staff to adopt stringent isolation — still before Xi’s public warning. A health expert told AP that on Jan. 19, she toured a hospital built after the SARS outbreak, where medical workers had furiously prepared an entire building with hundreds of beds for pneumonia patients.

“Everybody in the country in the infectious disease field knew something was going on,” she said, declining to be named to avoid disrupting sensitive government consultations. “They were anticipating it.”

___

Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org

G M

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I wonder why New York has so many cases
« Reply #566 on: April 15, 2020, 08:38:58 PM »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emyNXZ8v8sY

Not dumb, like those flyover states!

ccp

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Whitmore to Trump
« Reply #567 on: April 16, 2020, 08:13:43 AM »
We have the bill of rights, the constitution to protect us from leaders who would be kings.

psssssst:

but nothing in there about "QUEENS  "


hahahahahahha.   :wink:

Crafty_Dog

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China covered up for six weeks, not six days
« Reply #568 on: April 16, 2020, 04:26:46 PM »
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/chinas-information-about-the-virus-wasnt-six-days-late-more-like-six-weeks-late/

Also, I gather that China blocked domestic flights out of Wuhan but not international during that time.  Can we find a proper citation for this?


Crafty_Dog

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Re: Epidemics: Bird Flu, TB, AIDs, Superbugs, Ebola, etc
« Reply #570 on: April 16, 2020, 08:10:02 PM »
If I am reading that correctly our answer is buried in the final lines and even there the data is presented in a way which blurs what we are looking for.

Do I have this right?

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« Last Edit: April 16, 2020, 08:51:20 PM by Crafty_Dog »


G M

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Re: Epidemics: Bird Flu, TB, AIDs, Superbugs, Ebola, etc
« Reply #574 on: April 16, 2020, 10:53:14 PM »
If I am reading that correctly our answer is buried in the final lines and even there the data is presented in a way which blurs what we are looking for.

Do I have this right?


It appears China placed restrictions, but never stopped outbound international flights from Beijing, Shanghai and other cities besides Wuhan.

https://www.businesstraveller.com/business-travel/2020/03/27/china-cuts-international-flights-to-stop-imported-coronavirus-cases/

Looks like you can fly from Beijing to LAX, as long as you don't fly direct.

https://www.kayak.com/flights/BJS-LAX/2020-04-17/2020-05-24?sort=bestflight_a

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Re: Curious coincidence at SD meat plant
« Reply #575 on: April 17, 2020, 07:45:52 AM »
https://www.theepochtimes.com/pork-plant-at-center-of-south-dakotas-virus-outbreak-had-visit-from-ccp-tied-owners_3313529.html


Interesting. S. Dakota doesn't see a whole lot of international travel.

Interesting that the Chinese Communist Party owns our food production system.  Odd that they brought a horseshoe bat to a business meeting...

It's not really 'National Socialism' if a foreign government owns your means of production.
« Last Edit: April 17, 2020, 08:26:50 AM by DougMacG »

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Re: Comparative country numbers; Sweden
« Reply #576 on: April 17, 2020, 07:57:35 AM »
https://townhall.com/columnists/johnrlottjr/2020/04/15/headlines-around-the-world-say-the-u-s-has-the-highest-number-of-coronavirus-dea-n2566941
Maybe that segment on Tucker tonight needed to do a bit more research:
https://nypost.com/2020/04/16/sweden-grapples-with-high-death-toll-after-controversially-refusing-to-lockdown/

John Lott's chart looks different than the ones I see elsewhere:



Also it looks like we are losing between .00005 and .0001 portion of our population to this end of the world pandemic, average age of the dead in my state 88, 10 years past everyone else's life expectancy.

I hope the other .99995 of the population are okay. 

Meanwhile it's too dangerous outside to allow golf course grass to be mowed.



DougMacG

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Re: Epidemic: Indoor Outdoor numbers
« Reply #577 on: April 17, 2020, 08:11:32 AM »
Just one study, not yet peer reviewed.

"318 identified outbreaks that involved three or more cases is that they all occurred in indoor environments, for a total in the study of 1245 cases.  We identified only a single outbreak in an outdoor environment, which involved two cases." 

Best things you can do to survive this nasty virus is to avoid catching it and strengthen your immune system with good nutrition and exercise.  Instead we are ordered to stay indoors?

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.04.20053058v1

Three hundred and eighteen outbreaks with three or more cases were identified, involving 1245 confirmed cases in 120 prefectural cities. We divided the venues in which the outbreaks occurred into six categories: homes, transport, food, entertainment, shopping, and miscellaneous. Among the identified outbreaks, 53.8% involved three cases, 26.4% involved four cases, and only 1.6% involved ten or more cases. Home outbreaks were the dominant category (254 of 318 outbreaks; 79.9%), followed by transport (108; 34.0%; note that many outbreaks involved more than one venue category). Most home outbreaks involved three to five cases. We identified only a single outbreak in an outdoor environment, which involved two cases. The first salient feature of the 318 identified outbreaks that involved three or more cases is that they all occurred in indoor environments. Although this finding was expected, its significance has not been well recognised by the community and by policy makers. Indoors is where our lives and work are in modern civilisation. The transmission of respiratory infections such as SARS-CoV-2 from the infected to the susceptible is an indoor phenomenon.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Epidemics: Bird Flu, TB, AIDs, Superbugs, Ebola, etc
« Reply #578 on: April 17, 2020, 08:31:59 AM »
GM:

When were domestic flights/travel out of Wuhan first stopped?

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Re: Epidemics: Bird Flu, TB, AIDs, Superbugs, Ebola, etc
« Reply #579 on: April 17, 2020, 09:32:41 AM »
GM:
When were domestic flights/travel out of Wuhan first stopped?

Try this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Hubei_lockdowns
On 23 January 2020, the central government of China imposed a lockdown in Wuhan and other cities in Hubei
--------------------
Per previous post, about 6 (or 8) weeks too late.

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Pandemic: US Sen Bill Frist, M.D. 2005: A Storm for which we were unprepared
« Reply #580 on: April 17, 2020, 11:14:06 AM »
More famous people agreeing with our G M:

https://americanmind.org/essays/a-storm-for-which-we-were-unprepared/

Senator William Frist, M.D. is a nationally acclaimed heart and lung transplant surgeon and the former Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate. In 2005, during his tenure in Congress, he delivered the Marshall J. Seidman Lecture for the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard University. In this strikingly prescient speech, he foretells the possibility of a viciously deadly pandemic and calls for action to defend against that eventuality on a vast scale. Though his warnings went unheeded, we are honored to publish his words now as part of our ongoing efforts to understand and counteract COVID-19 and its effects.
...
"the evidence strongly suggests that we are at the threshold of a major shift in the antigenicity of not merely one but several categories of pathogens, for never have we observed among them such variety, richness, opportunities for combination, and alacrity to combine and mutate. HIV, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (mad cow), avian influenzas such as H5N1, and SARS are merely the advance patrols of a great army forming out of sight, the lightning that however silent and distant gives rise to the dread of an approaching storm—a storm for which we are entirely unprepared. How can that be? How can the richest country in the world, with its great institutions, experts, and learned commissions, have failed to make adequate preparation—when preparation is all—for epidemics with the potential of killing off large segments of its population?"
...
"new facts such as rapid, voluminous, and essential travel and trade; the decline of staffed hospital beds; and a now heavily urbanized and suburbanized American population dependent as never before upon easily disrupted networks of services and supply, lead me to believe that—especially because vaccines, if they could be devised, would not be available en masse until six to nine months after the outbreak of a pandemic—the imminence of such viruses might result in the immensely high death tolls to which I have alluded. It is true that none of these viruses has yet spread geometrically—instantly and irrevocably overcoming health care systems and pulling us backward across thresholds of darkness that we long have believed we would never cross again. And yet this they might do—either entirely on their own or as a result of intentional human intervention."
...
"the inadequacy of what little has been done, but a hint may be accurately conveyed by the fact that the nation’s largest biocontaminant unit with fully adequate quarantine and negative air is a ten-bed facility in Omaha, or by the absurdity of a recent announcement from the Washington Hospital Center that in “implementing plans for handling any disaster that might effect our capital,” and “to deal with the worst in biological, chemical, and natural disasters,” it has built, “a multi-use, 20-bed ready room”
...
"The nature of the threat being mortal and reaction to it heretofore irresponsible and inadequate, I propose—entirely without prejudice to the necessity and absent the diminution of the means to disrupt, defeat, and confound the aggressor by force of arms—an immense and unprecedented effort. I see not an initiative on the scale of the Manhattan Project, but one that would dwarf the Manhattan Project; not the creation of a giant, multi-billion dollar research institution, but the creation of a score of them; not merely the funding of individual lines of inquiry, but of richly supported fundamental research, a supreme effort in hope of universal application; not the fractional augmentation of medical education but its doubling or tripling; not a wan expansion of emergency hospital capacity, but its expansion, as is necessary and appropriate, by orders of magnitude; not to tame or punish the private sector, but to unleash it especially upon this task; not the creation of a forest of bureaucratic organization charts and the repetition of a hundred million Latinate words in a hundred million meetings that substitute for action, but action itself, unadorned by excuse or delay; not the incremental improvement of stockpiles and means of distribution, but the creation of great and secure stores and networks, with every needed building, laboratory, airplane, truck, and vaccination station, no excuses, no exceptions, everywhere, and for everyone."
...
"today I have tried to impress upon you the urgency I feel in the matter of the immediate destiny not only of America but of the world, for pandemics know neither borders, nor race, nor who is rich nor who is poor, they know only what is human, and it is this that they strike, casting aside the vain definitions that otherwise divide us."
-------------------------------------------------------
It goes on, read it all.  If not in 2005, do this now.
« Last Edit: April 17, 2020, 11:18:04 AM by DougMacG »

ccp

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remember this movie?
« Reply #581 on: April 17, 2020, 01:31:52 PM »
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain_(film)

of course corona did not come from space

(just a wuhan lab - maybe)

This whole thing also reminds me of War of the Worlds
where in the END of the invasion it was God's littlest creatures that killed the alien invasion.

Now even littler "creatures" mere  packets of RNA may wind of being our END
(in the future)

Or how about this :

From Secret Agent Man:

Microsoft will take away our names and give us a number (1s and 0s) put us all in their database and track us with apps from FB AMZN and GOOG.

Of course they will find way to profit from it all.

while they own us.
« Last Edit: April 17, 2020, 01:46:26 PM by ccp »


ccp

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gaming the statistics
« Reply #583 on: April 17, 2020, 05:02:27 PM »
a real epidemiologist will

subtract these numbers of death from corona

from  total lives lost due to corona :

since most bean counters are leftist data manipulators don't bet on it:

https://www.newsmax.com/health/health-news/car-crash-accident-fatal-stay-at-home/2020/04/17/id/963388/



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Re: Epidemics: Bird Flu, TB, AIDs, Superbugs, Ebola, etc
« Reply #586 on: April 18, 2020, 09:45:55 AM »


Are we (almost) done with this?

G M

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Re: Epidemics: Bird Flu, TB, AIDs, Superbugs, Ebola, etc
« Reply #587 on: April 18, 2020, 10:40:47 AM »


Are we (almost) done with this?

Almost done with the first wave, maybe.

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DougMacG

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Re: Epidemics: Bird Flu, TB, AIDs, Superbugs, Ebola, etc
« Reply #593 on: April 19, 2020, 07:51:13 AM »
Antibody research indicates coronavirus may be far more widespread than known

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/antibody-research-coronavirus-widespread/story?id=70206121
-----------------------------------------------------

[Doug] If the virus is way more widespread than previously thought, then the death rate from it is far lower than previously calculated.  Watch for the overall death rate to drop far below what we have been told, maybe 0.1%, not 3.4% or higher we were told.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-rate/
-----------------------------------------------------
Boston homeless shelter:
Of the 397 people tested, 146 people tested positive. Not a single one had any symptoms.
https://www.boston25news.com/news/cdc-reviewing-stunning-universal-testing-results-boston-homeless-shelter/Z253TFBO6RG4HCUAARBO4YWO64/
« Last Edit: April 19, 2020, 11:16:44 AM by DougMacG »

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Re: Epidemics: Bird Flu, TB, AIDs, Superbugs, Ebola, etc
« Reply #596 on: April 21, 2020, 10:07:42 AM »
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3080771/coronavirus-mutations-affect-deadliness-strains-chinese-study

could be true but then again is not this information coming from China
interesting "then NY" strain from Europe deadlier then from China........

I do not trust anything coming out of China.
« Last Edit: April 21, 2020, 03:28:46 PM by ccp »

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WSJ: The Bearer of Good Corona Virus News
« Reply #598 on: April 24, 2020, 11:38:17 AM »
The Bearer of Good Coronavirus News
Stanford scientist John Ioannidis finds himself under attack for questioning the prevailing wisdom about lockdowns.
By Allysia Finley
April 24, 2020 12:36 pm ET

Defenders of coronavirus lockdown mandates keep talking about science. “We are going to do the right thing, not judge by politics, not judge by protests, but by science,” California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom said this week. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer defended an order that, among other things, banned the sale of paint and vegetable seeds but not liquor or lottery tickets. “Each action has been informed by the best science and epidemiology counsel there is,” she wrote in an op-ed.

But scientists are almost never unanimous, and many appeals to “science” are transparently political or ideological. Consider the story of John Ioannidis, a professor at Stanford’s School of Medicine. His expertise is wide-ranging—he juggles appointments in statistics, biomedical data, prevention research and health research and policy. Google Scholar ranks him among the world’s 100 most-cited scientists. He has published more than 1,000 papers, many of them meta-analyses—reviews of other studies. Yet he’s now found himself pilloried because he dissents from the theories behind the lockdowns—because he’s looked at the data and found good news.

In a March article for Stat News, Dr. Ioannidis argued that Covid-19 is far less deadly than modelers were assuming. He considered the experience of the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which was quarantined Feb. 4 in Japan. Eight of 700 infected passengers and crew died. Based on the demographics of the ship’s population, Dr. Ioannidis estimated that the U.S. fatality rate could be as low as 0.025% to 0.625% and put the upper bound at 0.05% to 1%—comparable to that of seasonal flu.

“If that is the true rate,” he wrote, “locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.”

Dr. Ioannidis, 54, likes metaphors. A New York native who grew up in Athens, he also teaches comparative literature and has published seven literary works—poetry and fiction, the latest being an epistolary novel—in Greek. In his spare time, he likes to fence, swim, hike and play basketball.

Early in his career, he realized that “the common denominator for everything that I was doing was that I was very interested in the methods—not necessarily the results but how exactly you do that, how exactly you try to avoid bias, how you avoid error.” When he began examining studies, he discovered that few headline-grabbing findings could be replicated, and many were later contradicted by new evidence.

Scientific studies are often infected by biases. “Several years ago, along with one of my colleagues, we had mapped 235 biases across science. And maybe the biggest cluster is biases that are trying to generate significant, spectacular, fascinating, extraordinary results,” he says. “Early results tend to be inflated. Claims for significance tend to be exaggerated.”

An example is a 2012 meta-analysis on nutritional research, in which he randomly selected 50 common cooking ingredients, such as sugar, flour and milk. Eighty percent of them had been studied for links to cancer, and 72% of the studies linked an ingredient to a higher or lower risk. Yet three-quarters of the findings were weak or statistically insignificant.

Dr. Ioannidis calls the coronavirus pandemic “the perfect storm of that quest for very urgent, spectacular, exciting, apocalyptic results. And as you see, apparently our early estimates seem to have been tremendously exaggerated in many fronts.”

Chief among them was a study by modelers at Imperial College London, which predicted more than 2.2 million coronavirus deaths in the U.S. absent “any control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour.” The study was published March 16—the same day the Trump administration released its “15 Days to Slow the Spread” initiative, which included strict social-distancing guidelines.

Dr. Ioannidis says the Imperial projection now appears to be a gross overestimate. “They used inputs that were completely off in some of their calculation,” he says. “If data are limited or flawed, their errors are being propagated through the model. . . . So if you have a small error, and you exponentiate that error, the magnitude of the final error in the prediction or whatever can be astronomical.”

“I love models,” he adds. “I do a lot of mathematical modeling myself. But I think we need to recognize that they’re very, very low in terms of how much weight we can place on them and how much we can trust them. . . . They can give you a very first kind of mathematical justification to a gut feeling, but beyond that point, depending on models for evidence, I think it’s a very bad recipe.”

Modelers sometimes refuse to disclose their assumptions or data, so their errors go undetected. Los Angeles County predicted last week that 95.6% of its population would be infected by August if social distancing orders were relaxed. (Confirmed cases were 0.17% of the population as of Thursday.) But the basis for this projection is unclear. “At a minimum, we need openness and transparency in order to be able to say anything,” Dr. Ioannidis says.

Most important, “what we need is data. We need real data. We need data on how many people are infected so far, how many people are actively infected, what is really the death rate, how many beds do we have to spare, how has this changed.”

That will require more testing. Dr. Ioannidis and colleagues at Stanford last week published a study on the prevalence of coronavirus antibodies in Santa Clara County. Based on blood tests of 3,300 volunteers in the county—which includes San Jose, California’s third-largest city—during the first week of April, they estimated that between 2.49% and 4.16% of the county population had been infected. That’s 50 to 85 times the number of confirmed cases and implies a fatality rate between 0.12% and 0.2%, consistent with that of the Diamond Princess.

The study immediately came under attack. Some statisticians questioned its methods. Critics noted the study sample was not randomly selected, and white women under 64 were disproportionately represented. The Stanford team adjusted for the sampling bias by weighting the results by sex, race and ZIP Code, but the study acknowledges that “other biases, such as bias favoring individuals in good health capable of attending our testing sites, or bias favoring those with prior Covid-like illnesses seeking antibody confirmation are also possible. The overall effect of such biases is hard to ascertain.”

Dr. Ioannidis admits his study isn’t “bulletproof” and says he welcomes scrutiny. But he’s confident the findings will hold up, and he says antibody studies from around the world will yield more data. A study published this week by the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health estimated that the virus is 28 to 55 times as prevalent in that county as confirmed cases are. A New York study released Thursday estimated that 13.9% of the state and 21.2% of the city had been infected, more than 10 times the confirmed cases.

Yet most criticism of the Stanford study has been aimed at defending the lockdown mandates against the implication that they’re an overreaction. “There’s some sort of mob mentality here operating that they just insist that this has to be the end of the world, and it has to be that the sky is falling. It’s attacking studies with data based on speculation and science fiction,” he says. “But dismissing real data in favor of mathematical speculation is mind-boggling.”

In part he blames the media: “We have some evidence that bad news, negative news [stories], are more attractive than positive news—they lead to more clicks, they lead to people being more engaged. And of course we know that fake news travels faster than true news. So in the current environment, unfortunately, we have generated a very heavily panic-driven, horror-driven, death-reality-show type of situation.”

The news is filled with stories of healthy young people who die of coronavirus. But Dr. Ioannidis recently published a paper with his wife, Despina Contopoulos-Ioannidis, an infectious-disease specialist at Stanford, that showed this to be a classic man-bites-dog story. The couple found that people under 65 without underlying conditions accounted for only 0.7% of coronavirus deaths in Italy and 1.8% in New York City.

“Compared to almost any other cause of disease that I can think of, it’s really sparing young people. I’m not saying that the lives of 80-year-olds do not have value—they do,” he says. “But there’s far, far, far more . . . young people who commit suicide.” If the panic and attendant disruption continue, he says, “we will see many young people committing suicide . . . just because we are spreading horror stories with Covid-19. There’s far, far more young people who get cancer and will not be treated, because again, they will not go to the hospital to get treated because of Covid-19. There’s far, far more people whose mental health will collapse.”

He argues that public officials need to weigh these factors when making public-health decisions, and more hard data from antibody and other studies will help. “I think that we should just take everything that we know, put it on the table, and try to see, OK, what’s the next step, and see what happens when we take the next step. I think this sort of data-driven feedback will be the best. So you start opening, you start opening your schools. You can see what happens,” he says. “We need to be open minded, we need to just be calm, allow for some error, it’s unavoidable. We started knowing nothing. We know a lot now, but we still don’t know everything.”

He cautions against drawing broad conclusions about the efficacy of lockdowns based on national infection and fatality rates. “It’s not that we have randomized 10 countries to go into lockdown and another 10 countries to remain relatively open and see what happens, and do that randomly. Different prime ministers, different presidents, different task forces make decisions, they implement them in different sequences, at different times, in different phases of the epidemic. And then people start looking at this data and they say, ‘Oh look at that, this place did very well. Why? Oh, because of this measure.’ This is completely, completely opinion-based.”

People are making “big statements about ‘lockdowns save the world.’ I think that they’re immature. They’re tremendously immature. They may have worked in some cases, they may have had no effect in others, and they may have been damaging still in others.”

Most disagreements among scientists, he notes, reflect differences in perspective, not facts. Some find the Stanford study worrisome because it suggests the virus is more easily transmitted, while others are hopeful because it suggests the virus is far less lethal. “It’s basically an issue of whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist. Even scientists can be optimists and pessimists. Probably usually I’m a pessimist, but in this case, I’m probably an optimist.”

Ms. Finley is a member of the Journal’s editorial board.

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