Hello All,
Dale and I have been communicating about the recent problems with the Forum here at pspowerbooks.com. It has been decided to retire the Forum and move all author & conversational interactions over to Patreon.
Over the next week or so, I'll be closing down the Forum and creating redirects to start funneling visitors of the Forum over to that URL (the main website showing all the books will be staying).
Thank you everyone for your participation on the Forum these past several years! See you on Patreon!!
Brent / Argy / ArgyrosfeniX
p.s. Sorry about all of the coding errors. They reset nightly these days and I can't keep up with changing the code that often...
Dale and I have been communicating about the recent problems with the Forum here at pspowerbooks.com. It has been decided to retire the Forum and move all author & conversational interactions over to Patreon.
Over the next week or so, I'll be closing down the Forum and creating redirects to start funneling visitors of the Forum over to that URL (the main website showing all the books will be staying).
Thank you everyone for your participation on the Forum these past several years! See you on Patreon!!
Brent / Argy / ArgyrosfeniX
p.s. Sorry about all of the coding errors. They reset nightly these days and I can't keep up with changing the code that often...
Carona virus/Wuhan China/Pandemic
Re: Carona virus/Wuhan China/Pandemic
First...
I laughed at that picture, Marcia! That was good...
Now...
People, especially the WHO and CDC seem to be forgetting that we do not know if this disease goes airborne or not.
A mask of protective gear that is perfectly capable of slowing or stopping droplets in the air will be bypassed instantly by micro-particle sized viruses. That means we need to test this woman and quiz her as to her use of that gear if she is positive for SARA-CoV-2 precisely because she had that gear on. Did she fail in it's proper use? Was it only partially effective? Do others who wore gear near her have it?
People seem to be under the illusion (delusion?) that testing for a disease like this is valuable for medical treatment purposes. It isn't. The doctors will treat the infected for the symptoms they present with, regardless. There is no cure at this time. All they can do is see that, say, you're having trouble breathing and treat you with the correct level of assistance for that, to buy you time to heal. Or perhaps give you fluids via IV, so that you don't dehydrate and weaken your immune system. (These things make a huge difference in long term outcomes, but don't be fooled into thinking they need a test before they can be done. No one works that way. You treat to the patients presented symptoms, always.)
Testing then is to aid us in gaining a more complete picture of what is really going on here. Is this truly airborne? If so, then the R0 value isn't going to be 4 it's going to be a minimum of 10, to possibly 20-30. How long does this last on surfaces? We know that one to be 4-9 days, which is incredibly long...
But, with good testing we can find out how long this lasts, if there is a regular mutation rate, if we are seeing multiple strains already, and, finally, we can find out the actual death toll.
Right now, we are seeing an amazing truncated picture of that for this disease. People, trying to keep other calm, have been presenting this is most likely being much smaller in death toll, taking only older and ill people... But that ignores the fact that younger people who have been dying of similar symptoms have simply not been tests and therefore, not counted in the tally, when they die of this disease.
There are rumors of a sudden world wide increase in death from things which possibly could be this virus...
On top of that, historically, diseases which present with flu like symptoms (SARS, MERS, Swine Flu in particular, being modern examples form the last 20 years) are universally and ALWAYS under estimated in their death tolls at first. Why? Because a normal Doctor or medical practitioner will simply count the death as being from other things, in the absence of testing. It is only later, when the death certificates are reviews that researchers go back, wince and say "That one was probably disease-X. So was this one and..." (You get the picture.)
1. SARS- Originally thoughts to have a 2% death ratio. Later found to have a 10-12% after it was contained.
(Meaning the guesstimate was 5-6 times off of reality.)
2. MERS- Originally thought to kill 5%. Later it was discovered (in hindsight) that it was an incredible 30%.
(Meaning the guesstimate made by the WHO and CDC was off by 6 TIMES.)
3. Swine Flu. They thought 10,000 had died of it. It turned out to be 300,000...
(Meaning that they were wrong about the number of dead by 30 TIMES. Think about that... They couldn't tell that they had an extra 290,000 physical bodies, world wide, until later, when researchers had enough time and space to check the work of the people on the ground!)
Now, not every disease is like this. The experts do a great job estimating Ebola death numbers, for instance. Why are they so good with the one and horrible at the other? The symptoms. Ebola causes dramatic bruising, bleeding from the eyes and ears and coagulation in waves. It's very clear what it is.
SARS, MERS, Swine Flu and SARS-CoV-2 all present with flu like symptoms, which acts as a cover for untested people who are dying of them. On top of that, our death system around the world might handle 100,000 people each day. A jump of 3-4 times that is an incredible death rate, but the man or woman dealing with the bodies will only notice a small uptick in their business. If you handle 0-1 people in the morgue in your small town, but have occasion busy times with a few more, you might not really notice is that goes up to 4 per day. At first.
After a week or two you'll start to realize something is happening and if it goes to ten per day, you might not be able to handle things in you individual location. Now, multiply that by the WORLD and you can have a huge, rather hidden, death toll.
Also recall that most of these people have no one to directly report this increase to. There is no body to handle that sort of thing and the CDC isn't doing testing and they are done with the victims when they die...
*Before anyone panics, while the above is all true and factual, a thing you should check for yourself, it does not mean that the current situation HAS to be going this way. Only that it might be and in fact, given the track record for similar things, is likely.
This one could still "just be the flu, Bro."
Are you willing to bet your life on that, though?
I laughed at that picture, Marcia! That was good...
Now...
People, especially the WHO and CDC seem to be forgetting that we do not know if this disease goes airborne or not.
A mask of protective gear that is perfectly capable of slowing or stopping droplets in the air will be bypassed instantly by micro-particle sized viruses. That means we need to test this woman and quiz her as to her use of that gear if she is positive for SARA-CoV-2 precisely because she had that gear on. Did she fail in it's proper use? Was it only partially effective? Do others who wore gear near her have it?
People seem to be under the illusion (delusion?) that testing for a disease like this is valuable for medical treatment purposes. It isn't. The doctors will treat the infected for the symptoms they present with, regardless. There is no cure at this time. All they can do is see that, say, you're having trouble breathing and treat you with the correct level of assistance for that, to buy you time to heal. Or perhaps give you fluids via IV, so that you don't dehydrate and weaken your immune system. (These things make a huge difference in long term outcomes, but don't be fooled into thinking they need a test before they can be done. No one works that way. You treat to the patients presented symptoms, always.)
Testing then is to aid us in gaining a more complete picture of what is really going on here. Is this truly airborne? If so, then the R0 value isn't going to be 4 it's going to be a minimum of 10, to possibly 20-30. How long does this last on surfaces? We know that one to be 4-9 days, which is incredibly long...
But, with good testing we can find out how long this lasts, if there is a regular mutation rate, if we are seeing multiple strains already, and, finally, we can find out the actual death toll.
Right now, we are seeing an amazing truncated picture of that for this disease. People, trying to keep other calm, have been presenting this is most likely being much smaller in death toll, taking only older and ill people... But that ignores the fact that younger people who have been dying of similar symptoms have simply not been tests and therefore, not counted in the tally, when they die of this disease.
There are rumors of a sudden world wide increase in death from things which possibly could be this virus...
On top of that, historically, diseases which present with flu like symptoms (SARS, MERS, Swine Flu in particular, being modern examples form the last 20 years) are universally and ALWAYS under estimated in their death tolls at first. Why? Because a normal Doctor or medical practitioner will simply count the death as being from other things, in the absence of testing. It is only later, when the death certificates are reviews that researchers go back, wince and say "That one was probably disease-X. So was this one and..." (You get the picture.)
1. SARS- Originally thoughts to have a 2% death ratio. Later found to have a 10-12% after it was contained.
(Meaning the guesstimate was 5-6 times off of reality.)
2. MERS- Originally thought to kill 5%. Later it was discovered (in hindsight) that it was an incredible 30%.
(Meaning the guesstimate made by the WHO and CDC was off by 6 TIMES.)
3. Swine Flu. They thought 10,000 had died of it. It turned out to be 300,000...
(Meaning that they were wrong about the number of dead by 30 TIMES. Think about that... They couldn't tell that they had an extra 290,000 physical bodies, world wide, until later, when researchers had enough time and space to check the work of the people on the ground!)
Now, not every disease is like this. The experts do a great job estimating Ebola death numbers, for instance. Why are they so good with the one and horrible at the other? The symptoms. Ebola causes dramatic bruising, bleeding from the eyes and ears and coagulation in waves. It's very clear what it is.
SARS, MERS, Swine Flu and SARS-CoV-2 all present with flu like symptoms, which acts as a cover for untested people who are dying of them. On top of that, our death system around the world might handle 100,000 people each day. A jump of 3-4 times that is an incredible death rate, but the man or woman dealing with the bodies will only notice a small uptick in their business. If you handle 0-1 people in the morgue in your small town, but have occasion busy times with a few more, you might not really notice is that goes up to 4 per day. At first.
After a week or two you'll start to realize something is happening and if it goes to ten per day, you might not be able to handle things in you individual location. Now, multiply that by the WORLD and you can have a huge, rather hidden, death toll.
Also recall that most of these people have no one to directly report this increase to. There is no body to handle that sort of thing and the CDC isn't doing testing and they are done with the victims when they die...
*Before anyone panics, while the above is all true and factual, a thing you should check for yourself, it does not mean that the current situation HAS to be going this way. Only that it might be and in fact, given the track record for similar things, is likely.
This one could still "just be the flu, Bro."
Are you willing to bet your life on that, though?
Re: Carona virus/Wuhan China/Pandemic
And... Boom!
(Not in a good way, either... This freaking thing just never presents with good news!)
Several points of confirmation (real studies, though all in early release, not yet peer reviewed due to the pressing nature of the data...) are showing that this virus is airborne and can live in the air for up to 42 hours (though it will settle after 2-3 hours, thankfully!) and on surfaces, as mentioned before, will last up to 9 days.
What does that mean?
Every calculation was off. Not as much for me as for the CDC/WHO and the world governments, but their totals, projections and thoughts on the matter have to be rethought, instantly.
1. The R0 value of this isn't, as suspected around 4-6, which was dependent on observation and the hope that it was transferable by contact with surfaces and droplets in the air. (The big droplets fall out of the air in minutes, then live on surfaces, but don't linger in the air for hours, wafting around and infecting people...). Instead, as an airborne, highly infectious agent, with not mitigation being reasonably available in public places, the R0 is likely to be between 8-12.
If it is at the low end, at 8, the spread of this is going to be a lot faster and impossible to stop. Short of being a true hermit or living in a bubble. Literally. (An R0 of 8 seems to be slightly low based on observations of spread, but I'm trying not to panic anyone. Which... Duh. Panic won't help, anyone reading this will get that and look at things bravely and sensibly. But still, I don't want to be THAT guy, going around always yelling "be afraid!". Because he's a jerk and I don't like him.)
2. The big problem here is that a tight quarantine with a virus that has an R0 of 2.4... (This is the CDC/WHO public use value. Behind the scenes they are using different numbers and getting themselves ready to hide away from the rest of us soon. They are not your friends. Useful to find out what the government want you to think, but that is all. Do NOT trust them. Verify anything they tell you. For that matter, verify what ANYONE tells you now.)
Sorry tangent... Anyway at 2.4 a quarantine like the one in Wuhan, everyone trapped in their apartments, get arrested or shot if they go out, starving and going crazy from confinement... Could potentially work. It would be tight and you are in a race between how long people can survive without food and when the disease dies out.
With an R0 of 8, if your apartment neighbor has is, and you have any air leakage between the two spaces (and with modern construction techniques, air leakage is build in on purpose, on all wall, to prevent the buildup of CO2) then you will most likely be infected. In your own home, never leaving.
In short, the quarantine won't work in large cities, even if it is draconian in nature. Not if you let people out of their homes/apartments/houses inside several cycles of the disease. Right now they are assuming a cycle of 14 days, even though the actual numbers show that it is, in outlying cases, well over 20. Possibly close to 30.
So...
What does this mean? Well, it really comes down to the honest death ratio. What percentage of people will die?
If it is as we are being told (incorrectly. I won't bury the lead here, the actual data is showing that the death ratios we are being told are wrong by a factor of several times, minimum. More information came in since what I wrote last time, above.) at 2-3.4 percent of those getting this dying, then we will probably have a tough time ahead, no matter what we do.
Look, the numbers are mainly guesswork at this point. Mine have consistently been closer than say the CDC/WHO, but I could be wrong here. I hope that I am. I also have a responsibility to the truth that those people do not...
Right now, the death ratio appears to be between 5 and 23.4 %. If we lose say, 15% of the world population to this, the actual death toll (due to non-disease causes) will be close to double that. People will starve when the food can't be moved around from the fields.Medical care will fail, and crime rates, including murder, will likely go up, as people desperately struggle to hang on to what they have.
If it is, as some of the numbers honestly show right now, closer to a 20% death rate, then we are looking at a world wide Pandemic that will, in the end, trigger wars and aggression that might well change everything, forever.
We may have already seen the last normal day, if that's the case.
*Now, I'm not claiming this is psychic data, or that I am the high prophet who must be heeded. For what I am saying to work, then large governmental groups around the world, will have to be lying to the rest of us, to buy themselves time to make last minute preparations, before going underground.
If that's the case, then we will start to hear about that kind of thing, mass death being covered up, leaking into the alternative press, soon.
**Okay, there are CLAIMS, with some video, out of China and Iran on that. The biggest point to watch right now is Italy, who seems to be honestly reporting their findings for the time being along with South Korea. They actually tried for early mitigation, and while their death rate is climbing, I think they have the best chance of actually fighting this thing we have seen so far.
Italy is reporting that the youthful are NOT immune to this and die of it as well as the old. It is early there, and anecdotal, but several front line doctors are saying that younger men and women are going down to this now. It just took them a bit longer for the virus to get them. (This is a thing to watch. Everyone else has told us that it is only the old and weak. If it is different than that...)
So, my recommendation? Stay clean. Wash your hands. Sanitize your environment. Bolster your immune system. Especially get enough sleep each night... Also, if you don't know how, study up on how to fight. Exercise. Ready yourself for what may come.
Then, in a year, when this is all nothing, you'll be in shape, healthy and have a few new skills, which isn't a bad thing at all!
Now, everyone with me now, cross those fingers and hope for the best? I can bear up under the weight of being wrong, after all! (Which doesn't mean I am, but screw it, I hope that I'm secretly smoking dope on this one. Otherwise things are going to suck and I'm just now getting my life the way I like it!)
(Not in a good way, either... This freaking thing just never presents with good news!)
Several points of confirmation (real studies, though all in early release, not yet peer reviewed due to the pressing nature of the data...) are showing that this virus is airborne and can live in the air for up to 42 hours (though it will settle after 2-3 hours, thankfully!) and on surfaces, as mentioned before, will last up to 9 days.
What does that mean?
Every calculation was off. Not as much for me as for the CDC/WHO and the world governments, but their totals, projections and thoughts on the matter have to be rethought, instantly.
1. The R0 value of this isn't, as suspected around 4-6, which was dependent on observation and the hope that it was transferable by contact with surfaces and droplets in the air. (The big droplets fall out of the air in minutes, then live on surfaces, but don't linger in the air for hours, wafting around and infecting people...). Instead, as an airborne, highly infectious agent, with not mitigation being reasonably available in public places, the R0 is likely to be between 8-12.
If it is at the low end, at 8, the spread of this is going to be a lot faster and impossible to stop. Short of being a true hermit or living in a bubble. Literally. (An R0 of 8 seems to be slightly low based on observations of spread, but I'm trying not to panic anyone. Which... Duh. Panic won't help, anyone reading this will get that and look at things bravely and sensibly. But still, I don't want to be THAT guy, going around always yelling "be afraid!". Because he's a jerk and I don't like him.)
2. The big problem here is that a tight quarantine with a virus that has an R0 of 2.4... (This is the CDC/WHO public use value. Behind the scenes they are using different numbers and getting themselves ready to hide away from the rest of us soon. They are not your friends. Useful to find out what the government want you to think, but that is all. Do NOT trust them. Verify anything they tell you. For that matter, verify what ANYONE tells you now.)
Sorry tangent... Anyway at 2.4 a quarantine like the one in Wuhan, everyone trapped in their apartments, get arrested or shot if they go out, starving and going crazy from confinement... Could potentially work. It would be tight and you are in a race between how long people can survive without food and when the disease dies out.
With an R0 of 8, if your apartment neighbor has is, and you have any air leakage between the two spaces (and with modern construction techniques, air leakage is build in on purpose, on all wall, to prevent the buildup of CO2) then you will most likely be infected. In your own home, never leaving.
In short, the quarantine won't work in large cities, even if it is draconian in nature. Not if you let people out of their homes/apartments/houses inside several cycles of the disease. Right now they are assuming a cycle of 14 days, even though the actual numbers show that it is, in outlying cases, well over 20. Possibly close to 30.
So...
What does this mean? Well, it really comes down to the honest death ratio. What percentage of people will die?
If it is as we are being told (incorrectly. I won't bury the lead here, the actual data is showing that the death ratios we are being told are wrong by a factor of several times, minimum. More information came in since what I wrote last time, above.) at 2-3.4 percent of those getting this dying, then we will probably have a tough time ahead, no matter what we do.
Look, the numbers are mainly guesswork at this point. Mine have consistently been closer than say the CDC/WHO, but I could be wrong here. I hope that I am. I also have a responsibility to the truth that those people do not...
Right now, the death ratio appears to be between 5 and 23.4 %. If we lose say, 15% of the world population to this, the actual death toll (due to non-disease causes) will be close to double that. People will starve when the food can't be moved around from the fields.Medical care will fail, and crime rates, including murder, will likely go up, as people desperately struggle to hang on to what they have.
If it is, as some of the numbers honestly show right now, closer to a 20% death rate, then we are looking at a world wide Pandemic that will, in the end, trigger wars and aggression that might well change everything, forever.
We may have already seen the last normal day, if that's the case.
*Now, I'm not claiming this is psychic data, or that I am the high prophet who must be heeded. For what I am saying to work, then large governmental groups around the world, will have to be lying to the rest of us, to buy themselves time to make last minute preparations, before going underground.
If that's the case, then we will start to hear about that kind of thing, mass death being covered up, leaking into the alternative press, soon.
**Okay, there are CLAIMS, with some video, out of China and Iran on that. The biggest point to watch right now is Italy, who seems to be honestly reporting their findings for the time being along with South Korea. They actually tried for early mitigation, and while their death rate is climbing, I think they have the best chance of actually fighting this thing we have seen so far.
Italy is reporting that the youthful are NOT immune to this and die of it as well as the old. It is early there, and anecdotal, but several front line doctors are saying that younger men and women are going down to this now. It just took them a bit longer for the virus to get them. (This is a thing to watch. Everyone else has told us that it is only the old and weak. If it is different than that...)
So, my recommendation? Stay clean. Wash your hands. Sanitize your environment. Bolster your immune system. Especially get enough sleep each night... Also, if you don't know how, study up on how to fight. Exercise. Ready yourself for what may come.
Then, in a year, when this is all nothing, you'll be in shape, healthy and have a few new skills, which isn't a bad thing at all!
Now, everyone with me now, cross those fingers and hope for the best? I can bear up under the weight of being wrong, after all! (Which doesn't mean I am, but screw it, I hope that I'm secretly smoking dope on this one. Otherwise things are going to suck and I'm just now getting my life the way I like it!)
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Re: Carona virus/Wuhan China/Pandemic
Here are calculations of the current CFR (case fatality rates) based on the latest data from https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19
CFR (Resolved) is based on "Deaths / (Deaths + Recovered)"
CFR (Confirmed) is based on "Deaths / Confirmed" and represents the absolute best case for all currently Confirmed cases, assuming that nobody that hasn't died yet will die.
CFR (Resolved) is based on "Deaths / (Deaths + Recovered)"
CFR (Confirmed) is based on "Deaths / Confirmed" and represents the absolute best case for all currently Confirmed cases, assuming that nobody that hasn't died yet will die.
Re: Carona virus/Wuhan China/Pandemic
It’s the ratios. If we’re all eventually going to get COVID19, we don’t want to get it AT THE SAME TIME. A percentage of the sick WILL need ICU treatment, so we have to slow the rate of infections so we don’t run out of ICUs. We stay home to Flatten The Curve of the infections.
- CC92F15F-E5B8-409A-A880-38943F6788C7.jpeg (79.27KiB)Viewed 45829 times
Re: Carona virus/Wuhan China/Pandemic
While the charts are nice (and they really are very pretty and not specifically wrong at all, especially in the idea that we need to spread this thing out) I have some thoughts that are a bit different/more accurate than what is being presented in the first chart. (Due to NO fault of the person posting it, or likely the person compiling it! That was the data that they could get at the time, after all, which is about what we can work with... About...)
Okay:
Italy has been actually testing people that present with the virus. No place else really has so far, with the possible exception of South Korea, who has searched out people to test. Pretty close to everyone else has either dropped the ball or is doing something else with their numbers on purpose to hide the real death toll. Which seems insane to me, but has happened historically, so it's a thing.
When Italy reaches the point in time of ONE full cycle of this disease, we will be able to take a snap shot of the resolved cases/deaths. The real number for the death ratio. Cases confirmed is a starter indicator, but after a few weeks it's close to useless and part of why the CDC/WHO are always wrong in their projections about how many will die.
So that means we can do this at about day 21 of Italy's first round of this. Patients will, in the main, either die or start being cleared by week 3-4 so days 21-28. Yes, there will be cases that linger and some will die past that, BUT the resovled numbers should, in the main be fairly settled.
1. We take the total number resolved. This is recovered plus the deaths. today that is 1,266 having passed and 1,439 recovered for a total of 2,705 giving us the total currently resolved. (These are actually the numbers for the 13th and they will update later today if you run them yourselves. Which you should.)
2. Then we divide the total dead by the total resolved. Keep that in mind. The total resolved, not the total recovered!
Converted to percentages, that brings us to 46.8%.
3. Now it's fictional number time. Someone, out of China, said that they thought that 80% of the people who were sick had mild symptoms and weren't being tested. They had no proof or evidence of this, they simply guessed. Then it became a law, apparently, and has been repeated all over the place as if it had come from a scientific study. It didn't.
Still, if we use that number, then 46.8% would be divided by 5, giving us a currently projected death rate of 9.36%
9.36% is then, the currently projected death rate. Honestly, this number will probably end up being higher than this, since that "80% are fine" trope is likely to be wrong. Probably not to the better, either, unfortunately. (That's me being pessimistic, but a high number guess has the most chance of being wrong to the high end.)
HOWEVER!!!!
We really need to wait until about day 21 Italy's first cases appeared officially at the very end of February, so we can start counting from then, meaning the numbers on the 20-21 will be the first good ones. Past that, shifts in the death rate will probably be due to statistical noise, and wear on the Italian medical system.
This won't really work well in places that are faking their numbers, or, in the case of the U.S. simply refusing to test sick people. Right now that is hiding both the number of ill people and the death toll. Few under 50 are being noted as having died of this, when the numbers from Iran and Italy are showing that they are going down as well.
Italy has been open about this. Iran has hidden their numbers, but doctors and nurses have gotten the word out. That we can see the mass graves of Iran from space means that, as with China, the real death toll is larger than a few hundred or even a few thousand.
So, how come I am right and the professionals are wrong? Am I just that much smarter than they are? How can they not know this information? The short answer is, they do. They have better data than we do, and enough intelligence to work this all out.
In short, they are so desperate to stop a panic that they are standing their each day, collectively lying to us all. I do get the idea. I just think that lying to people is going to lead to mistrust later, when people realize that those in charge didn't arm them with information early enough to prepare.
So, I think they do know. It's why the Health and Human Services head of California started crying in the middle of her address yesterday. Because she understands what is really going on.
*Again, for anyone reading this and marveling at my genius, understand that I have been studying this exhaustively, have been correct at almost every point so far, and could still be wrong. Don't panic. Do prepare. Today. If you don't have what you need to stay at home without leaving, you soon might well have to do without for a long time, as the authorities attempt to "flatten the curve".
At least in the U.S. If you are in Britain the goal seems for you to get sick and to let the thing burn itself out, in order to form herd immunity. That will happen eventually, regardless, so the U.K. plan is actually to do nothing of note.
That will, likely, have about the same end result as doing our best, so don't worry about it too much. Just get ready for things to get a bit rough for a while.
Okay:
Italy has been actually testing people that present with the virus. No place else really has so far, with the possible exception of South Korea, who has searched out people to test. Pretty close to everyone else has either dropped the ball or is doing something else with their numbers on purpose to hide the real death toll. Which seems insane to me, but has happened historically, so it's a thing.
When Italy reaches the point in time of ONE full cycle of this disease, we will be able to take a snap shot of the resolved cases/deaths. The real number for the death ratio. Cases confirmed is a starter indicator, but after a few weeks it's close to useless and part of why the CDC/WHO are always wrong in their projections about how many will die.
So that means we can do this at about day 21 of Italy's first round of this. Patients will, in the main, either die or start being cleared by week 3-4 so days 21-28. Yes, there will be cases that linger and some will die past that, BUT the resovled numbers should, in the main be fairly settled.
1. We take the total number resolved. This is recovered plus the deaths. today that is 1,266 having passed and 1,439 recovered for a total of 2,705 giving us the total currently resolved. (These are actually the numbers for the 13th and they will update later today if you run them yourselves. Which you should.)
2. Then we divide the total dead by the total resolved. Keep that in mind. The total resolved, not the total recovered!
Converted to percentages, that brings us to 46.8%.
3. Now it's fictional number time. Someone, out of China, said that they thought that 80% of the people who were sick had mild symptoms and weren't being tested. They had no proof or evidence of this, they simply guessed. Then it became a law, apparently, and has been repeated all over the place as if it had come from a scientific study. It didn't.
Still, if we use that number, then 46.8% would be divided by 5, giving us a currently projected death rate of 9.36%
9.36% is then, the currently projected death rate. Honestly, this number will probably end up being higher than this, since that "80% are fine" trope is likely to be wrong. Probably not to the better, either, unfortunately. (That's me being pessimistic, but a high number guess has the most chance of being wrong to the high end.)
HOWEVER!!!!
We really need to wait until about day 21 Italy's first cases appeared officially at the very end of February, so we can start counting from then, meaning the numbers on the 20-21 will be the first good ones. Past that, shifts in the death rate will probably be due to statistical noise, and wear on the Italian medical system.
This won't really work well in places that are faking their numbers, or, in the case of the U.S. simply refusing to test sick people. Right now that is hiding both the number of ill people and the death toll. Few under 50 are being noted as having died of this, when the numbers from Iran and Italy are showing that they are going down as well.
Italy has been open about this. Iran has hidden their numbers, but doctors and nurses have gotten the word out. That we can see the mass graves of Iran from space means that, as with China, the real death toll is larger than a few hundred or even a few thousand.
So, how come I am right and the professionals are wrong? Am I just that much smarter than they are? How can they not know this information? The short answer is, they do. They have better data than we do, and enough intelligence to work this all out.
In short, they are so desperate to stop a panic that they are standing their each day, collectively lying to us all. I do get the idea. I just think that lying to people is going to lead to mistrust later, when people realize that those in charge didn't arm them with information early enough to prepare.
So, I think they do know. It's why the Health and Human Services head of California started crying in the middle of her address yesterday. Because she understands what is really going on.
*Again, for anyone reading this and marveling at my genius, understand that I have been studying this exhaustively, have been correct at almost every point so far, and could still be wrong. Don't panic. Do prepare. Today. If you don't have what you need to stay at home without leaving, you soon might well have to do without for a long time, as the authorities attempt to "flatten the curve".
At least in the U.S. If you are in Britain the goal seems for you to get sick and to let the thing burn itself out, in order to form herd immunity. That will happen eventually, regardless, so the U.K. plan is actually to do nothing of note.
That will, likely, have about the same end result as doing our best, so don't worry about it too much. Just get ready for things to get a bit rough for a while.
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Re: Carona virus/Wuhan China/Pandemic
I'm willing to bet that when this is all over, and the survives look back with hindsight, they will find that not just the cost in lives, but also the total economic cost would have only been a tiny fraction, if, when Wuhan was placed under lockdown on the 23rd of January, the whole world would have largely followed.
Ground every passenger plane. Stop all long distance passenger transport. Cancel any non essential public event or activity. Get everyone who can work from home. Quarantine every person who has been traveling from China or any other country which had a presumptive coronavirus case at that time. Completely isolate any country not participating.
Extreme measures? Yes. But by today, most countries would have been able to say with a high degree of certainty that they are actually virus free, and would be able to slowly lift restrictions by region and get the economy going again. It would have been a 4-6 week hiccup for most of the world. Would it have had a significant economic impact? Yes. But only a tiny fraction of what the next 6 month to a year will cost economically. And that's not even considering the lives that will be lost.
Ground every passenger plane. Stop all long distance passenger transport. Cancel any non essential public event or activity. Get everyone who can work from home. Quarantine every person who has been traveling from China or any other country which had a presumptive coronavirus case at that time. Completely isolate any country not participating.
Extreme measures? Yes. But by today, most countries would have been able to say with a high degree of certainty that they are actually virus free, and would be able to slowly lift restrictions by region and get the economy going again. It would have been a 4-6 week hiccup for most of the world. Would it have had a significant economic impact? Yes. But only a tiny fraction of what the next 6 month to a year will cost economically. And that's not even considering the lives that will be lost.
Re: Carona virus/Wuhan China/Pandemic
That is simply true...
But I have to honestly say that a month ago I wasn't calling for the world to lock down. Even in my pessimistic (and at that point, depressed, for other reasons) state, I wouldn't have recommended that kind of measure. Even if, in hindsight, it was the correct action to take.
All right, I looked at the South Korea numbers, since they are further along than Italy, though different in their testing. They have as close to 100% testing of likely infected as possible. Just to be clear, I kind of love South Korea for this. I actually get weepy eyed thinking about it and have warm fuzzy feelings for them... (That isn't a joke. They sort of rock right now!)
I'm not certain that they are counting all of the dead from this as well as Italy, BUT, most of the world simply isn't, so that isn't a huge slam, just a thing to note. Their actual death ratio might be higher, when all is said and done.
But...
Resolved cases for South Korea: (In week four-five, so these should be fairly stable numbers over time, or rather, the percentage should be stable...)
Recovered 714
Dead 72
Resolved cases: 786
Death ratio: 9.1%
Modifier: Zero, due to their high caliber and professional testing.
Current expectation is that 9.1% of the people who catch this are dying of it in South Korea.
This number will likely go up, if containment and mitigation strategies break at any point. Then their hospitals will be overwhelmed causing a higher death rate.
Note that the current Italian numbers with an 80% modifier are very similar to the unmodified South Korean numbers. These two places have as close to good numbers as we have access to at this point. There may be a change in calculated numbers with Italy in a week. I would expect that to go up, rather than down, given the current situation.
My current best guess is that the real death rate for this is close to 10%, not the smaller numbers that known liars have been giving us. (CDC/WHO I am specifically calling you liars. When this is over, if you live, I am recommending prison time for anyone who lied to the public "for their own good". Even if it wouldn't have changed the outcome, people need the truth to make good decisions.)
For instance: Right now the U.K. is planning to do nothing to slow the spread of this, hoping for herd immunity (which is NOT assured with this, even if it is likely) because they feel people will "get bored" with quarantine and go out anyway in abut a month...
You know what would get to to stay in? The fact that 1 in 10 of them would die if they go out! You can't tell people that this is risk free for anyone under fifty for weeks and is basically the bad sniffles and expect them to comply with what seems an insane level of precaution. By lying to us, these people have made the situation far worse.
People would be demanding massive steps be taken if they knew the truth.
But I have to honestly say that a month ago I wasn't calling for the world to lock down. Even in my pessimistic (and at that point, depressed, for other reasons) state, I wouldn't have recommended that kind of measure. Even if, in hindsight, it was the correct action to take.
All right, I looked at the South Korea numbers, since they are further along than Italy, though different in their testing. They have as close to 100% testing of likely infected as possible. Just to be clear, I kind of love South Korea for this. I actually get weepy eyed thinking about it and have warm fuzzy feelings for them... (That isn't a joke. They sort of rock right now!)
I'm not certain that they are counting all of the dead from this as well as Italy, BUT, most of the world simply isn't, so that isn't a huge slam, just a thing to note. Their actual death ratio might be higher, when all is said and done.
But...
Resolved cases for South Korea: (In week four-five, so these should be fairly stable numbers over time, or rather, the percentage should be stable...)
Recovered 714
Dead 72
Resolved cases: 786
Death ratio: 9.1%
Modifier: Zero, due to their high caliber and professional testing.
Current expectation is that 9.1% of the people who catch this are dying of it in South Korea.
This number will likely go up, if containment and mitigation strategies break at any point. Then their hospitals will be overwhelmed causing a higher death rate.
Note that the current Italian numbers with an 80% modifier are very similar to the unmodified South Korean numbers. These two places have as close to good numbers as we have access to at this point. There may be a change in calculated numbers with Italy in a week. I would expect that to go up, rather than down, given the current situation.
My current best guess is that the real death rate for this is close to 10%, not the smaller numbers that known liars have been giving us. (CDC/WHO I am specifically calling you liars. When this is over, if you live, I am recommending prison time for anyone who lied to the public "for their own good". Even if it wouldn't have changed the outcome, people need the truth to make good decisions.)
For instance: Right now the U.K. is planning to do nothing to slow the spread of this, hoping for herd immunity (which is NOT assured with this, even if it is likely) because they feel people will "get bored" with quarantine and go out anyway in abut a month...
You know what would get to to stay in? The fact that 1 in 10 of them would die if they go out! You can't tell people that this is risk free for anyone under fifty for weeks and is basically the bad sniffles and expect them to comply with what seems an insane level of precaution. By lying to us, these people have made the situation far worse.
People would be demanding massive steps be taken if they knew the truth.
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Re: Carona virus/Wuhan China/Pandemic
Here is an updated spreadsheet with the latest data:
The most reliable out of all this is probably South Korea, because they haven't been waiting for people to come to them to do tests. They've thrown privacy out the window and have been using any and all data available, credit card payments, gps and network data from phones, public transport cards, and so on to create movement traces of everyone in the country, and then they've looked for anyone that has come close to a known infected person or the trail of a known infected person and tested them. Over 300000 tests performed.
So different from most other places in the world, the South Korea "Confirmed" cases are probably pretty close to the number of actual confirmed cases.
There hasn't been quite enough time yet for one full generation of the diseases to run it's course, so hopefully the CFR will still come down a bit (people die earlier during the disease than others recover from it), but probably not by much more than a couple of %.
So that 12.4% is probably close to the real actual fatality rate.
Under the condition that there is a highly developed, proactive, health system and it is able to cope. It's going to get worse when the health system is overwhelmed.
The draconian measures on China have managed to keep actual infection rates for the whole of the population to under 0.1%.
But the western democracies are basically all saying: "Quarantine is too hard, expect 50-80% of the population to get infected."
The most reliable out of all this is probably South Korea, because they haven't been waiting for people to come to them to do tests. They've thrown privacy out the window and have been using any and all data available, credit card payments, gps and network data from phones, public transport cards, and so on to create movement traces of everyone in the country, and then they've looked for anyone that has come close to a known infected person or the trail of a known infected person and tested them. Over 300000 tests performed.
So different from most other places in the world, the South Korea "Confirmed" cases are probably pretty close to the number of actual confirmed cases.
There hasn't been quite enough time yet for one full generation of the diseases to run it's course, so hopefully the CFR will still come down a bit (people die earlier during the disease than others recover from it), but probably not by much more than a couple of %.
So that 12.4% is probably close to the real actual fatality rate.
Under the condition that there is a highly developed, proactive, health system and it is able to cope. It's going to get worse when the health system is overwhelmed.
The draconian measures on China have managed to keep actual infection rates for the whole of the population to under 0.1%.
But the western democracies are basically all saying: "Quarantine is too hard, expect 50-80% of the population to get infected."
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