COVID-19: and what of Mexico?
Here’s a good question from commenter “Sharon W”:
Shouldn’t [Mexico’s] numbers be worse than ours, not having enacted any orders and living life in normal fashion? I thought maybe the weather, but I checked Tijuana and it is the same as here in L.A.
Pandemics behave in different ways in different countries and areas of the world, and even in territory within a country. If you look at just the US at present, you can see what I mean. The disease’s effects are mostly concentrated in the NY metropolitan area, with a few other states pretty bad (Washington, Louisiana, Michigan) but nowhere near as bad as NY (and Washington was hit early and hard, and has since leveled off considerably). For all the other states, if we weren’t already alerted to the thing, COVID would barely be a blip on the radar screen. And what of Chicago, one of our largest cities? Why is the number of deaths there from the disease relatively low? And I could point to many other US cities and ask the same question.
You can think of reasons why NYC would be hardest hit: congestion, travel hub, later imposition of social distancing. But I don’t think it really explains all the disparity, although perhaps I’m wrong about that. You can also say – as some prognosticators and politicians do – that NYC is just a forecast of what will happen soon all around the country. And perhaps that’s correct, but I don’t think so and I sincerely hope I’m right in this case. There is little doubt in my mind that things will get worse everywhere before they get better, but how much worse? Hopefully not NYC levels of worse.
As for Mexico – some predict that it will get very bad there [emphasis mine]:
AMLO’s [AMLO is the president’s nickname] advice [no social distancing], experts say, is deadly. What makes matters worse is that his policies over the past few years have set the stage for a profound health crisis. In a major effort to cut government spending, AMLO has reduced funds for the country’s hospitals and medical centers by millions. It’s left the nation short of physicians, medical equipment, beds, and coronavirus tests.
That last part is especially frustrating, because Mexico has been hit hard by outbreaks before. In 2009, the H1N1 influenza was identified, originating in Mexico before it spread around the world, killing about 17,000 people in an initial count. (A 2012 Lancet study estimated there were hundreds of thousands of deaths associated with the disease.) Then, Mexico aggressively tested hundreds of thousands of its citizens to identify clusters of infection and stem the tide against transmission, said Alejandro Macías, the “czar” for the government’s emergency response at the time. “We acted then like South Korea has today,” he told me.
That’s not happening this time. The country has barely tested people, likely accounting for the low official number of 475 cases as of March 26. That comes as millions continued to move freely outside, including tens of thousands who attended a large outdoor festival in Mexico City last week.
So has COVID actually already hit Mexico somewhat, but because there’s little or no testing for it, we don’t know much about it? If a small number (relatively speaking) of people are dying in Mexico from COVID, and if they’re not being tested for it, they will not appear in any statistics unless the numbers finally increase so much that it cannot be ignored.
I hope for Mexico’s sake that doesn’t happen. One thing I can say is that I don’t trust the predictions of experts, either the catastrophic or the milder ones. I just don’t think they know enough at this point to issue anything but a description of possibilities.
And since they aren’t testing, we don’t need no stinking tests at no stinking border. But the left will say “The wall won’t stop a virus!” What could conceivably go wrong?
Two possibilities:
The lower reported rate is the result of a natural immunity that comes from more sunny days, or
The government is not reporting cases of infection.
Is it possible that the virus/flu events in past years already took their toll on the weak and vulnerable so now those who are left are in better shape to withstand this virus event. Here in the US, thankfully we have a decent health system that has allowed a lot of us older people to be alive where we would not have survived a lot of our maladies a 40 years ago. Another aspect I recently read was that in Italy no matter what the other issues a person had, if they tested positive for the Corona that was cause of death, not the criteria used by Germans and other European countries.
The answer of course is that – – Time will tell – – and I hope most all of us are still here to be told.
Have you seen the Abbott Labs new testing device? Look here:
https://www.engadget.com/2020-03-28-abbott-covid-19-lab-in-box-test-fda.html
And people have figured out how to 3D print swabs. Tests will be available everywhere if countries need them. And if the governments don’t fund testing, Individual doctore and clincs can do it themselves and get the message out to their citizens.
Have you seen the Abbott Labs new testing device? Look here:
https://www.engadget.com/2020-03-28-abbott-covid-19-lab-in-box-test-fda.html
And people have figured out how to 3D print swabs. Tests will be available everywhere if countries need them. And if the governments don’t fund testing, Individual doctors and clinics can do it themselves and get the message out to their citizens.
Knowing, even if not valid, is required for panic
even neo says as bad as ny, but ny right now is about the number of murders per year in the 90s… we didnt shut the city down for that… nor overdoses.. or pedestrian accidents… so as bad as means what? relative to other places then relative to what?
worldwide we just hit the number of flu deaths this year in the US alone..
Deaths in the US if used to represent the costs of the bailout law passed are over 800 million each… (actually over 900 million)…
wars would be cheaper…
If Mexico City experiences something close to what NYC is experiencing right now, it will be an epic tragedy. A huge, densely packed metro that has millions in marginal circumstances with a less than robust medical system is a recipe for disaster. I hope they avoid massive illness and deaths.
I agree predictions are worthless right now. Be cautious everyone. And, good luck.
I would think the weather plays a part in Mexico. Viruses generally don’t like heat and humidity.
Mexico is interesting in that it may be another experiment to point to later. No testing, no lockdown, and are they really seeing an increase in the normal fatality level? If nothing really changes there, then all the fuss we are making is going to look very foolish, as Art indicates. If they go full on exponential, then their prez is going to be in trouble.
One other factor is the high level on average of UV in Mexico which breaks down the virus. And Mexico City being up in altitude the UV is even higher there.
It appears that the president of Brazil has made the same fateful choice for his country.
(I guess that both Mexico and Brazil want to be “more like Sweden”….)
There are other similar locations: India, Africa, Philippines. The use of anti-malaria drugs is common in those places and that has been proposed as an explanation for the low rates of infection. On the other hand, how would we know if the infection rate is low? I think we will need to wait for information.
People might have heard of disease data that Dr. Roy Spencer (he normally analyzes satellite infrared thermometry data) was analyzing a little less than two weeks ago. Blog link here, scroll down 60%.
There are many comments to the above post, some suggesting that poverty and lack of testing may explain the data. This person below seems to agree that something deeper might be going on.
The disease’s effects are mostly concentrated in the NY metropolitan area, with a few other states pretty bad (Washington, Louisiana, Michigan) but nowhere near as bad as NY (and Washington was hit early and hard, and has since leveled off considerably).
Roughly 65% of the deaths have been in the commuter belts around New Orleans, New York, Seattle, and Detroit. Proportionate to the resident population, the situation is more dire around New Orleans than around New York. It appears to be fairly non-dynamic in Seattle at this point in time.
My wager would be that temperatures in much of the world are putting a damper on this, and in Mexico as well.
See the figures for the Arabian peninsula. This ailment was present in significant numbers there in advance of its presence here. Hundreds of identified cases, but hardly any deaths.
Well if you survive malaria you may be protected from the Wuhan virus? With friends or “cures” like that …. 🙁
Art Deco:
Re temperature – what do you say about New Orleans having so much COVID, relatively speaking? If it’s Mardi Gras overcoming the effect of warm weather, why isn’t Brazil having similar difficulty?
It might be weather. Or it might be poor reporting/testing in most warm countries.
Then there’s Russia, of course, which isn’t warm and also claims to have low rates. But are they reporting their actual rates? We don’t know.
Everybody keeps saying how the cases are low in Mexico because the number of people tested is low. Now I might be completely wrong, but to the best of my knowledge you don’t need a test to figure out if the person is dead. Things would have progressed from large number of cases to large number of bodies if you were to take the accepted view.
Art Deco,
Someone was quoted recently saying that because SARS-CoV-2 is not an influenza virus, there is no reason to think that summer, warmth, or dryness should halt or reduce the spread of covid-19. I don’t recall where I read that or who said it, and almost everything we hear is conjecture at this point.
Here is the current data from Wikipedia for sunny Spain:
Cases: 85,199; Deaths: 7,424 ; Recovered: 16,780
Neo: Re temperature – what do you say about New Orleans having so much COVID, relatively speaking?
There is a chart embedded within this paper that graphs latitude vs number of cases. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3550308
There is a very strong link based on temperature. That is why Bangladesh has only 5 deaths. As for New Orleans, it is a case of probability. It is in a zone that is second-most probable when it comes to getting an infection. See this map from the same paper
https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/media/SOM/News/2020/images/Climate-Coronavirus.jpg
did a large number of bat soup eating Chinese-Mexicans return from the old country after celebrating the New Year in Wuhan?
And a bit closer to home than Mexico:
https://nypost.com/2020/03/30/sick-experiment-arizona-not-implementing-coronavirus-lockdown-measures/
Andy:
Do you really think that the state of the health care system in Bangladesh is such that everyone who dies of respiratory distress, including of course old people, is being tested for COVID?
I very very much doubt that they are doing much testing or record-keeping at all.
In addition, the percentage of Bangladesh’s population over 65 is 5%. See this chart. That would affect their death rate from COVID immensely.
TommyJay:
If you look at Spain’s weather, it’s been quite cool lately.
Someone was quoted recently saying that because SARS-CoV-2 is not an influenza virus, there is no reason to think that summer, warmth, or dryness should halt or reduce the spread of covid-19.
No clue who the someone was. Dr. Fauci offered some hedges, but has said explicitly and emphatically that cool, dry weather is optimal for viruses to thrive.
I very very much doubt that they are doing much testing or record-keeping at all.
Again, the very affluent and very literate Gulf emirates have hundreds of cases and very few deaths.
Neo: Do you really think that the state of the health care system in Bangladesh is such that everyone who dies of respiratory distress, including of course old people, is being tested for COVID?
Absolutely not, they would simply die. Now where are the bodies? Where are the videos like this one? https://nypost.com/2020/03/30/disturbing-footage-shows-dead-bodies-loaded-onto-truck-outside-brooklyn-hospital/
The current population of Bangladesh is 164.2M. If 5% are over 65 that is 8.2M people. That is not a trivial number. By comparison the entire population of NYC is 8.4M. We should be seeing higher death count in Bangladesh than NYC if your assertion about old age being the only factor is correct. Yes, age makes a big difference but there are other factors that are just as significant with weather being one. That Univ of Maryland paper is excellent when it comes to this.
India supposedly has had 32 deaths. This in a country of 1.3bn. Where are the bodies?
Re temperature – what do you say about New Orleans having so much COVID, relatively speaking?
That the weather is one vector among several in influencing outcomes? In re New Orleans, my wager would be Yancey Ward’s thesis, that the infections are occurring in the hospitals. Another might be that the critical mass of infected people were immunocompromised homosexuals. Just tossing spitballs here.
Good catch Neo. A few towns in the south have been warmish, but mostly not countrywide.
Andy:
When you ask “where are the bodies?” you are making many unwarranted assumptions, I think.
I am not alleging that Bangladesh has a problem right now like Italy. Let’s say it has the more average problem like – say – Maine. There would be only a tiny per capita increase in bodies, hardly noticed.
You also need to know what happens in Bangladesh when an old person dies. Probably at home, I might add. For example (written prior to COVID, but probably describing things that are still the way it works):
For deaths from COVID, the bodies are probably being dealt with by families in the usual manner. It seems it would only be if the death rate takes a tremendous leap that the change would be noticed.
Sweden is also being very light in its policies, no lockdowns (and no malaria or tropical climate, to say the least). And so far the outcomes there are not very different from, say, Norway’s. Here’s a Forbes piece.
Art Deco:
I was speaking of Bangladesh, in response to a comment. I also am speaking of a lot of the other warm 3rd world countries involved.
For the Saudis, I assume it’s not just a function of poor testing. It may be that they’ll escape, or it may just be they started late and are catching up. I notice that their first case was only reported on March 1, whereas the US’s first case was on January 20. Big difference in time. The very first coronavirus death in the US was on Feb 29, over a month later (see this). Saudi Arabia is only a month out from its first case at the moment and is reporting 8 deaths in a population one-tenth the size of ours. They are also reporting some panic buying.
In another piece on Sweden, there’s this:
Art Deco:
I agree that viruses tend to like cooler weather rather than high heat.
And yet that is certainly not universal. For example, during the 1918 flu (H1N1) pandemic, India was one of the hardest-hit countries in the entire world, and that’s saying something. And it struck in the summer:
Six percent of the population of India is estimated to have died, one of the highest rates in the world.
Well doesn’t it make sense that if you have a lot of infected people coming to a region (like Louisiana) and interacting closely it would override the warmer weather whereas if you have relatively few infected coming into an area the warmer weather may suppress it greatly.
It may be that they’ll escape, or it may just be they started late and are catching up.
No, it was present in the UAE at a time when there had been no community spread in the U.S.
Art Deco:
I was talking about Saudi Arabia. Each country has a different history, but they are all in the same general climate area.
Nor am I saying that climate won’t turn out to be a big factor. It might. But we don’t have nearly enough data right now to know, and there are too many confounding variables. It will probably sort itself out more as time goes on.
I live in a county of about 2 million with what is considered a higher than avg hit from the virus.
We have 25 dead.
That’s kind of a drop in the bucket.
They don’t give us hospitalization numbers so we don’t know the load on the healthcare system. They give a count of cases but admit it’s likely to be wildly inaccurate.
I’m becoming suspicious that they jumped the gun and overreacted.
JimNorCal:
At 25 dead out of 2 million, your county’s death-per-million number would be 12.5. That’s higher than the US rate at present and in line with many of the countries of Europe (not Italy of course, but some of the others).
The idea is that we won’t hit peak for a few weeks. Also, the idea is that if we hadn’t put in place all the restrictive rules, our rates would be much higher. I think the jury is definitely out on that.
Mexico was infected with Corona many years ago, around 2012+. This was brought into the USA, which is why people were having pneumonia like symptoms from cold/fever that they thought was some new exotic flu mutation. It wasn’t.
I find the relationship with chronic chloroquine use (in malaria-struck countries) more convincing that any other single factor, though average age and heat/humidity are interesting, too. Crowdedness and mass transit seem like likely factors, as well as large numbers of international visitors. But the chloroquine use correlation is striking. Thank goodness chloroquine trials are continuing despite the irrational debate and TDS.
LA is actually not doing badly. The number of cases has been growing by about 338 per day with no acceleration. The number of deaths has been 5-6 per day with no acceleration. That’s for all of Los Angeles County, which is huge and goes all the way down to Long Beach. Wealthy west-side neighborhoods have been hard hit: Brentwood and WeHo particularly. Brentwood’s numbers should be reflected on UCLA’s dashboard, which currently (as of 11:59 on 3/30) shows:
3,474 tests
239 pending results
2,897 negative results
338 positive results
31 hospitalizations
When I checked yesterday, I think they listed 331 positives and I know they had that same number of 31 hospitalized. They aren’t showing any acceleration, and their positive daily tests peaked last Wednesday at 39.
What percent of deaths are hiv positive or patients taking immunosupressant drugs for ulcerative colitis or rheum arthritis?
Texan99:
Are you assuming “chronic” use of the drug in those countries, or is there a chart showing it? My understanding (and I don’t have time at present to look it up again and get a link) is that the med is used for the populations of those countries) as needed, for people who already have the illness, and then stopped afterwards. There has been a problem with drug-resistant malaria and several other drugs have been substituted instead, as well.
Visitors to the countries may take it prophylactically, I believe, but not the regular residents.