Part I: is this “just a bad flu”?
I see it over and over: assertions that COVID-19 is just “a bad flu,” and accusations that those who say that are wrong, wrong, wrong.
Both statements annoy me – but then, maybe I’m just getting testy from being cooped up.
Or maybe I’m not just being testy, because what annoys me is that the phrases “the flu” or even “a bad flu” are rarely defined. They seem to have become protean terms that people use as they see fit.
So first I’d like to give some definitions. For “flu”:
There are two main types of influenza (flu) virus: Types A and B. The influenza A and B viruses that routinely spread in people (human influenza viruses) are responsible for seasonal flu epidemics each year.
Influenza viruses can and do change quite regularly, and the people who make vaccines try (and sometimes fail) to keep up with those changes. But the viruses remain one of those two types.
Note also that word “seasonal.” There is a flu season, and although it drifts around somewhat and varies somewhat in length, it tends to be from later in the fall to sometime in the spring.
This is part of life and happens every year. But some of these seasonal flu seasons are worse than others, so there’s a lot of variation in how many people get sick, how sick they get, how many die, and the age distribution of all of the above.
COVID-19 is a different type of virus, a coronavirus rather than a flu virus. However, just to complicate matters, this particular coronavirus causes symptoms that are very very much like the flu. But we don’t know how seasonal it is. And still another important difference is that we already have vaccines for the flu, and so it’s not so very hard and doesn’t take so very long to transform those vaccines into one for a new flu strain.
That’s not true of coronaviruses. We started to develop a vaccine for the previous one known as SARS (although COVID-19’s official name is “SARS-CoV-2,” just to complicate matters). But the process was never finished because the disease ended up being far more localized than originally thought and therefore the money was never spent to fully develop a vaccine that was considered to be unnecessary. That SARS vaccine work might be helpful in developing a vaccine against COVID, but it’s nothing like the head start we ordinarily have in developing vaccines for new types of flu.
But sometimes a flu becomes a far greater killer than it usually is even in a “bad” year. Sometimes the flu becomes a far more vicious killer around the world. These flu pandemics also vary in deadliness, although they all are nasty. In the 20th century we had three: 1918, 1957, and 1968.
You probably know that 1918 was the worst of all. I’ve written about it before:
How many people died worldwide? Estimates vary, but the most conservative state that the death toll was 25 million. Oher estimates go much higher, up to 70 million or even 100 million.
That’s worldwide, in a time when the population was much smaller than today. The US was by no means the hardest hit, but it’s estimated that we lost about 675,000 Americans back when the US population was somewhat less than a third what is today – so today’s equivalent US death toll would be approximately two million.
That was devastating, and it also was “the flu.” What’s more, that illness tended to work in a way that was somewhat strange for flu: it killed the young and old, which is typical, but it also killed a far greater proportion of young adults in the prime of life.
So there’s no “just” to “just the flu,” unless you specify something like “regular seasonal flu rather than pandemics” – which is a mouthful.
But even regular seasonal flu can be very very bad. We accept it for various reasons, though. One is that we’re used to it. Another is that the media reports on it at times but doesn’t often highlight or spotlight it. Another is that it tends to kill the very old (although COVID does the same in that regard, and yet is very much in the new). What’s more, flu deaths are mostly estimated. It’s a little-known fact (at least, I didn’t know it till recently), but patients – even those who die – are not tested for flu that often.
So all these things have combined to make the terms “flu” and even “seasonal flu” take on an aspect far more benign than they sometimes deserve.
Let’s take an example from the “bad” flu year of 2017-2018. That wasn’t so very long ago, right? So we all should remember, correct? But we don’t; I certainly didn’t, until COVID came along and I started looking this sort of thing up (the article is from early February 2018):
The amount of influenza ravaging the U.S. this year rivals levels normally seen when an altogether new virus emerges, decimating a vulnerable population that hasn’t had a chance to develop any defenses.
It’s an unexpected phenomenon that public health experts are still trying to decode.
And yet it flew under the radar for most of us, although I assume that the CDC, doctors, and hospitals were paying close attention:
The primary type of influenza this year hasn’t changed enough from previous seasons to be considered a novel strain, Schuchat said. The agency’s virologists are studying it to determine if there are any other explanations for why it’s been so hard-hitting…
Deaths from influenza and pneumonia, which are closely tied to each other in the winter months, were responsible for 1 of every 10 deaths last week, and that’s likely to rise, Schuchat said in a conference call Friday. There were 40,414 deaths in the U.S. during the third week of 2018, the most recent data available, and 4,064 were from pneumonia or influenza, according to the CDC data. The number for that week is expected to rise more reports are sent to the agency.
It gets worse. The death toll in future weeks is expected to grow even higher because flu activity is still rising…
That was written on February 10. I don’t have weekly figures for later in the season, but I’m going to assume they went up, although I doubt they ever came to rival what we’ve seen lately with COVID-19. Of course, none of these are exact figures. The flu deaths in 2017-2018 were estimates. And the deaths attributed to COVID-19 may be over- or under-reported as well (are all people with COVID who die being labeled COVID deaths no matter what they may be dying from, and/or are home deaths from COVID not being properly listed as caused by the disease?). But the figures are all we have to go on.
Here’s the CDC report on that 2017-2018 season. You can see the death rate estimates that year per 100,000 people were as follows: for ages 0-4 it was .4 (or 115 total), for ages 5-17 it was 1 (or 528 total), for ages 18-49 it was 2 (or 2803 total), for ages 50-64 it was 10.6 (or 6751 total), for ages over 65 it was 100 (or 50,903 total).
Of course, we didn’t have social distancing edicts back then. And I’m not saying that social distancing is a bad idea now, because I do think that without them, COVID would be killing a lot more people. It’s already killing plenty, and it certainly seems that it’s at least going to be equal to a “bad” flu year even with all these draconian rules in place. But the big (and so far unanswerable) questions are: at what cost? How many more deaths would there have been without the rules that are crippling the economy and causing resultant hardship?
[NOTE: This is Part I of a projected two-or-more-part series on the topic of COVID and flu. My plan is to cover the following: the 1957-1958 “Asian” flu pandemic, the 1968-1969 “Hong Kong” flu pandemic, and the “swine” flu H1N1 pandemic of 2009-2010.]
“How many more deaths would there have been without the rules that are crippling the economy and causing resultant hardship?”
The “If the rest of the country gets as bad as New York now” tracker for April 9, 2020, stands at about 120,000 dead. I think the latest official figure is a projected 60,000 dead, though that’s dropped from a projected 90,000 or so dead just a week ago. And we’re already at over 16,000 actual dead, compared to about 34,000 killed in 2018-2019 by the flu.
So, even with the severe restrictions we’ve taken, COVID-19 looks pretty sure to be about as bad or worse than the last flu season. Take those restrictions away and the initial projections of millions dead might not have come true but we could very well have seen parts of the country with overwhelmed and collapsing health care systems.
Mike
Or if we had used an approach like the South Koreans, or if we had chosen to isolate and protect the elderly and infirm as a priority and address the vectors (staff and professionals in those facilities), or if …. But why someone chooses to tout a New York tracker, now that’s a real conundrum.
It seems that we are trying to be statistical without any real idea of what the Corona virus benchmarks are. MBunge’s suggestion of a possible 120,000 dead would make this about twice as bad as a “bad flu season” but even still, that is 120,000 / 320 million = 0.0375% of the total population; a large number but an insignificant percentage.
Could it have been (or be) worse? That’s the problem with trying to prove a negative. Have our distancing policies helped? Probably so, but with estimates of 50% of infected people being asymptomatic to what extent distancing helped is really an open question.
IMO what the Wuhan Coronavirus has done has been has been to carry to the nth degree the ripping off of the masks of numerous people and institutions. The WHO as a Chinese surrogate, the press and the Democratic party as rooting against its own country in a desperate effort to damage Trump. The FDA, CDC and other government agencies for bureaucratic ineptitude and inability to readily adapt to the current virus (or adapt to anything, really), and perhaps most importantly, the willingness of our government to suspend our civil rights and the people’s willingness to accommodate those suspensions out of fear.
On that last point, don’t misunderstand me. It is one thing to voluntarily accommodate the various federal and gubernatorial guidelines. I do so, and I agree that we should because we really do not know the totality what we are dealing with here. But I offer that there is a psychic difference between people who accommodate because they must (i.e., it’s the law, we were told we must do this>) and those who choose to accommodate because it happens to make the most sense to voluntarily comply at this point in time. It’s sheeple who are ruled vs. people who are governed, and this at a time when too many of our supposed superiors already see themselves as public masters rather than as elected public servants.
Pardon my venting. Now excuse me while I step out on my porch and wave my Gadsden Flag.
MBunge:
The point of that question of mine was that we don’t know the answer, and I submit that we almost certainly will never know. Models are often wrong, but why? Was the model wrong this time, and which model are we talking about (the initial ones differed and/or had a wide range)? Was the model way off base or only a little? Was it the intervention that changed the outcome for the better? Or would the outcome have been better even without it?
We don’t know. There are nations which haven’t done much of anything in terms of social distancing, but for the most part they are nations that didn’t have much of a coronavirus problem in the first place. There are nations which intervened with draconian social distancing and claim it really really helped, but some are nations like China whose statistics can’t be trusted. And there are a few nations with a fair degree of coronavirus – such as Sweden – which aren’t doing much social distancing and are doing fair to middling so far, but with accelerating tolls. There are countries doing poorly that started social distancing early, and countries doing well that started it late. Maybe some clear pattern will emerge some day, but so far it hasn’t.
The IHME model touted by the White House ‘experts’ factored in complete social distancing and shutdowns from the beginning and still said 100,000-240,000 deaths before the adjustments downward. Anybody that tries to say our actions have led to a lower projected death total from this model is being ignorant or dishonest. They made adjustments earlier this week and it was way off one day later. This model is junk.
Sean Davis and Alex Berenson on Twitter have done great work highlighting the ridiculousness of this model that was used to cause such massive economic disruption.
“But why someone chooses to tout a New York tracker, now that’s a real conundrum.”
Well, New York is…you know…IN AMERICA, as opposed to a foreign country which has vastly less direct or indirect connection to the rest of the United States. New York is also, for good and ill, much more similar to the rest of America culturally, economically, structurally, and behaviorally than South Korea. How many direct flights from China to South Korea are there normally compared to China and the U.S.? How many direct flights from Europe to South Korea normally compared to Europe and the U.S.? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
I don’t mind people disagreeing with me. Heaven knows I’ve been wrong about enough stuff in my life that I should welcome it. It’s a little annoying, however, when people disagree with me when they obviously haven’t…you know…ACTUALLY THOUGHT about the issue.
Mike
That is not to say that social distancing and shutdowns haven’t had an effect on the virus spread (sure as hell hope it has for all the damage these measures have caused) but using those actions to defend the adjustments to IHME model is just wrong.
MBunge:
However, in terms of coronavirus, New York is an outlier so far.
It has one of the worst records in the world, actually.
Of course, the most galling aspect of this is the so-called experts are in a no lose situation. If their projections are accurate they can on and on about how smart they are and their models are just super and should be believed for all future viruses and if their models are way off they can get away with saying that because of their brave warnings people took action and lowered the totals and the ignorant and willing media will let them get away with it.
And if I may, apropos of my point above, I just saw this in Roger Kimball’s latest article:
My concern exactly: Be wary that we do not become the 50 HOAs of America rather than its 50 United States.
The link:
https://spectator.us/case-reopening-country-now/
Griffin:
Agreed. I went into that in more depth here.
From CDC: “The overall vaccine effectiveness (VE) of the 2017-2018 flu vaccine against both influenza A and B viruses is estimated to be 40%. This means the flu vaccine reduced a person’s overall risk of having to seek medical care at a doctor’s office for flu illness by 40%. Protection by virus type and subtype was: 25% against A(H3N2), 65% against A(H1N1) and 49% against influenza B viruses.”
Not so doggone impressive, huh?
Means it was overall 60% ineffective.
60% Ineffective.
And no one’s hair caught on fire.
Until now, with our MSM-fueled mass hysteria, societal pyromaniacs like Fauci and Birx, some $2,000,000,000,000 of new federal debt, helicopter money, gubernatorial stay-at-home tyrannies, 17 million newly unemployed, small businesses bulldozed flat.
Mr. Bunge:
Somehow NYC isn’t like San Francisco, or Los Angeles, or Seattle, or Houston, or even Boston, or the great expanses of the great unwashed, you know those place called “rural?” Just because NYC’s experience is the worst in the US makes it the standard? Maybe the substandard. Consider that thought before your next rant.
Griffin,
I find myself completely unconcerned by the lack of accuracy of the models. Because many find the inaccuracy disturbing, I’ve asked myself why I should feel differently. And the answer is that I always assume models are wrong, often on the high side. As I have said before on this blog, the purpose of these models is not to foretell the future, no one can do that, the purpose is to provide a basis for planning and to center people’s attention on developments.
I’ll also note that at the time of the early projections, Italy and Wuhan were major sources of preliminary data. If their experiences had been replicated across the US, we would all be looking like New York City. If I were to speculate, I would blame a lack of early intervention for the problems in those places. Even a few weeks could make a difference, and I think most of the US got those few weeks.
Great post, neo. Great comment at 6:01 p.m., T.
Thanks all.
When reliable data is absent experts make models which can range from useful to dangerous. And, there always unintended consequences. Coming soon: food chain supply problems. (Yes, it is searchable, just less important than orangemanbad.)
I have thoughts similar to those expressed by Cicero, the response to COVID19 will with hindsight, prove the cure is worse than the disease
Chuck,
Yeah, that’s all fine and dandy in some classroom or some conference for epidemiologists but when the models are being used as a reason to shut a large portion of the largest economy in the world down then I would say accuracy is a little bit important.
Andrew McCarthy on the models:
http://www.nationalreview.com/coronavirus-pandemic-projection-models-proving-unreliable/
Griffin,
Decisions are the job of the people in charge, modelers are like intelligence officers, it is a specialized trade, they aren’t made commanders.
There is no such thing as a perfect model. Take, for example, a well defined problem like modeling a optical system of mirrors and lenses. When the actual device is assembled there will be spacing and centering errors, variances of the index of refraction from spec, manufacturing variance of lenses and applied coatings, unforeseen light leaks, etc. Optical design is well understood, but the product still needs to be tested. When models are used for public policy testing is not an option, it will always be a trade off with decisions made on uncertain information. It is up to the leaders to make those decisions. And no matter how well things go, they will be second guessed. People still argue over decisions made in WWII, and we won that war and the cold war that followed.
And if they hadn’t shut things down, and the US was home to scenes like those coming from Ecuador, people’d be demanding to know why the negligence.
It was a no-win situation, and they erred on the side of more people coming out of it alive. I can’t really blame them for that.
And if they hadn’t shut things down, and the US was home to scenes like those coming from Ecuador, people’d be demanding to know why the negligence.
Fake news. There have been 272 recorded deaths in Ecuador, or 15 deaths per million resident (1/2 the German rate). No clue what’s up. Note, however, the daily death toll appears to be reaching the apex of the bell curve.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/ecuador/
Think back to the 2016 election. If memory serves, it was Nate Silver of the 539 blog that gave Hillary Clinton an 83% chance of winning the election. People were surprised that Trump won, but Trump had a 17% chance of winning, yet the pundits. and much of the public heard 83% and surmised a shoe in: a 100% chance of winning. Likewise, people seemed to hear “extinction event” when the high numbers of various models were publicized. Even the large numbers, 240,000 deaths, computes to 0.075% of the population, again a substantial number but an insignificant percentage, and hardly an extinction event.
Models, IMO, are like that. STEM models deal with constants such as gravity, velocity, the speed of light, etc., but models in the soft “sciences” do not. It may be too much to say garbage-in-garbage-out, but I suggest that is it absolutely fair to say supposition-in-supposition-out. Then if one is constructing a model based upon supposition, the bias of the supposition is baked into the algorithmic cake.
Models, it seems, are like differential equations with multiple independent variables all changing at unique rates. So, it’s possible to look back and say “this is WHY we got the result we did,” but in order to be predictive, the model must get every variable and every rate of change precise and correct. So, while models can be instructive, they are rarely predictive, and on the very, very, very rare occasion when that does happen, I offer that it’s more than likely luck than skill.
Chuck,
Yes, that’s why I have been critical of Trump because he seems to have completely fell under the sway of the ‘experts’. When he said he hoped to start opening by Easter (now 2 days away) that seemed consistent with his approach but it was right after that when the 100,000-240,000 death counts came along and he was touting that right along side the gods of science. All these leftist governors don’t really surprise me as they have dreamed of something like this giving them incredible control over the rubes.
I expect more from Trump.
such as Sweden – which aren’t doing much social distancing and are doing fair to middling so far, but with accelerating tolls
Sweden’s doing rather poorly compared with Denmark and Norway, with deaths-per-resident about 2x and 4x as severe, respectively.
Art Deco:
That’s what “fair to middling” means in this context. It means that it’s worse in Sweden than in some European countries that implemented more social distancing and it’s better in Sweden than in some other countries that implemented more social distancing. Did you see the chart I linked to on the words “there are countries”?
Well, COVID-19 is the official WHO name for the condition(disease) caused by the official WHO named SARS-CoV-2. I call it SARS 2.0. Mostly because in the announcement of the official taxonomic names, the WHO stated they would use SARS-CoV-2 in public releases as it might upset some people in Asia. Instead they opted for “the virus that cause COVID-19” and one other dissembling.
Well, as you went over, we can and do have pandemic influenzas that will run through the population just like SARS 2.0 has. The “seasonal” influenzas are only seasonal because, A. there is a level of immunity in the population, and B. they show up in the medical surveillance more from October 1 – into May. This last season’s influenza death estimate is 24,000-63,000. It should be noted they don’t do a lot of testing but rather track Influenza-Like Illness (ILI). They have to do some sorting of the data to arrive at the seasonal influenza burden.
Interestingly for the “bad flu” argument is that SARS 2.0 is spreading like an influenza virus. It has similar environmental stability in air as influenza, a bit longer on surfaces. Unlike influenza, SARS 2.0 is a lower respiratory virus so nastier in that fashion.
What I was startled to discover is that very little research on the transmission of influenza has been done since the original (pre-dating CDC) work in 1941. I did find a 2009 study that showed influenza spread via aerosols and not just by droplet and touch transmission. This would implicate the wearing of masks. But this new transmission is not pushed. Apparently the WHO doesn’t promote the wearing of masks for political reasons, i.e, many countries wouldn’t have the supplies, according to Dr. Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH in his recent CIDRAP COVID-19 podcast.
There is also a Feb 2019 study that found a correlation between the start of school and the spike in “medically assisted Acute Respiratory Infections” in children age 5-17. Who knew?
Why Dr. Fauci, head of the NIH, Institute for Allergies and Communicable Diseases for the past 36 years, doesn’t use this information when on a pandemic task force is unknown. Theres is no more firm evidence of droplet (spittle) or touch transmission of SARS 2.0 than there is for close-range aerosol transmission by 10s of minute exposure to virus in a confined, poorly ventilated space. I wonder if the NYC spike isn’t associated with unmasked commuters on poorly ventilated subway stations/trains and buses for 30-180 minutes a day. The cases are higher in the outer (commuter) boroughs.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm
Rob Crawford,
Comparing Ecuador to the USA is an apple and orange thingy. You might as well compare Somalian industrial might to the USA industrial might.
Connecting some dots:
Covid victims present with low blood oxygen, some docs say it’s more like altitude sickness than typical acute respiratory distress. Others say ventilators are being overused.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9GYTc53r2o
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-social-media-is-crucial-for-frontline-physicians-in-the-fight-against-covid-19/
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-overused-for-covid-19/
The Covid-19 virus seems to attack hemoglobin’s ability to carry oxygen, and may be freeing up iron ions, which can be damaging to tissue:
https://chemrxiv.org/articles/COVID-19_Disease_ORF8_and_Surface_Glycoprotein_Inhibit_Heme_Metabolism_by_Binding_to_Porphyrin/11938173
Methylene Blue is being looked at as a possible prophylactic, since cancer patients on a regimen of MB seem to be Covid resistant. The mechanism may have to do with hemoglobin:
A COHORT OF CANCER PATIENTS WITH NO REPORTED CASES OF SARS-COV-2 INFECTION : THE POSSIBLE PREVENTIVE ROLE OF METHYLENE BLUE
https://guerir-du-cancer.fr/a-cohort-of-cancer-patients-with-no-reported-cases-of-sars-cov-2-infection-the-possible-preventive-role-of-methylene-blue/
> In the 1920s methylene blue proved to be a dramatic antidote for carbon monoxide or cyanide poisoning.23 Consequently, methylene blue could be very efficient since 1940 for treatment of methemoglobinemia, a pathology where the ferrous ion of hemoglobin becomes oxidized into ferric ion, impairing attachment of dioxygen and thus reducing the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood.22 Upon IV-injection methylene blue (1-2 mg·kg-1 or 1% sterile solution) transforms in contact with reductases in the erythrocytes into the colorless leuco-methylene blue (LMBH) able to reduce methemoglobin back to normal hemoglobin.
Researchers looking at quercetin as a possible Covid treatment.
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/health/quercetin-take-or-not-take
Quercetin chelates ionic iron:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0102900
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4464588/
Quercetin prevents oxidative degradation of hemoglobin:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25026201
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/245662025_Quercetin_Diminishes_the_Binding_of_Hemoglobin_to_the_Red_Blood_Cell_Membrane
Hydroxychloroquine has antioxidant properties:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26246395
Zinc has known antiviral qualities but can’t naturally pass the cell wall. Quercetin and Hydroxychloroquine are both zinc ionophores, allowing zinc to get into the cell where it can interfere with viral replication.
The problem with “flattening the curve” and “social distancing” and universal quarantines – in the absence of a good/great vaccine coming on-line in 7 or 8 months – is that a recurrence of the disease is more or less guaranteed. California and Florida and other “warm and sunny” states seem to be taking less of a hit. If this suggests the Wuhan Coronavirus is seasonal, buckle up for a winter return since there may be little herd immunity acquired this round.
Regarding questioning the models, and the fact that we still seem to have no reasonable benchmarks for modeling this virus see this (H/T Instapundit):
The link:
https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/530092711-roseland-hospital-phlebotomist-30-of-those-tested-have-coronavirus-antibody
Griffin,
I think that is a fair criticism. My big problem with Trump are the immense spending bills that have been passed. They are bound to be larded with tons of unknown crap. I’m not sure how much better Trump could have done, government funding in this country has been broken for at least the last 12 years, but I think he should have drawn the line earlier. I’m hoping he can exercise some discretion in actual spending without getting impeached. Heck, I’d say politics in the US seems broken. The greatest impact of this pandemic may end up being political.
“But why someone chooses to tout a New York tracker, now that’s a real conundrum.” … “Well, New York is…you know…IN AMERICA”
Yes, but New York is absolutely nothing like the rest of America when it comes to how it easily it can communicate an airborne illness between people. From the building upon building where thousands live right on top of each other sharing every egress and often the same ventilation system, to a culture that eats out in restaurants far more than anywhere else in the US (restaurants where tables are rarely more than 3 feet from each other) to a mass transit system perfectly designed to spread disease far and wide (not just in the city but throughout the ny, nj and conn suburbs through metro north, nj transit, etc). There is no other city in the US that has such a combination of communication vectors for an airborne disease.
So I do think its ludicrous to extrapolate what occurs in NYC to what might occur anywhere else in this country.
Why do some believe there will be a vaccine for COVID19? We have no vaccine for the common cold, another coronavirus. Wishful thinking or another boondoggle of funds lining the pockets of bureaucrats?
parker:
Because COVID is related to SARS, and we were on the way to developing one for SARS.
The common cold is not primarily a coronavirus, although it sometimes can be. It is a rhinovirus usually, but it can be any number of types of viruses. Here’s some info:
NYC, 27,000 people per sq. mile, density might be part of the problem in NYC, lots of folks traveling in and out of NYC from all over the world, all of the time. Pull your heads out of your backsides and look at the demographics, density and mobility and go figure.
This shit all give me a headache because there are way too many variables for anyone to make a decision to fly our nation into a mountain based up one part of the United States of America. I am sorry for those affected and all those who live in cities that have been failing for decades which are experiencing this virus afflicting people who are not living good life styles to begin with. Lots of factors and lots of causes and oh, my, lots of diversity reasons why those at the bottom of prosperity are getting hammered.
I am so sorry, stuff always falls down and this is no exception and you’all at the bottom can thank your fine Democratic Party leaders for giving you the last 50 years of leadership putting you in this position, welcome to your world.
All punctuation errors and spelling errors are because of my three glasses of wine before I wrote this. Mea culpa, and thank you Neo for your site where us common folk can be heard.
A huge reason the flu is “just the flu” is because it hits most people not very hard. Oh sure we’re big crybabies while we suffer, but it’s mostly aches, sniffles, congestion, and coughs. We might take to our beds with it. We treat it with tea and menthol and Tylenol and NyQuil. Maybe a prescription decongestant.
That’s not everyone’s experience, obviously, but most of us have been through multiple flu seasons with very little danger (that we knew of) to our lives. And a lot of us have been through various flu seasons without ever getting the flu (a few have never had it!).
But Winnie The Flu had this big blossom in China. Suddenly China shut down a city of 11 million people. And the folks who have wanted to fight a pandemic for decades saw their chance. (Funny, they’ll claim that military people will turn a non-war into a war because “they’ve trained their whole lives for this”; but they won’t say the same about doctors at places like WHO.)
So, where this would have just been another SARS, it became The Super-Flu From Hell. It got headlines and tweets and press conferences and models that showed it sweeping the world like the Black Death. And then lockdowns as Dr Robert McNamara* took over the war planning. And it became so much bigger than it really needed to be.
(* That’s a metaphor. If you’re too young to remember the Vietnam War, just ask for an explanation.)
I would assert that most people who refer to this as “a bad flu” (myself in particular, but others, too, for the most part) are usually meaning it in terms of the risk to all — both the higher-risk groups and the general public, as well as the symptomology and fatality rates, not as a clinical definition of the term “flu”.
Is this just a bad flu? We don’t know enough to answer that, IMO. This is a mysterious illness. Many people get it and have no, or mild symptoms. Many have awful fevers and chills lasting up to 14 days, with a further recovery necessary to feel well again. And then there are those who become gravely ill with ARDS and need to be put on a ventilator from which only about 20% survive.
We don’t really know how infectious it is. In some places it runs through the population like fire, in others it seems not very contagious at all. Can disciplined handwashing/hand sanitizing, masks, and careful cleaning of surfaces protect against virulent spreading? Or is a stoppage of those activities such as air travel, commuter travel, restaurant dining, sports events with huge crowds, and other events that bring large numbers of people together the best way to stop the infection?
Will the virus die down in the warm months and spring back to life in the fall? Or will it just be somewhat less infectious during the warm months? How do we handle it in the fall?
Why do medical authorities not get behind possible treatments such as Hydroxychloroquine, a long used and safe drug? Are they afraid that a treatment would ruin their reputations as scientists or infectious disease model interpreters?
The questions are far more than the answers at this point. Each day we scan the news looking for light at the end of the tunnel. And each day the questions are still there and no light seems to appear. It’s maddening.
The models are not reassuring because they are not factual. Models are “best” estimates by “experts.” I’ve known this about models for years because I have examined the AGW models. That’s why I don’t expect too much from models. In this case, because there is so little factual information, they are bound to be less than accurate. We crave answers, and the models are held up as the expert’s projection of the future – an answer to our question of how many will get sick, how many will die? When they are wrong we are not encouraged, to say the least. We are enraged about our loss of freedom and yet we are also leery of catching this mysterious disease, especially if we are old. So we do the best we can and hope that things will work out.
Thankfully, we can write about our ideas and feelings here. Thanks, Neo.
The concept of “seasonal” flus is interesting.
We know they are the colder months, but I’m willing to bet that it isn’t the cold weather, per se, but the increased heating in homes and buildings that bakes the humidity out of the air, and the sinus passages, removing a first line of defense.
I experienced this in my youth when I would crank the free heat up to 80 in the winter and run around the apartment in tank tops, cut-offs and sandals.
I got regular respiratory ailments those winters.
Then I read about freezer workers (like I had been in my teens) not getting respiratory ailments.
It’s not the cold of Winter. It’s the heat. Get a humidifier. And keep it clean.
Since people cant tell colds and flu apart… they say flu
but corona virus are more common as colds..
Coronaviruses have a worldwide distribution, causing 10–15% of common cold cases. Infections show a seasonal pattern with most cases occurring in the winter months
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Common human coronaviruses, including types 229E, NL63, OC43, and HKU1, usually cause mild to moderate upper-respiratory tract illnesses, like the common cold. Most people get infected with one or more of these viruses at some point in their lives.
Symptoms of common human coronaviruses:
runny nose
sore throat
headache
fever
cough
general feeling of being unwell
In the United States, people usually get infected with common human coronaviruses in the fall and winter, but you can get infected at any time of the year. Young children are most likely to get infected, but people can have multiple infections in their lifetime.
If you are found to be infected with a common coronavirus (229E, NL63, OC43, and HKU1), that does not mean you are infected with the 2019 novel coronavirus.
Soooooo the real question is whether this will end up, ending up as just one more set of letters in the common coronavirus list or not..
many people think it will… (i think so)..
Human coronavirus HKU1 (HCoV-HKU1) is a species of coronavirus which originated from infected mice. HCoV-HKU1 was first identified in January, 2005, in a 71-year-old man who was hospitalized with an acute respiratory distress and radiolographically confirmed bilateral pneumonia. The man had recently returned to Hong Kong from Shenzhen, China
Human coronavirus OC43 is a member of the species Betacoronavirus 1 which infects humans and cattle
Human coronavirus NL63 (HCoV-NL63) is a species of coronavirus that was identified in late 2004 in a seven-month-old child with bronchiolitis in the Netherlands. The virus is found primarily in young children, the elderly, and immunocompromised patients with acute respiratory illness. It also has a seasonal association in temperate climates. A study performed in Amsterdam estimated the presence of HCoV-NL63 in approximately 4.7% of common respiratory illnesses
Human coronavirus 229E (HCoV-229E) is a species of coronavirus which infects humans and bats.
HCoV-229E is one of the seven human coronaviruses which include HCoV-NL63, HCoV-OC43, HCoV-HKU1 and SARS-CoV-2 and are globally distributed
part of the above was from the CDC, part was from various wiki posts..
i put this up way back in the beginning of the outbreak..
the fact that they kill with co-morbitity was not unknown…
and given it causes about 10–15% of common cold cases, puts it at around 85% asymptomatic..
we will find out whether SARS-CoV-2 ends up being more or less similar… AFTER all this is over..
oh well… putting it up doesnt really get heard until people want to hear it
so i get tired… i dont put up half of what i used to cause its a waste of time
Mr. Bunge: What is needed is a half decent formula that maps infections vs population density with perhaps a quotion for cultural contact, with a elder vs young in it.
from all the reading and such, these are the variables i would use if i was training a net to predict case spread… NY is real dense with a subway system that forces people to get packed in… it only has about 4 days of food, so there is a constant need to go to the stores, and yet no one has realized that the change we get from the register from the people in front of us, can give it to us given the short term handling time.
Japanese on the other hand are more fastidiously clean though also packed in compared to places like Sweden or Nebraska… they do not shake hands the bow, they do not like body contact… while Chinese culturally have short distances as acceptable between people (to the point that new Chinese doctors have to be taught that most others like wider distances). Italians are physically close people but not packed in… in fact, even in Arab countries men may walk holding hands despite other customs of cleanliness (left hand vs right hand actions).
and those are general generalizations…
poor Chinese can be really filthy while more wealthy can be nearly germophobic… (economic quotient?) the masks they wear is about not transmitting to others, while here in the states, people been caught spitting and rubbing on things trying to spread it..
No model takes the worst case and extrapolates it to everywhere else as you did, which is kind of why your getting the reaction… you picked the worst, not the mean or average.. and you picked one of the most densly populated per square mile places with some of the most cultural mixing in the world, with huge transportation hubs one being international…
the models in this case suck..
as do the global warming models…
but we try to attribute the success of physics / engineering models and all that to these models
without examining rigor and errors… the better models are constantly being tested for accuracy and tossed out… in medicine bad models that are popular can live on a long long time… like some psych personality tests that are really bad but the left commonly uses them (see Adorno).. or the some of the other personality tests (entj etc), which is akin to astrology…
Scientific American
but there is a whole economic industry around it… companies pay for it too..
HEXACO is thought to be a better test… but living things just dont tend to be that easy to pin down… we have more dimensions and we change over time… so i have no opinion on that one (yet).
State Rep. Tavia Galonski recently posted her intention to report the president to the Hague, the city in the Netherlands where the International Criminal Court is.
Trump repeatedly said at a White House coronavirus task force briefing this week that an anti-malaria drug could treat COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
Last week, NBC News reported that an American couple has become deathly ill after ingesting a form of chloroquine. [fish tank cleaner they overdosed on]
“He’s going to get people killed.” – Galonski
[they want it bad… these people revel in destruction as the path to utopia]
(such as Sweden – which aren’t doing much social distancing and are doing fair to middling so far, but with accelerating tolls
Sweden’s doing rather poorly compared with Denmark and Norway, with deaths-per-resident about 2x and 4x as severe, respectively.)
Sweden is doing poorly now. People seem to not appreciate that flattening the curve doesn’t eliminate deaths, it just spreads them out. It’s quite likely that when Norway and Denmark loosen their restrictions they will catch up.
Without a vaccine, deaths won’t stop until we reach herd immunity at approx 70% of the population. Dead is still dead, you’re just dead in Sweden sooner.
Great discussion. OBloodyhell is spot on. The comparison to flu is to the fatality rate for a transmittable disease. The problem I have with locking down the country is twofold. Forst, there was never any indication from the Governors that the models might not reflect actual results. Second, at least in the State I live in, the Governor didn’t go to the Legislature and ask for emergency powers. I believe that better decisions would have been made if the representatives of the people were consulted. The governors, however, were only too happy to deprive the people of their liberty, their livelihood and their financial well being. They told us all we are asking you is to sit on a couch, that’s not too hard. How condescending. They forgot the part about asking you to give up your liberty, your job and your financial well being. When this blows over (and it may never because that peak they are expecting never seems to come) it would be nice if the Governors were brought before the bar to answer for their actions which deprived the people of their civil rights without due process and took their property without compensation.
Here you have the daily deaths in Spain during the last two years. You can notice the periodical increment during the winter, including flu deaths.
And then the big peak due to the coronavirus, high and narrow, which already started to decrease.
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/WWDFm/4/
With no herd immunity and the virus being contagious as hell, it spread extremely fast. The final death toll is not much higher than a hard flu… in a very narrow period: 3-4 weeks. It’s like having a hard winter flu concentrated in a single month.
The quicker it spreads, the quicker it ends. That’s the positive side. The negative side is that it collapses hospitals and people panic because health system is taken for granted.
Griffin on April 9, 2020 at 6:15 pm said:
Of course, the most galling aspect of this is the so-called experts are in a no lose situation. If their projections are accurate they can on and on about how smart they are and their models are just super and should be believed for all future viruses and if their models are way off they can get away with saying that because of their brave warnings people took action and lowered the totals and the ignorant and willing media will let them get away with it.
* * *
A gentleman boarded the train traveling between two cities in Iowa and found himself sitting next to a man who opened the window as soon as the train left the station and proceeded to tear his newspaper into small strips and carefully drop them outside the moving car.
The first man said nothing, but when they finally approached his destination he could no longer restrain his curiosity.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said to his companion, “but may I ask why you have been throwing those strips of paper out of the window?”
“Indeed you may so inquire,” replied his traveling companion. “I have found that it keeps the elephants from over-running the state.”
“Elephants!” exclaimed the other man. “There are no elephants in Iowa!”
“Yes. It works very well, doesn’t it.”
PS I have nothing against Iowa; that’s how we told the joke in the sixties.
On point in several ways:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/shocker-politicians-position-themselves-for-re-election.php
https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/04/09/part-i-is-this-just-a-bad-flu/#comment-2489104
‘A bad flu season’ is not the same as ‘last flu season’.
What’s more, given the attribute death even without tests much less autopsy that rules out other causes, some portion of COVID-19 deaths could BE flu deaths.
When comparing COVID-19 to “the flu” we need to remember that the ~50,000 seasonal flu deaths occur with a readily available vaccine (that sometimes doesn’t match the flu strain) and that there is currently no vaccine for COVID-19. We should also remember that each fall we hear “everyone should get a flu shot, especially the young, the old and the those with an underlying health condition”. Lastly, we need to remember that communists lie and from all appearances the Insidious Flu Wan Hu scared the Chinese dictators… would the reported death of 3,000 of their powerless slaves really scare the dictators?
Putting the remembrances together, we start with an estimated 50,000 deaths (it’s the flu!), we look at the reaction of the Chinese and bump up the number, and then we look at the percentage of our population that is “young, old and/or has an underlying health condition” and really bump up the estimated death total. And you get a very big number.
The problem for the person in charge is that the virus has an exponential growth rate which means you have to act long before you must act, because once you reach the “must act” stage it’s far too late. Consequently, you need good data early on and the only good data we had was that the Chinese were scared by their slaves dying. Then we started to see problems with the vulnerable population in Italy and the press saddled their “pandemic ponies” and all rationality was left in the dust.
I know I am late to the party but I came across this article in the Washington Examiner:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/respected-scientific-journal-issues-apology-for-pointing-out-coronavirus-originated-in-china-over-racism-fears
Should we now retroactively change the name of the Spanish Flu because it might offend Spaniards?
You know how you deal with bullies? You punch them in the kisser so it hurts. You don’t kowtow to them!
Morning update: No good news to report. Active cases continues back on its linear portion of the sigmoid curve with possible flattening 6-7 days out. The goal posts keep moving as the active cases show no sign of moving away from a linear increase. Serious cases, that showed a 3 day flattening, now back inline with the increasing active cases and showed a 13% jump from the day before.
So why no change? All we are doing with the lockdown is just delaying the inevitable. For those who understand integral calculus, the area under the total death curve is going to be the same whether it’s a tall narrow curve, or a lower wide curve. Plus, we are adding the possibility of a resurgence after restrictions are removed. All this to destroy the economy, add to the death from untreated other illnesses, and secondary deaths from economic/social displacement. Only two ways this goes away: herd immunity or a vaccine. The politicians seem to be betting on a pie-in-the-sky vaccine. Trump needs to get himself away from Fauci/Birx. In my view those two have led us down a path to destruction.
Interesting listen from Dr. Ted Noel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn9SKYbk0GA
Agreed, physicsguy, on what we should do. Re-open things, recommending that people wear masks while shopping and on mass transit, and continue the hand-washing. People like me, 70+, need to stay isolated for a while longer. Younger people need to get back to work.
This is an excellent break down of the knowns and unknowns regarding this virus. How many of our professional journalists reporting on it, and hectoring our health and government officials know this information, or could write this post?
You would think being informed would be a prerequisite for people whose job it is to inform others, but few journalists invest the time.
Griffin on April 9, 2020 at 6:15 pm said:
“Of course, the most galling aspect of this is the so-called experts are in a no lose situation.”
No. If there are fewer deaths than predicted, it might be argued that the experts were hysterical fear-mongers.
We can’t know how bad things would have gotten. Suppose NY had not locked down. Things got pretty bad there even so, but how much worse might it have been if even more panicked New Yorkers had fanned out all over the country, seeding more outbreaks? Even the states and counties without jam-packed cities and mass transit might have been overwhelmed. Some guesses will just have to remain guesses.
This Chinese virus has 2 really strange features never seen before in respiratory infections: 1) a very long (2 weeks) incubation period with asymptomatic spread of the virus in the bodies of patients; and 2) infected persons can infect others during all this two weeks when nobody knows that they are spreading the disease. In addition, it does not makes sick absolute majority of babies, children or adolescents, and rarely seriously attack young adults, but is very dangerous for those of advanced age, the more dangerous the more advanced their age is. As an immunologist, I infer from this that this virus had very recently jumped to humans and is poorly fit for reproduction in human body. That is why it takes it almost two weeks to build up in sufficient numbers to produce real symptoms. But 2 weeks is an important period of time for producing serious immune response to a new, never met before antigen: this the typical period of mobilization of antibody-producing cells and building up of their numbers. To accomplish the task, however, these plasmatic cells need an another type of immune cells to recognise the alien antigen and present it to antibody-producing cells. This type of cells is called T-lymphocytes (T here stands for tymus, an important gland where these cell mature and are instructed to deal with alien antigenes). This gland is also called infantile gland: it is big and active in newborns, but gradually shrinks and devolves during infancy. It is complely degenerate in adults. The number of T-cells in circulation also gradually fall with the age, and is negligibly small in octagenarians. Biologically this all makes sense: infants are the most well armed against new infections, because they all are new for them. In adults, this immunological memory persists in plasmatic, antibody-producing cells, that can rapidly multiply when met with with already known alien antigen. But ability for immune response to unknown antigen rapidly declines with age and is almost non-existent in the really old people. That completely explain the difference in morbidity by age. In young, the mobilization of antibody response to virus is very fast, and they are mostly asymptomatic when infected: the duration of incubation period is longer than typical time to produce enough antibodies to kill the virus completely.
These pecular features of this virus make all known epidemiology models wide of the mark, totally inadequate. And I know them all, as a scientific editor of WHO basic manual on mathematical models in epidemiology.
Well, the other coronaviruses (6) that humans get take a while too..
but these are colds, not flu… and they attack people with co-morbidities as well.
Given my family, this was easy to see…
Yet, we do not want to notice that this was ALSO the issue in Italy too with its factories being the source…
Our politicians games are setting us up for more of these issues because their effort to push a false ideal takes precedence over safety. Even more so when they get to benefit from disaster more than real progress…
Once i had a railroad…
This was something i pointed out as hospitals get more money the more they cry poverty and waste money… they get little reward being efficient!!!!!!!!!
Are ventilators being overused on COVID-19 patients?
Some physicians caring for COVID-19 patients question whether the threshold for placing someone on a ventilator should be raised, given that the breathing machines are in critically short supply nationwide, Stat News reported.
“I think we may indeed be able to support a subset of these patients” with less invasive breathing support, Dr. Sohan Japa, an internal medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston told Stat News. Ventilators push oxygen into the lungs via a tube placed in the mouth, nose or a hole in the front of the neck; but less invasive devices like the breathing masks for sleep apnea could be used to treat some COVID-19 patients, at least at first.
Indeed, for COVID-19 patients who need breathing assistance, many hospitals are starting them off on sleep apnea devices or nasal cannulas, which deliver air into the nose through a pronged tube, Dr. Greg Martin, a critical care physician at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta , told Stat News.
These noninvasive devices offer some advantages compared with ventilators. For example, the process of intubating patients — placing a tube into their airway — to hook them up to a ventilator requires doctors to sedate patients for long periods of time, so the machine can take over the work of breathing, Stat News reported.
https://www.livescience.com/too-much-ventilator-use-for-covid19-coronavirus-patients.html
1) a very long (2 weeks) incubation period with asymptomatic spread of the virus in the bodies of patients;
The median incubation period is 5 days. The share with incubation periods > 11 days is around 3%.
Never blindly trust the experts. They are like generals who always are fighting not the war that ravages now, but the previous war. That what they were trained to do, and must go against all their habits of thinking to see the difference. This is a new war, and all the previous strategies are hoplessly obsolete.
Why do some believe there will be a vaccine for COVID19? We have no vaccine for the common cold,
IIRC ca. 1985 some researchers discovered an antigen common to cold viruses. The immune system cannot recognize the antigen because it is down a pit so and so many Angstrom units deep on the surface of such viruses.
Good news for New York, the daily number of deaths remains flat. Two weeks ago deaths doubled every 2.3 days, now it doubles every 6.6 days. It’s a welcome improvement.
It would be wonderful if the media focused on rates of change instead of totals.
Officially China’s National Health Commission (NHC) had initially estimated an incubation period from 10 to 14 days. Nobody knows for sure when a patient was infected, so the upper limit seems more plausible. This, of course, must depend on the dose of virus taken, so in asymptomatic (light) cases it should be longer.
USA deaths double every 5.7 days compared to 6.6 days for NYS. Getting the death rate down in NYS is key to turning this thing around.
This is a scary, sobering video, but one everyone should watch.
Dr. Keith Mortman, Chief of Thoracic Surgery at George Washington University hospital in D.C., has taken the CAT scan of an actual patient who was very sick with the Coronavirus and had to be intubated, and used virtual reality to graphically illustrate for people the wide extent of the damage that the Chinese Coronavirus can do to a person’s lungs.*
One of the versions of this video—can’t find that particular version now–also includes a basic tutorial.
If I am remembering it correctly, this tutorial explains that, when you breathe, oxygen is drawn into your two lungs and then distributed through these lung’s branching structure, through finer and finer structures, until that oxygen gets down to the ends of these branching distribution systems, to the alveoli distributed throughout your lungs.
At this point, the oxygen penetrates through a thin membrane in the alveoli, and into the circulatory system, to oxygenate blood that, then, carries this oxygenated blood throughout your body.
What the Coronoavirus does is to attack these alveolar membranes, and as they swell and get covered with secretions and blocked, oxygen can no longer penetrate these membranes to enter and oxygenate the bloodstream, and one-by-one your organs—starved for oxygen–shut down.
See https://wjla.com/news/local/a-new-perspective-virtual-reality-shows-exactly-how-covid-19-can-damage-the-lungs
The US won’t be back to anything like normal until we have a vaccine. That is the bottom line. We will not be ready for business in May or June or July. Maybe some smaller populated areas might be but even then people will be cautious. The world has changed. If you’re retired maybe that’s not so bad – other than the inability to travel for a while. But for those in school or the workforce we are seeing changes that will be with us for at least a year or more.
The exceptions might be for those who have already tested positive or recovered. But until we have wide testing it’s difficult to get to that point.
It’s not fun.
This is my way of saying CV-19 is not like the flu.
Stay safe out there.
This is precisely the “camel’s nose under the tent” that I fear; masters of the people rather than their elected servants. I’m sure others have seen even more examples of this hubris nationwide.
The link:
https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2020/04/10/welcome-to-the-socialist-republic-of-michigan-gov.-bans-travel-between-residences
Montage:
Thanks for your concern and wisdom (not). Any other wisdom and bottom line diktats? The sun don’t shine on that bottom line IMO. Do you have any special powers that enable you to know jack about rural America, such as the Eye of Mordor?
Your “normal” hasn’t been part of the US since early November 2016.
Here is an interesting, lengthy video, an “investigative report,” examining the origin of what they term the “CCP (Chinese Communist Party) Virus,” a deep dive into Chinese language sources by the Epoch Times Canada—a multi-language news organization headquartered in New York, and founded by Chinese-Americans associated with the Falun Gong, which focuses on China and its human rights record, and which has Chinese language expertise.
See https://www.facebook.com/EpochTimesCanada/videos/249873422852228/
And more on our 30 day free trial of socialism (but I’ll stop now):
The link:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/the_age_of_coronavirus_ushers_in_whiffs_of_totalitarianism.html
T:
The new “normal” from our progressive betters. What you can buy. Where you can go. When and how you can worship. What you can say (“COVID19”). When and if you can work. If you can vote (next rule)? It is for the health and safety of the “people” after all.
How’s that for not the flu? Almost as powerful as climate change and the New Green Deal. Models and the media, who knew their awesome power?
OM,
Unfortunately it has been “what you can say” for quite some time. Feeding this universal trend is my specific concern.
The US won’t be back to anything like normal until we have a vaccine. That is the bottom line. We will not be ready for business in May or June or July.
Japan is functioning satisfactorily – 120 million people packed like sardines and they have a few deaths a day. We need extensive distribution of protective equipment, a moratorium on mass celebrations, and extra care in re the elderly. Which means the supply chain back ups need to clear.
Brian Morgan:
You write: “It would be wonderful if the media focused on rates of change instead of totals.”
It would also be wonderful if pigs would fly. Or at least it would be a source of wonderment.
The media will focus on whatever makes things look worst. Especially if they think it will hurt Trump, but even without that, worst is good enough.
Artfldgr:
I think there is most likely something to your thesis. It makes sense that areas with a lot of travel back and forth from Asia and in particular China would be particularly hard hit. But what about the San Francisco area? SF is 35.8% Asian, and yet does not (at least so far) appear to be hard hit at all.
But what about the San Francisco area? SF is 35.8% Asian, and yet does not (at least so far) appear to be hard hit at all.
Hypothesis: the strongest vector in influencing outcomes would be the dimensions of the seminal infection. See Mardi Gras in New Orleans, or the funerals in Albany, Georgia. Posit nothing analogous occurred in the Bay Area during the time frame in question (say, mid-February). Posit that nothing analogous occurred in Seattle, either. Just bad luck in re one particular nursing home. NB, the flow of new cases in Seattle is no worse than the national mean as we speak. A new hypothesis in re New York is that it arrived there via travelers from Europe. The wildfire’s hardly spread beyond the commuter belt, suggesting that mass transit was a crucial vector. That it’s as bad in the suburbs as in the city suggests that elevator travel is a minor vector.
I’m so old I remember flying toasters. On the John Hopkins site there is a choice of three plot options: “Confirmed”, “Logarithmic”, “Daily Increase”.
Brian Morgan —
USA deaths double every 5.7 days compared to 6.6 days for NYS. Getting the death rate down in NYS is key to turning this thing around.
There’s a saying: “When a metric becomes a target it stops being a useful metric.”
Getting deaths to trend down isn’t key to turning this thing around, it’s just a way of looking better for the stats comparisons. Turning it around will be when we have a vaccine, or when we let enough people out to get infected to get herd immunity, or the virus mutates to a less virulent endemic form.
Bryan, I agree but all I have are metrics. I have no special skill besides crunching numbers. All I have is faith that skilled people are making the right decisions and its being reflected in the numbers. It’s down to faith at this point.
Just got back from the grocery store. Last time was nearly two weeks ago. What a nightmare. We’ve become cattle:
1. There used to be two points of ingress and egress. They changed it. Now one point is entrance-only, the other is exit-only. There used to be a common hallway that connected the two points (200 ft distance). They’ve blocked it off. People haven’t caught on yet.
2. Indoors, the aisles are now boldly labeled “One-way only”.
3. Paper products are still virtually exhausted.
4. Some items like coffee creamer that used to cost $3 are now $5.
5. At checkout all lanes are open but shoppers can’t choose because they are blocked. A drill sergeant barks orders: “The line begins at the end of Aisle 17!”
6. “Do-gooders” are everywhere scolding anyone without a mask.
The end is nigh. Please God get me out of New York.
Regarding the “closing of churches,” some anecdotal stuff:
I heard a fairly reliable rumor that some Priests are getting the word out that anyone told to report to a hospital due to the severity of their symptoms can stop and see a Priest first, and he will administer the Last Rites. This is being done since many patients are not allowed personal visits once they enter a hospital and if things go south they will not receive Last Rites. From what I hear this is being done clandestinely, on a Priest by Priest basis. It is very likely some Priests are not doing this, but also very likely some are.
Our local parish has been following orders from the Pope, U.S. Catholic Bishops and our Diocese. This morning my wife saw me getting ready to leave the house and asked where I was going. I told her I was going to walk to Church and asked her if she would like to join me. She said she believes the church doors are locked, but she would like to walk to it, and maybe we could circumnavigate the building a few times. I replied, “It will be open.” The doors were open and about 10 other folks were there, doing the same. We all took care to remain distant from one another. I imagine that has been going on all day, and continues now. Churches aren’t announcing it, nor publicizing it, but I believe many are allowing Easter week worship to happen.
It’s particularly challenging theologically for Christians, as the founder of the faith was a Jewish man who often violated Roman and local law, as well as Hebraic law, in order to do such things as minister to lepers. His followers were also imprisoned and tortured for practicing their faith. My guess is Sunday we will not see many news stories, if any, from major Catholic parishes holding public, in person, services, but I bet money there will be Protestant, especially Baptist churches in the U.S. that do.
I heard from a Jewish friend who had two, separate “facetime” Passovers with friends who were unable to celebrate in person due to social distancing rules.
I like to think there are many religious leaders of all faiths risking their personal health to minister to their flocks during this pandemic. My guess is they are asking folks to not publicize what is going on, for fear of being halted from their work, but I assume these stories will leak out when restrictions are lifted.
“It’s particularly challenging theologically for Christians, as the founder of the faith was a Jewish man who often violated Roman and local law, as well as Hebraic law, in order to do such things as minister to lepers.” [Rufus T Firefly @ 5:06 pm]
A brilliantly perceptive observation. That it must be clandestine in the 21st century United States is the real scandal.
T,
I heard from a few friends who live in Michigan; very well educated and very “live and let live” politically. They are extremely dyspeptic with Governor Whitmer’s new edicts. I’m not sure when her term is up, but if she’s got their attention this strongly I imagine she won’t be elected to a second.
“That it must be clandestine in the 21st century United States is the real scandal.”
I hear if you deny it is Easter three times before dawn on Sunday the COVID Pharisees will not stone you. 😉
Rufus T. Firefly – I am happy to hear that you are a man of God. I have faith but I don’t frequent church as often as I should. There have been two times in my life when I’ve needed God to explain what the hell is going on: the year following 9/11, and now. I was raised Methodist but it was too rigid for a young liberal. I discovered Pentecostal but it soon soured after I bumped up against the command hierarchy which, now that I think about it, exists in all religions.
Having said that I am going to say something absurd. But before I say it let me tell you how absolutely appalled my wife and I were when our young Gov. Cuomo announced his support for killing a born child just because the mother had misgivings at the moment of birth. Truth be known, my wife and I have no living children. Our first, Gabrielle, did not make it past 17 weeks gestation. Thankfully my wife is Catholic so she was tended to by the wonderful people at a Catholic Hospital. Part of the grieving process is for the parents to say goodbye. Gabrielle was a perfectly formed child, no longer than the length of my hand, but having mostly my wife’s features: long slender fingers. That experience was a turning point in my life. I was pissed, not for losing a child, but for being lied to by the liberal establishment about her being a “clump of cells”.
So here is my absurd statement: I think that Gov. Cuomo and the State of New York is being punished. There, I’ve said it.
So I forgot to mention that when I reached the checkout register this is what happened:
She: “May I help you? Do you have your card?”
Me: “How do you like your free two-week trial of Socialism?”
She: …. long pause …. “I don’t like it at all”
Without saying anything more I hope I changed a mind.
Brian Morgan:
Very good! I hope she is open for change too.
I’ve heard that paper money carries a lot of germs. 😉
The virology stats are almost entirely off basis.
Brian Morgan on April 10, 2020 at 8:47 am said:
I know I am late to the party but I came across this article in the Washington Examiner:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/respected-scientific-journal-issues-apology-for-pointing-out-coronavirus-originated-in-china-over-racism-fears
Should we now retroactively change the name of the Spanish Flu because it might offend Spaniards?
You know how you deal with bullies? You punch them in the kisser so it hurts. You don’t kowtow to them!
* * *
There is a way, way big difference between inciting racism, that is, holding all Chinese people everywhere somehow responsible for the actions of the CCP* by pointing out vituperatively (albeit correctly) that the disease started in China and was deliberately inflicted on the rest of the world, and what the Journal is trying to do: iabjure all connections of the virus to China.
Even the WaPo couldn’t go that far.
*This kind of tribal racialism is particularly notable among Muslims, many of whom will kill random Westerners because they are upset about something someone totally unrelated did to offend Islam (or so they claim) – no need to even be from the same country as the “offenders.”
Anyone in the West guilty of carrying on in the same fashion does need to be chastised, but there is no getting around the facts of the case on The Commie Cough (as AmmoGrrrll called it today).
T on April 10, 2020 at 1:40 pm said:
And more on our 30 day free trial of socialism (but I’ll stop now):
* *
American Thinker lists many of the manifold problems with the lock-down being executed by those who have a lock-’em-up mentality.
Bottom line:
Does the phrase “Better Red than Dead” ring a bell?
And it didn’t refer to Republicans, back in the day.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/nature_magazine_apologizes_for_having_associated_covid19_with_china_.html
“Here’s the real problem: wherever they go, students from China pay full fare.” [see AesopFan @ 10:30 pm]
Follow the money; nothing new under the sun! The irony of capital-ism from the Chinese communists.
Brian Morgan,
I hesitate to say “I’m a man of God.” I am a cool, clear
seeker of wisdom and truth 😉 , and that has led me to try to be a man of God, but I’m confident if you asked His opinion, God will tell you I come up way short. My path is a long and complex story, as all of ours are. Hard to summarize in a few sentences in the comments of a blog, but I was raised by a Catholic mother (Old world, eastern European Catholic. Big on humility, iconography and martyrdom.) and atheist father. My father is about as close to a character from a Damon Runyon novel as real life could produce. So I was raised with one parent quietly and humbly trying to teach me the Catholic faith and the other parent lecturing me on organized religion being the greatest grift any conman ever came up with. I still wonder if they aren’t both right.
I am very sorry for the loss of Gabrielle. My wife and I lost our second son on this exact date, 25 years ago. We will celebrate his birthday today, as we do every year. He was full term. I guess, “died at birth” is the accepted phrase. I believe the death certificate read, “cord accident.” In the months and years that followed, as I had time to reflect on everything, my view on abortion and “pro choice” gradually altered. I suppose you’d say I was “pro-abortion” at the time of our son’s birth. I don’t think it is an issue for the law, or pat, bumper sticker slogans. Each pregnancy is a personal circumstance and mothers in fear, or doubt, or in dire straights need individual help, not court edicts.
But you and I know it is a human life.
AesopFan, T, et al,
It seems a bit, reductio ad absurdum, but I don’t believe we would be here if it weren’t for a large percentage of the last two generations being raised in a home without a father and most states losing population in smaller towns and gaining it in larger towns And the XVIth and XVIIth amendments.
Since mothers have a lot more “skin in the game” regarding birthing and raising children they are typically far more protective than fathers, who don’t technically have to invest anything more than 10cc’s of fluid and maybe pick up the tab for a nice dinner. It’s often common that mothers are a bit over protective and fathers are a bit lax. There are many amazing people who can walk the tightrope of both roles, and there are no doubt many divorces that are justified (I mainly blame men for abandoning their duties) (and a lot of divorced couples do a good job of keeping both parents in their childrens’ llives), but we now live with many adults who believe pain and suffering are the worst things that can happen to a person. Mom sees you heading off on your bike and she shouts, “where’s your helmet?!” Dad winks and says, “have fun!”
I assume the Amendment piece is self explanatory; a shift from rural to urban (rural folks typically need to be more independent and resourceful, and typically have strong bonds with their neighbors and local community; folks in high-rise apartments, not so much) and a shift from distributed, federal power to D.C.
I am sure there is much less anxiety regarding this pandemic in rural communities than our most congested cities. Self isolation is a way of life in rural America and those folks know they can count on their neighbors and local officials. Heck, their local officials are their neighbors.
AesopFan, I know you know but I want to be clear when I said “You know how you deal with bullies? You punch them in the kisser so it hurts. You don’t kowtow to them!” — I meant it metaphorically — punish the CCP not any individual.
AesopFan, let me ask you, is it ever appropriate to punch an individual who is a bully? I was presented with that question at 12yo when a school yard bully repeatedly harassed me for months. One day an adult entrusted me with their property. The bully found me and threatened to strike me with a claw hammer if I did not hand it over. He promptly produced the hammer from his back pocket. I know what I did. What would you have done?
Brian – I would have run like the dickens, because I was, and still am, small and not strong, but smart enough to know the bully would damage me in a head-on confrontation.
If you punched him in any part of his anatomy, good for you.*
Did it cure him?
And, yes, I knew you were speaking metaphorically.
Metaphysically, however, the CCP is composed of individuals — and I am okay with making them feel the pain as individuals.
Almost all comments referencing groups are short-hand for the leaders, so we mean “punish the CCP leadership,” but not necessarily the subjugated peons — unless they enjoy what their leaders make them do.
*BTW, I am a fan of “Ender’s Game” if that means anything to you.
The short story is better than the book is better than the movie, but the moral of the fable is the same.