COVID death rates continue to fall
If deaths rates from COVID have gone way down, why then are people still getting so upset about rising case rates in some places? “Second wave!” they scream.
I think the answer is that the MSM has become addicted to COVID alarm stories, both because that type of news drives traffic and because the MSM thinks it will hurt Trump. So it continues, and added on is the bizarre fiction that someone who has not had a single good idea about how to tackle COVID any differently than Trump did (Joe Biden) is supposed to be the person who will handle it all much much better.
But let’s take a look at some facts that might help explain what’s going on now with COVID. There have been more tests, and in particular tests of people who are less ill or even asymptomatic. Also, the tests being used are more sensitive and probably pick up a lot more cases that would have earlier been missed. The people who are testing positive now tend to also be younger than before, and of course that means they would be expected to have milder cases. There’s also the possibility that social distancing and/or masks reduce the viral load even in people who do come down with the disease.
Plus, treatment has changed:
From published analysis Oxford Researchers show that in June people with the virus were four times less likely to die in hospital than in April.
Several factors play a part here as non-invasive devices such as CPAP replaced ventilators, infection control measures improved as hospitals created COVID-19 wards, whilst hospitals and clinicians do better when not overwhelmed.
Corticosteroids such as dexamethasone and hydrocortisone also contribute to improved recovery by calming the body at times over-reaching immune response which in itself can be the result of genetic predisposition.
As for whether the virus itself is getting less virulent, we simply don’t know. I suspect it may be the case, but so far scientists haven’t been able to verify that theory.
[NOTE: Some people may say that we have seen an unusual number of very serious post-infection complications in people who have had COVID, even mild cases. I’ve been following that, and I remain unconvinced that it is a common problem compared to other serious flus, or a long-lasting one, although that opinion of mine is open to revision. Maybe I’ll write a future post on that topic.]
It will be increasingly apparent to all rational thinkers, that the Wuhan virus, although a matter for serious concern, and potentially very dangerous for the elderly, those trapped in nursing homes, and older individuals with severe underlying conditions, poses almost no risk for young people or for the middle-aged and healthy, but it was certainly a splendid opportunity for those leftists in power to consolidate control and to instill unthinking fear, panic, and hysteria into the citizenry, many of whom have been far too easily coerced into believing nonsense about masks and lockdowns (news is breaking about panic-buying in Ireland as the state imposes an idiotic new lockdown).
We are definitely in a “casedemic” for many of the reasons Neo has just outlined. The ramping up of PCR testing is driving much of the new cases. In fact, looking at the cases data it looks like a 3rd wave of infections: 1st initial in April, second wave in June-July, and now this “third wave”.
Burt as also Neo hints at, the percentage of “serious cases” remains very steady at 0.5%. Georgia death rate is falling towards 20/day from a peak of over 90/day, and Florida (that evil place where DeSantis rules) is now approaching 10 deaths/day from a peak in June of 160/day.
My county of about 900,000 people consistently reports between 60-100 cases everyday and then reports that about 40% of new cases are in the 20-39 age group and 15% are in the 19 and under age group.
Since those age groups are rarely seriously affected by the virus this should be great news but of course it’s never reported that way.
And don’t kid yourself they will try to lockdown places once the election is over. Our idiot governor is up for re-election and of course this being Washington he will win but he has been opening up things a little the last week even though his beloved ‘cases’ have been flat to rising but I’m sure he will change his tune in a couple weeks.
This entire thing has been a crime against the citizens of the world perpetrated by leaders, bureaucrats and the media.
This may be the biggest scandal on a global scale ever.
There was a report that four babies in Australia had died because they were denied transport from Adelaide–large city without the necessary medical devices–to Melbourne. About a nine-hour drive from hospital to hospital with all the precautions that involves.
Covid restrictions, of course.
As somebody said, God has those babies in His loving arms. Those who made this happen will also come to His attention.
I haven’t done any research on this but anecdotally post-viral infection effects definitely do occur with other viruses.
About two years ago I was severely sick with a virus in the hand, foot, and mouth virus family and it has left me with some residual nerve effects – mainly tingling in my tongue. And my sister still has a bit of lung damage from a whooping cough infection ten years ago.
We’re both fine and our lives aren’t affected by these effects but it does show that viruses seen as ‘non-dangerous’ can and do have permanent effects on people. So covid isn’t unique in this regard.
This story from Florida today is an interesting look into the games going on with death reporting. Check out the lengths of time between some of these people becoming ‘cases’ and their date of death?
And this has been going on all over the country every day for months.
http://www.alachuachronicle.com/florida-surgeon-general-implements-additional-review-process-for-fatalities-attributed-to-covid-19-to-ensure-data-integrity/
And who really believes that such a high percentage of deaths are happening in Palm Beach county?
Death certificate matching, data dumps, legacy death laundering whatever you want is happening and the data is then being used to ruin lives.
Disneyland will never open under California’s criteria. Never.
See here for hospitalization rates as recorded by the CDC;
https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/COVIDNet/COVID19_3.html
click on the WEEKLY RATE to see the rate vs. calendar date of hospitalizations.
Hopefully someone can help me understand the meaning of coronavirus “positive” tests.
If someone had contracted the virus in the past, is now not sick nor can transmit the virus, that person has developed antibodies to the virus.
Does the test used to assess the presence of the virus, look for antibodies to the virus of does it detect the live virus in an individual?
And if the test detects a live virus, yet the individual is asymptomatic, does that mean the individual can transmit the virus or does it ONLY mean the virus is present?
And if the virus is present, how does the test determine if the ‘viral load” is large enough to transmit the disease?
My questions are motivated by the fact that never before in history have “not sick” individuals been tested for an infection. If this sort of testing had been performed in the past, would many individuals test positive for some sort of viral/bacterial infection, yet have never been sick nor be capable of transmitting a disease for which they have tested positive?
Why are hospitalization rates leveling off despite the number of positive tests increasing??
The influenza “pandemics” of 1959 and 1968, when adjusted for population were just about as serious as the coronavirus, yet nothing was shut down; there was no panic
Why??.
I saw somewhere someone use this example of how one person could become a case then a hospitalization then a death.
A person has to take a test for COVID for work and he is positive even though he has no symptoms so he is now a COVID CASE.
10 days later our case is now testing negative but he has an appendicitis attack and has to be admitted to a hospital to have his appendix removed. He is now a COVID HOSPITALIZATION.
Then our guy gets out of the hospital and a week later dies in a car accident. He is now a COVID DEATH.
They justify all this by saying that they can’t judge what COVID affects on a person.
Hi, Maet. Love the beard. 🙂
That’s interesting about the aftereffects of viral infections. Is it not possible that COVID has some unique aftershock potential in some way? It’s the only thing about which I really feel particular concern with this pathogen. I’m puzzled that I never heard of things like these strange neurological anecdotes that crop up in the COVID reporting from time to time. Were we as a society really that blasé about the flu before that we just somehow accepted these aftereffects as background noise of the usual seasonal stuff?
JohnTyler, I understood that the test detects characteristic marker sequences of RNA unique to CoV2. This, I thought, was why we see the objections in circulation that the test is either too sensitive or is also detecting parts of dead virus particles (though I’m not sure offhand how naked RNA could survive chemically on a mucous membrane for very long; maybe I’m naive about proteolysis). Certainly faster than a protein detection test, though.
John Tyler:
My understanding is that the test is for live virus. The antibody tests are a completely different instrument. And the tests for live virus don’t tell use whether it is transmissible, although they think that the more virus a person carries the more contagious that person probably is, with or without symptoms. But they don’t seem to know for sure; at least, I’ve not read anything that indicates they do.
Maetenloch; Griffin:
Hi there, Maet.
That’s my impression as well. I think that somewhere I have a draft of a post on the matter, but I don’t have time to look for it at the moment. My impression is that various flus and other viral illnesses can have lengthy sequelae of the cardiovascular, respiratory, and/or neurological variety, and I’m not at all sure that COVID is substantially different in that regard.
John Tyler,
A major issue is that for the PCR tests the cycle thresholds that various labs use differ wildly. Many labs apparently are using cycles of 40 and even 45 which can pick up all kinds of dead virus that is not at a level that is infectious. These are likely a lot of the asymptomatics and false positives we are seeing.
I’ve seen it said that any cycle over 30 is way too sensitive for all but maybe the elderly.
Unfortunately almost nobody but maybe Florida governor Ron DeSantis is actively asking these questions.
neo,
There have been a few incidences where states (Arizona for one I believe) were reporting antibody tests as new cases until called out on it.
They will do absolutely everything to keep this thing going.
Griffin:
Agreed.
And – although I’m doing this right now from memory – I seem to recall that for a while the CDC itself was lumping together antibody tests with regular COVID viral tests.
What are the odds that somebody someday will do a (ahem) post-mortem on the “official” statistics, presumably those collected by the CDC?
Some notes on what I have in mind:
(1) “somebody” doing this, should be super-credible. Which means somebody with skatey-eight degrees and several centuries of experience at every level of virology, epidemiology, testing technology, database management AND FORENSIC AUDITING; and that “somebody” should be endorsed beforehand by all the warring factions in this white-hot debate.
Something tells me we will never get such a person, not soon anyway. Which leads me to
(2) “Someday” needs to be soon, as in “within an actionable time frame to enrich the public understanding of what has been going on, what distortions may have crept into the critical process of counting cases/disease progress/death or recovery/sequelae/movement toward herd immunity; not only to enrich that understanding but to drive action to improve public policy in testing, monitoring, developing mitigation/management tools, trade-offs.”
Something tells me that the time horizon for this is approximately never. People will be arguing bitterly about The Time of Covid for decades.
(3) Generally, I began to lose faith in CDC when I read that it had relaxed the definition of “died of Covid” to include not only those with comorbidities but those without lab-confirmed presence of virus. That was in the spring. What other moves CDC has made to “improve” its counting, I can only guess. But as others up-thread have noted, when you run a PCR test long enough, you can apparently find almost anything. What relevance that trace mRNA fragment might have to, you know, a real case of Chinese Lung Rot is IMHO debatable.
/rant. Thank you for letting me rip a bit.
Many of us on the Right oppose ANY new government intrusions into our lives, even those meant to be temporary, because once you give the government any power they never let it go. The lockdowns have given government an INCREDIBLE tool to screw with us, and they will hold onto it until the very last moment. They took a bad flue, and treated it like it was the Black Death. It started as a couple of weeks to build resources, now they are telling us they wont accept a vaccine from the FDA and CDC.
Another thing about all this that is scary is the lack of input from state legislatures. Has there been any state legislature in this country that has done anything in these last 7 months? Instead we get wannabe dictator governors and power hungry health bureaucrats running and ruining our lives with zero over sight save for a few judges.
It’s all a sham now to keep the lockdowns going. Our governor is running on emotion not logic since the death rate is essentially in line with previous years. But CASES! which are meaningless since we have no data about the same for colds and flu.
I recently took a hard look at what is happening in MA using the data supplied by the state. The peak of the epidemic was May 1 and virtually over about July 1. Since then the deaths attributed to Wuhan virus run at about 20 per day, 15 of them over 70 years old, the rest under 70 years old. The average daily death rate in 2017 was 160.
The average age of death is 82 vs life expectancy at birth of 80 for the last decade, i.e., the virus is culling people on their last legs would would have died of something else sometime soon.
At this point I doubt that there are any excess deaths over previous years.
Well, on my tree-lined, university neighborhood, street people have finally stopped wearing masks to walk their dogs alone.
Owen, agreed. It’s like the global-warming question in a way. I mean that, once I started to hear about the doctoring of the original datasets for instance, that was pretty horrible to my science-ish persona; but when it came out that some of those ice cores had been “lost” and consequently nothing could be verified any more from original preserved samples, I hit the roof. The worst scientific crimes possible, but The Narrative!!!
With Everybody’s Favorite Pathogen now, it’s much the same – everybody and his brother has a different way of categorizing cases, deciding what’s a ‘new’ case and what isn’t, what to do about deaths ‘of’ vs. deaths ‘with’ – it was apparently never dealt with consistently across nations or states within this country, so it’s all a giant train wreck. The worst part about it is, in a way, that we have all these piles of “data” and we think that means we have this wonderful trove of information, but so much of the data is going to have to be retroactively re-evaluated as you said that it’s really a lot of garbage. And because so many pollytishuns have now basically staked their careers on “look what a wonderful job I did on this crisis, hooray me!”, there will be a lot of people who won’t want this stuff to be re-evaluated.
Which all means that, a couple of decades down the road, society will have resolutely refused to learn anything from it and we’ll get to do it all “once more, with feeling.”
I think I stepped on what was supposed to be your rant. Sorry. (I’m not always this cynical, but maybe I’m just having a moody day somehow. The dream about election day that I had during my nap didn’t help.)
Griffin, a fine question. I didn’t hear a peep out of the three-ring circus down the hill. Michigan legislature made some token efforts, I thought. Others, no idea.
Philip Sells: you didn’t step on my rant, you validated it! Thanks: I guess. In fact I would LOVE to be proven wrong; shown that, oh no, there was really good data and it all fits together and the picture is clear. Excuse me while I agree with you, this is a mess, but the plethora of garbage data (badly annotated/curated, apples/oranges, conveniently overwritten or “oops, lost” by its partisan owners, etc) and the absence of any credible umpire in a supercharged political context (where the CYA governors cannot afford to admit error and find it profitable to keep doubling down on the tyrannical measures), will, as you say, lead to more tragedy. We really are a stupid species…
Owen, if we keep this up, we’re going to start channeling Charlton Heston. We’d better quit while we’re ahead. 🙂 I maintain that “people” don’t learn. That doesn’t say that a person can’t learn, though. Individual people achieve this all the time – it’s just a question of that vs. aggregate phenomena that has us worried.
What I think is remarkable is that POTUS was treated aggressively early in his infection, and recovered in a few days. He felt that the anti-bodies from Regeneron were what cured him, but he also received Remdesvir, steroids and other treatments. No one in the MSM or medical community has said, ‘We now know how to treat this and very few people who get it and are treated properly will die.” Even though Trump has ordered that the Regeneron treatment be available cost free all over the country, the medical community hasn’t hailed this as a break through. Why? If I knew I could get treated aggressively as soon as I tested positive, I would have little fear of catching it. Just think, we could all go back to normal. Too many people with clout don’t want to get back to normal. Jay Inslee and all you medical experts wanting to quarantine us all indefinitely, we’re looking at you.
What I think is remarkable is that POTUS was treated aggressively early in his infection, and recovered in a few days.
J.J.: I was struck, though hardly surprised, that Trump’s recovery, as far as I could tell, wasn’t even a blip on the news. Though if he had taken a turn for the worse, it would have been non-stop schadenfreude. It was just on to the next anti-Trump story. (Or covering up the Hunter Biden story.)
You’re right. Trump’s recovery and means-to are big, good news for everyone, except those who don’t want good news.
I just went to a restaurant to order take-out, then wait in the waiting seats. I was offered a glass of water, which I declined because I wasn’t thirsty.
I took off my mask because I wasn’t roaming the restaurant, potentially expelling pathogens everywhere. Then the hostess came up and told me I would have to put on my mask.
I had already worked this out. I said, “Then I’ll have that glass of water.”
She smiled and brought me a glass of water.
I smiled, took one sip and didn’t put my mask back on.
Everyone happy!
Huxley,
Yep it’s all nothing but theatre. There is ample evidence that where this spreads is in the home. Not in restaurants or movie theaters or at sporting events.
The all out war on family Thanksgiving and Christmas get togethers is going to be something to see. Neighbors calling the cops on neighbors it’s going to be just awesome.
There is ample evidence that where this spreads is in the home.
Senior care homes (Planned Parent), construction sites (e.g. outhouses), medical centers, and high-density complexes with improper plumbing. The observed spread is consistent with asymptomatic (i.e. no coughing, sneezing, forced expulsions of viral loads) transmission through fecal (solid and aerosol) contamination. Masks, for their part, can block a forced expulsion with variable efficacy, but the droplet model falls short when it evaporates (and the wearer inhales or exhales, and the observed spread in warm, humid climates).
What I think is remarkable is that POTUS was treated aggressively early in his infection, and recovered in a few days.
My friend claims to understand Trump’s miraculous COVID recovery perfectly. Trump faked the infection so that he could have a fake miraculous recovery. October surprise and all that.
Re: Questions posed by JohnTyler on October 21, 2020 at 5:00 pm.
None of the three types of available tests determine the presence of “live” or infectious virus. I prefer to speak of infectious virus vs. non-infectious virus as I don’t consider virions to be living things.
The most sensitive, reliable, and common test is the RT-PCR test which tests for the presence of perhaps 3 tiny snippets of the SARS-CoV-2 RNA sequence. At least in the original (failed) CDC test, two of those snippets were highly unique to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and one snippet was common to a number of corona viruses that were vaguely similar to SARS-CoV-2. The third snippet was included in case the virus mutated rapidly. (Or it was included to allow inflated case counts if you are cynical.)
The precise details of the three snippets suggests many questions but I don’t know any of the answers.
I’ve read in several places that people are testing the municipal sewage systems for remnants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus using the RT-PCR test, I think. They claim to be able to measure the net amount of infection in a community. I have to presume that this is all non-infectious remnants. Could the virus really remain infectious after transiting to the sewage system? Not sure.
Test #2 is the antibody test. Supposedly the one drop of blood test has low reliability, but the vial of blood test is good. Antibodies develop slowly when infected, and then hang around in your system for months or years.
Test #3. We now have the antigen test. This test reacts to the specific S or Spike glycoprotein found on the exterior of the SARS-CoV-2 virion. It uses a nasal swab and “very sophisticated little piece of cardboard” and no machine. Adm. Giroir of HHS demonstrates in this video. I don’t know about reliability. Tiny fragments of virions can trigger this test positive too.
_____
It has always bothered me that nobody talks about the level of amplification or “number of thermal cycles” used in the PCR test. I did read a medical publication written by Dr. Didier Raoult in France back in April or May where he used 33 or 34 thermal cycles to test his recovering COVID-19 patients. If they tested negative on that test, he claimed that the virus had mostly cleared their systems.
TommyJay,
The amazing thing is the New York Times (yes!) reported on August 29 about how the cycle thresholds on PCR testing were way too sensitive and were catching a bunch of non infectious positives and it still didn’t make a dent in the narrative.
Good to know Griffin.
Here is a fact sheet for the BinaxNOW antigen test.
Does that mean a 3% false negative and 1.5% false positive probability? At least it is fast and cheap.
trump was sick
You won’t get any argument from me Ymarsakar. Sometimes I wonder if my friend is a LTZIV, or Less Than Zero Information Voter. A person who believes more false things than true things.
TommyJay,
I’ve seen some saying that 1.5% false positive and if I understand correctly that is 1.5% of all tests not just the positives so we are currently finding about 5-5.5% positive rate and if 1.5% are false positive that is several hundred to a couple thousand false positives everyday.
Test, test, test means it never ends. Apparently there are still strains of the 1918 flu out there. COVID will be here for a very long time. Are we going to keep testing for it for years?
TommyJay, I see there are some nice little training videos from Abbott to show how to use the antigen test card. Very cute idea!
“COVID death rates continue to fall.”
IOW, the so-called lockdowns are producing beneficial results. I realize that there are many who don’t want to admit that, but there it is.
I went by the Apple store here in Perth Western Australia on my way to a doctor’s appointment. The sidewalk was full of masked Apple employees, and masked security people in yellow vests. I’d just had cataract surgery last week and wanted a peek at the 4 and 5K iMac monitors, so I asked what was happening and was told that the mask wearing in strict social distancing were part of a brand wide Apple program. My temperature was taken after being asked permission then I was issued a mandatory mask. I had a lot of contradictory feelings but what stood out was “No Apple, and all the rest of you virtue signalling idiots, I am not going to vote for Joe Biden.”
While case rates are upwardly biased and not particularly meaningful, the death rate as a percentage of positive cases or of hospitalized cases is also not meaningful as a measure of public health policies or of the damage done by the disease. (This death rate is an imperfect measure of how well doctors and hospitals are treating people.) The key indicator for most purposes is the death rate relative to population, and this has been holding pretty steady in the US since July. That said, this death rate is increasing in several other advanced countries which had lower death rates than the US over the summer.
having a lot of problems getting here today: first try “site can’t be reached”
Hhmmmm, coincidence?
Micha Elyi:
There are many studies that say that lockdowns have not worked. This article reviews some of the data.
David Pitelli:
From what I’ve seen, the death numbers you’re talking about in European countries have increased from very low figures over the summer, so the increase is relative to that and the death numbers in this “second wave” are not high. I have not seen a country in Europe that has anywhere near the death numbers they had in the early days of the pandemic.
See this.
For example France had over 1,000 COVID deaths per day back in April. Now there’s been a rise compared to the summer, but the death toll per day is in the 80s, despite higher case rates. Clearly, the disease is not causing anywhere near the devastation it was causing in the spring.
Here you can find graphs for each country that go back all the way to the spring, and I believe you’ll see similar changes in the countries exhibiting what is called a “second wave.” Just to take one example, here’s a graph for the UK. Back in late March, April, and May, the daily death numbers there ranged from around 450 to over 1,000, with many in the 700-800 range. Now it’s been mostly between 60 and about 150 a day. Big difference. And this is despite the fact that diagnosed cases have increased enormously over the number of diagnosed cases in the spring.
Now of course this could change. But so far that’s the way it’s been going.
To elaborate, I am not saying that because I am parroting Republican or Demoncrat talking points, let alone what else humans and zombies talk about.
Trump was sick because his energy aura and stellar configuration was extremely weak, given his average. It was quite obvious to those who could sense it looking at him, if their P rating was high enough.
Whether it was C19 or a contaminated test kit that poisoned him… well that’s a different topic.
For those that don’t know me here or my history of comments, they may have misinterpreted that as contradiction or making fun of conspiracy theorists. Oh no. You are looking at the king here on those topics.
On Neo’s last point, about long-term flu effects that are sometimes reported, I knew a boat captain who said he felt that it took him 7 or 8 years to fully get over the effects of the Hong Kong flu of 1957.
I’m way too impatient to delve into the statistics, but I can certainly tell you that people on the left are still *really* invested in the view that this is a continuing calamity that is all Trump’s fault.
“people on the left are still *really* invested in the view that this is a continuing calamity that is all Trump’s fault.” – Mac
That investment is like the investment of the grievance industry apparatchiks in perpetuating the grievances that pay their salaries.
What would they do if racism, sexism, etc actually went away?
Babylon Bee solves their problem.
https://babylonbee.com/news/more-liberals-switching-their-vote-to-trump-after-realizing-hes-their-only-reason-for-living