Thread: Corona Virus

Originally Posted by Fatso

Along with mine as well , and all the Diggers who are no longer with us .

Yep, they would wonder why they even ****ing bothered.

Originally Posted by BradC

Let’s rephrase that. It’s highly infectious and it kills 6% of all perfectly healthy people it infects. Now do you see the problem?

No I don't believe it does kill "6% of all perfectly healthy people" infected. That 6% is of ALL deaths attributed to C-19, the other 94% had underlying conditions, so not perfectly healthy. There are most likely hundreds, possibly thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of healthy individuals walking around that don't even know they have it or have had it. They show no symptoms and don't live in "hot spots", so don't get tested. Exactly the same as the flu every year, thousands have and don't know it. Yes, this is more infectious than the flu, but what is the current infection to hospitalisation ratio? Hundreds daily reported infected in Victoria, they weren't all in hospital. If there are hundreds (or thousands) getting over this at home with no long lasting ill effects then we should be concentrating efforts to protect the vulnerable not the general population which should be dealt with on an as required basis. Whether that is bed rest at home (in isolation) or hospitalisation due to complications.

It may be the case that the overwhelming of hosptials we saw in China and the US was a result of panic from anyone with a slight sniffle or cough thinking the worst and actually compromising their health by attending the steaming petri dish that is a hospital emergency department, producing carriers leaving with the infection after arriving without it.

An alternative viewpoint.

Originally Posted by BradC

Let’s rephrase that. It’s highly infectious and it kills 6% of all perfectly healthy people it infects. Now do you see the problem?

Putting some numbers on it - one of the key features of this virus is how infectious it is, and together with having a relatively long incubation period, this means it will, with no controls, spread very rapidly.

One estimate I've seen is that a single infected person may on average infect 20 others, but let's make that 10, because it is easy to work with. And assume that the patient becomes infectious after a week. So after a week there are 10 infected. At two weeks, when the first patient is showing symptoms, there are another 100 infected - and we only know about one patient. In less than a month, we will have a thousand times as many as the single one we started with. Now you can use with a smaller R0, and hence a less rapid increase, say 5, and after four weeks it will "only" be 125 - but a month later it will be well over 3,000 and after five months from the start will be close to twenty million. If the infection fatality rate is only 0.05% this means almost 100,000 deaths.

These last calculations are using realistic numbers - the IFR is nothing like 6%, probably about 1% or less, and the R0 with no precautions is probably close to the 5 used. In real life though, long before deaths started to get anywhere near as high as this, R0 would drop dramatically as people started to take precautions without any government directions. But by then there would be so many cases in the wild that control would be almost impossible. The economic and social damage done in these circumstances would be far higher than that done by even stringent lockdown, a result that has been amply demonstrated by past pandemics.

This is why we cannot just let it run, even with protection for the vulnerable.

Edit: I looked back to the beginning of this thread, and it seems that I was saying something similar back then, but without the numbers.

Originally Posted by JDNSW

Putting some numbers on it - one of the key features of this virus is how infectious it is, and together with having a relatively long incubation period, this means it will, with no controls, spread very rapidly.

One estimate I've seen is that a single infected person may on average infect 20 others, but let's make that 10, because it is easy to work with. And assume that the patient becomes infectious after a week. So after a week there are 10 infected. At two weeks, when the first patient is showing symptoms, there are another 100 infected - and we only know about one patient. In less than a month, we will have a thousand times as many as the single one we started with. Now you can use with a smaller R0, and hence a less rapid increase, say 5, and after four weeks it will "only" be 125 - but a month later it will be well over 3,000 and after five months from the start will be close to twenty million. If the infection fatality rate is only 0.05% this means almost 100,000 deaths.

These last calculations are using realistic numbers - the IFR is nothing like 6%, probably about 1% or less, and the R0 with no precautions is probably close to the 5 used. In real life though, long before deaths started to get anywhere near as high as this, R0 would drop dramatically as people started to take precautions without any government directions. But by then there would be so many cases in the wild that control would be almost impossible. The economic and social damage done in these circumstances would be far higher than that done by even stringent lockdown, a result that has been amply demonstrated by past pandemics.

This is why we cannot just let it run, even with protection for the vulnerable.

Edit: I looked back to the beginning of this thread, and it seems that I was saying something similar back then, but without the numbers.

...and yet this is not what is happening in Sweden. After 6 months less than 1% of the population has had symptoms that warrant being tested and confirmed to be infected. There true infection rate is probably double what was reported but we are still only talking a few % get infected.

Sure the death rate being attributed to Coronavirus is higher, but this will also be offset by reductions in other death rates normally attributed to the frail and weak or an ageing population.

Now I support enforcing wearing a mask, but the biggest joke with the current rules in Melbourne - you don’t have to wear a mask if you are smoking. Smoking of course does kill around 20,000 a year in Australia but that is OK it seems - preferable to dying from Coronavirus so take that mask off and light up.

Which is ironic as 20,000 is probably around the true number Coronavirus would have claimed if Australia took a more balanced approach to dealing with the virus.

Originally Posted by ChookD2

It may be the case that the overwhelming of hosptials we saw in China and the US was a result of panic from anyone with a slight sniffle or cough thinking the worst and actually compromising their health by attending the steaming petri dish that is a hospital emergency department, producing carriers leaving with the infection after arriving without it.

It may also be that the Chinese authorities lied about how many people had it. And the numbers of deaths in the US indicates that it wasn't just sniffles that were being hospitalised.

Originally Posted by DiscoDB

. Which is ironic as 20,000 is probably around the true number Coronavirus would have killed if Australia took a more balanced approach to dealing with the virus.

No, it would've been significantly more than that - take the number of annual flu deaths and multiply by at least 30, higher once the hospitals were overwhelmed.

Originally Posted by DiscoDB

...and yet this is not what is happening in Sweden. After 6 months less than 1% of the population has had symptoms that warrant being tested and confirmed to be infected. There true infection rate is probably double what was reported but we are still only talking a few % get infected.

Sure the death rate being attributed to Coronavirus is higher, but this will also be offset by reductions in other death rates normally attributed to the frail and weak or an ageing population.

Now I support enforcing wearing a mask, but the biggest joke with the current rules in Melbourne - you don’t have to wear a mask if you are smoking. Smoking of course does kill around 20,000 a year in Australia but that is OK it seems - preferable to dying from Coronavirus so take that mask off and light up.

Which is ironic as 20,000 is probably around the true number Coronavirus would have claimed if Australia took a more balanced approach to dealing with the virus.

Sweden's experience is being widely misrepresented. While Sweden has not had any strict lockdowns, they have had social distancing that is at least as effective as some countries that have had strict lockdowns. And despite no lockdown, Sweden's economic downturn has been as bad or worse than comparable countries, with a higher death rate.

And the "excess death" figures (how many deaths this month compared to the same month averaged over the last few years) have nowhere shown that covid-19 deaths have either been overcounted or compensated for by reductions in other causes of death. In fact, for most countries I have see this figure, the excess deaths curves clearly show that covid-19 deaths have been undercounted, in some cases, such as the USA, by a large margin. The excess in Australia is insignificant, but still positive. The main problem with this measure is that because you need to wait until all deaths filter through to the statistics, there is a lag of several months before you can be sure the figures are accurate.

These results can be - and were - predicted pretty accurately back in February and March, simply by going back to the history of the "Spanish Flu". The places that took "a more balanced approach" as you are recommending ended up with a far higher death rate - and a far worse economic outcome. Those who forget or ignore history, are doomed to repeat it.

We just need a more balanced approach as we also need to survive the social and economic impact post-Coronavirus.

The failed experiment of COVID-19 lockdowns