Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

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My cousin's birthday is coming up soon. But that won't be a problem because no one likes him.


Just in case you're reading this Liam

Last edited by EzraS on 02 Apr 2020, 1:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

Do you have any older people living with you? See, there is a hypothetical world, and there is a real world.

In the real world, right now what people worry is lack of hospital resources. In Italy, we all know doctors had to make choices as who to save and who to let die. People die simply because the system is OVERWHELMED. If you have an older person to take care of, your heart tanks when instead of a hospital your mom is treated at a convention center. (That is a luxury already. In some other countries, you can forget about convention centers.)

With regular flu, or even pneumonia, hospitals were not overwhelmed. You took the elder patients to hospitals. Yes, people may die, but usually you get to do a proper ceremony and burial. When the system is overwhelmed, you don't even get to do the final goodbye properly. In China, you didn't even get to see the face, the body is loaded in a body bag, next to other body bags, and sent to cremation immediately.

And with today's situation, you can't even fly. If there is someone dying somewhere, you can't even fly over to say goodbye.

It's easy for you to live in your hypothetical world. For many people, we have to live in the real world.

Corona has no vaccine, therefore cannot be compared to flu. It also can cause severe symptoms in the young and healthy who require lengthy hospitalisation also. Corona causes serious fibrosis of the lungs unlike flu requiring the young and healthy to require artificial respirators. My doctor friends find Corona terrifying to treat and unpredictable. People are absolutely justified to be concerned. In my country healthy, young people without pre- existing conditions are dying, a minority yes but even so. Not like flu at all.

I'm not so sure that is the case. In China going by the numbers that exist 3,000 deaths is a tiny number compared to their daily and monthly mortality rate. In the US the daily mortality rate is 7,500 which takes it to 225,000 per month. The normal mortality rate in China with its 1.5 billion population must be much higer. So I do not see 3,500 deaths or even 35,000 deaths equaling bodies being stacked up.

According to the CDC in the US there have been as many as 850,000 flu hospitalizations within a flu season. With 215,344 cases right now and 15% (3,200) of those requiring hospitalization, it is hard to imagine the healthcare system currently being overloaded compared to 850,000 hospitalizations, with the exception of New York and New Jersey.

As i explained above, and in previous posts, these things are happening *because* of the panic, or were already in this state last year. Italy has apparently been struggling for years, its northern hospitals overwhelmed and asking for extra help, ie it is not true that with regular flu etc hospitals are not overwhelmed. The funeral homes/agencies have only been turning away cases because of the exaggerated fear of infection and crematorium have been overwhelmed because unusual numbers to be burned because of the exaggerated fear of infection.

About the exaggerated fear here is a rather good article examining the most likely real case fatality rates/CFRs and infection fatality rates/IFRs and the reasons for the exaggerations, variations etc.

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-co ... ity-rates/

About Iceland, where people are not panicking, they say:

"Iceland: (Update 28th March)

Iceland has tested a higher proportion of people than any other country (9,768 individuals), equivalent to 26,762 per million inhabitants the highest in the world (as a comparison, South Korea has tested 6,343 individuals).

Screening suggests 0.5% are infected; the correct figure is likely higher due to asymptomatics and many not seeking testing: estimates suggest the real number infected is 1%.

Iceland currently reports two deaths in 963 patients, CFR. 0.21%. If 1% of the population (364,000) is infected, then the corresponding IFR would be 0.05%. However, they have limited infections in the elderly as their test and quarantine measures have seemingly shielded this group, and the deaths will lag by about two weeks after the infection.

Iceland’s higher rates of testing, the smaller population, and their ability to ascertain all those with Sars-CoV-2 means they can obtain. an accurate estimate of the CFR and the IFR during the pandemic (most countries will only be able to do this after the pandemic). Current data from Iceland suggests their IFR is somewhere between 0.01% and 0.19%."

They are estimating Iceland''s infected fatality rate as probably somewhere between 0.01% and 0.19%.

After examining figures from several significant regions of the world they conclude that globally:

"Estimating COVID-19 Case Fatality Rates (CFR) Update 29th March:
Our current best assumption, as of the 22nd March, is the CFR is 0.51% – the lowest end of the current prediction interval and in line with several other estimates." .... .... .... and

"Estimating COVID-19 Infection Fatality Rates ( IFR ) Update 29th March: ...
Taking account of historical experience, trends in the data, increased number of infections in the population at largest, and potential impact of misclassification of deaths gives a presumed estimate for the COVID-19 IFR between 0.1% and 0.26%."

Their estimate for final/eventual real global infection fatality/death rates is between 0.1% and 0.26% and they warn against the high end projections.

And still, apart from Iceland ( where their estimate is of a likely infection rate of just 0.01% - 0.19% ), these figures are for the effect of this coronavirus combined with panic.

Panic, ( caused by unreliable inflated figures and the media and people wanting excitement/change etc, and by who knows what/who else ), kills by increasing fear and nocibo and isolation and by hobbling/crippling health services.

Last edited by ouinon2 on 02 Apr 2020, 2:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

There have been as many as 650,000 deaths within a flu season worldwide. With the majority taking place within a 3 month period. A good portion of those deaths are due to the flu causing critical respiratory problems.

One can not really say that the flu is nothing compared to COVID19. The flu is actually a very big something.

The difference seems to be when flu statistics are shown the attitude is meh big deal not really a problem, who cares? Whereas with covid19 there are huge reactions of fear, panic, grief etc. But I suspect that by 2021 people will start becoming just as blase about covid19 as they are about the flu.

Causes of Pulmonary Fibrosis include pneumonia, which is often caused by influenza/flu.

However one of the biggest causes of Pulmonary Fibrosis is air pollution.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-con ... c-20353690

Wuhan and the Lombardy region of Italy are amongst the most air polluted areas on earth.

PS. Young people die unexpectedly of flu too, a minority yes but it happens.

^ I also don't quite get the bit about hospitals being "overwhelmed." For example, Massachusetts has a population of 6.9 million. As of today there have been 682 hospitalizations for C19: https://www.mass.gov/doc/covid-19-cases ... 0/download

And yet there are more than 15,000 hospital beds in Massachusetts according to this chart: https://www.ahd.com/state_statistics.html

Now I can certainly understand if someone is making a projection: cases are expected to increase by X within 2 months and that will overwhelm the system. But the media message seems to be that the hospitals are overwhelmed *now*. Have 682 cases (some of which have already been discharged) already overwhelmed a system with more than 15,000 beds? (And note that Massachusetts has rather more cases per capita than many other states.)

It's not a matter of hospital beds but available respirators and trained staff. In Italy the tragedy is that they are having to let people die because they cannot respirate them. The entire world is desperate for respirators. They cannot put Corona patients in regular departments because they need to be isolated.This is why they are building massive field hospitals world-wide to isolate the Corona patients. People continue to have strokes and Cardiac Arrests, Appendicitis. The regular patients cannot be mixed with Corona patients obviously.

I included "You can possibly divide these numbers by 2 or 4 due to underreporting of mild cases", so I did take this into account. By asking about "intensive care units for even 0.1% of the population", I divided my original numbers by 50, to be on the safe side.

Guess you think all those beds are sitting empty?
My state has a 86% capacity use. Means if we have 100 beds 68 are used already and if we now have 50 people who needs beds we don’t have enough.

Other states have had white parties broken up. This isn’t a race thing.

https://nypost.com/2020/03/27/nj-cops-b ... ering-ban/

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/il ... r-n1171291

https://nypost.com/2020/04/01/nj-cops-s ... -pandemic/

The main reason why they have to be isolated in special wards and are being intubated on ventilators is because of the panic, the exaggerated fear of this virus. They don't do this as often for flu even though that too is infectious.

Northern Italy has been struggling for years to deal with its winter flu etc season, often asking surrounding/neighbouring regions and countries for help, which isnt forthcoming this time ... because of the exaggerated fear of this coronavirus. Italy has one of the highest antibiotic resistant disease rates in Europe, and Northern Italy one of the highest rates of air pollution.

Last edited by ouinon2 on 02 Apr 2020, 3:14 am, edited 2 times in total.

Yes. Another important factor here is that in the absence of a vaccine, and the fact thst it is new virus, therefore no pre-existing immunity to this new virus, the entire world community is being infected simultaneously, including the medical staff who are caring for them. The vast majority of the vulnerable population are innoculated against seasonal flu, so the number of people sick with flu does not crash the medical system.
In Italy they have an excellent health system, the virus is the problem not pollution. Japan and South Korea have massive pollution and they are faring better than Italy. They took early measures and locked down, wore mssks and gloves. Cut back contagion.

What you are saying is simply not true.

These are the facts.
(1) Italian health system was overwhelmed much more than before.
(2) There is numerical data showing that many more people died in Italy during the same months than previous years, even if you subtract the number of official coronavirus deaths.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/italys-coronavirus-death-toll-is-far-higher-than-reported/ar-BB122vvc
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-01/coronavirus-italy-shows-we-may-be-underestimating-death-toll


From these two reports, it seems like 4+ times as many people died as previous year in similar time period. Officially as many died of COVID-19 this year as number of deaths last year. That leaves a factor of 2 unexplained (out of the 4). Tell me, with four times more deaths than previous year, you think the hospitals were equally overwhelmed this year as last year? You think funeral homes can handle four times the number of deaths?

The numbers are there.

Last edited by eikonabridge on 02 Apr 2020, 3:25 am, edited 1 time in total.