Factor in a glut of people who're living into advanced age, due to the progress of medical technology, so naturally in a precarious place against any infection. And of course, mismanagement of those people in nursing homes means guaranteed disaster.
So really, I think it's much less dangerous than we've let on, but deadly to certain demographics, that happen to be larger in the West (obese, diabetic, etc.).
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/obr.13128
https://cardiologyres.org/index.php/Cardiologyres/article/vi...
There is no evidence of this and you are continually creating worst-case scenarios.
Please stop.
If the flu season is severe, then it could be quite catastrophic when combined with COVID-19. We should definitely be preparing for worst-case scenarios, and not downplaying potential severity because it's inconvenient.
Influenza: https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/globalassets/statistik-u...
Calicivirus (Vinter vomiting disease): https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/0ad710ef37...
As said, this hinges on social distancing and hygiene measures being kept enforced. If you open a country fully again and get two simultaneous peaks then you are in for a bad time.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/09/12/the-sout...
I am not surprised that measures to avoid COVID-19 also reduces the spread of flu.
How many millions has covid infected thus far? It would be concerning if it hadn't killed a couple healthy kids and not killed a couple obese old people.
Can you help us understand the thinking you use to make that tradeoff?
Also FYI, you can't hug your family member anymore once they're dead.
I have bad asthma and my wife is ill I don't appreciate you gathering and hugging your family and killing mine.
Did that advance the discussion? Was it manipulation? No and you bet!
It's also a HUGE distraction to the real concern: We don't fully understand how contagious children are.
Filter by 'Weekly Number of Deaths by Age' and you will see that it is literally the safest time ever for children and young adults because they are not allowed to go outside and do dumb stuff. Yes, some of them have died because of COVID, but the number is staggeringly small.
How many of those secondary infections die? How many of them stay sick for months?
There was a case right before schools opened in Georgia, I believe, of a kid who caught COVID at football practice. He's fine, but both of his parents died in a week.
Fortunately, he now no longer needs to worry about COVID. Unfortunately, he's now an orphan.
(It's a very convenient optimization metric, though, because it requires us to do quite literally nothing.)
Then why does the annual flu not wipe out this population? Immunity lasts about 3 years so every such person who is exposed to the flu should be dying in one 3 year cycle.
>According to our study, it appears they can last the entire lifespan of the human organism — 90 years plus.
>n our study we were looking for antibodies to the 1918 flu. This flu virus was reconstructed a number of years ago in the lab, so we were able to test to see if 90 years later we could still find antibodies. I recruited survivors, people who were born in 1915 or earlier and thus presumably survived the 1918 flu. We found that virtually all the people born in 1915 or earlier — about 90% of them — had good "titers" to the 1918 flu, which means they still had reasonably high concentrations of the antibodies in their blood, whereas among controls, people who were born in 1926 or later, it was only about 10%. That was really quite a remarkable finding.
http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1835907,0...
What we see is that countries that were lucky enough to do strong enough prevention actions early enough had order of magnitude less deaths than those who didn't do them (and Sweden is in the latter camp, even if they did have more response than most admit -- they did close all universities, for example). The scale of deaths seen in New York would have never happened, had the use of masks been common early enough.
Eidt: Regarding "vulnerable populations" Italy and Germany have similar number of "vulnerable" and it seems Sweden would be better than Germany then:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Population_pyramid_o...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Population_pyramid_o...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sweden_population_py...
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Another country with equivalent sun exposure to Italy is Greece, again orders of magnitude less deaths (like Germany). They also had strong lockdowns and early enough.
It's the measures. Analyzing what happened in Europe (and still happens) can't be explained with anything else.
Compare it with fires. Small fires are easy to extinguish. Pretending "it will go away" will simply result in a big fires. Eventually there won't be anything to burn. With people, eventually everybody who can and "feels the heat" will try to protect themselves.
A lot of older people in Sweden stay in their homes and take care not to be infected. Masks are common in the supermarkets, etc.
Not sure where you got this information - masks are not commonly worn at all in Sweden. I see perhaps 1 mask per week, unless I go into the city center, then I might see 10 in a day.
The Swedish public health authorities are not currently recommending general usage of face masks, citing mainly the lack of evidence of the effectiveness of general mask usage (wearing a mask can cause you to get lulled into a false sense of security, for example).
See https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/smittskydd-beredskap/utb...
(in Swedish, unfortunately)
Sweden adds vitamin D to food items so I wouldn't be surprised if Sweden has less vitamin D deficiency than many southern countries.
https://www.nutraingredients.com/Article/2015/05/28/Sweden-t...
This is outright false. I've been to a big supermarket twice this week and didn't see a single mask as far as I can recall.
i get super frustrated with the random corona rules at supermarkets in the US (like one-way only aisles, exit only doors), especially trader joe's, which is as draconian as it is arbitrary. for a while they weren't allowing you to take in your reusable grocery bags. later they relented and switched to just bagging your own groceries outdoors, leading to an awkward triple handling of your purchased items for what amounts to nothing other than safety theater.
for 6 months i've worn the same useless surgical mask to play my part in that misguided spectacle, when required. folks are slowly starting to realize their lack of utility, but have nothing else to latch onto because the obvious solution of modest distancing seems so mundanely unbelievable (and lacking obvious and spectacular conformance).
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8...
Vitamin D doesn't explain anything related to Covid-19 deaths in Europe, whereas the existence or lack of measures do, almost perfectly. Whoever can look at the curves of number of deaths since the begin of the epidemics, check the times of partial lockdowns or the introduction of some measures, can see that exactly around three weeks after these the curves stop going up and begin going down.
Italy as the first country seriously hit in Europe had the curve raising exponentially up until the measures started to work (there's a delay -- for people to stop dying the spread of infection has to turn first etc). Sweden also had the curve raising comparably to Italy, even if they had a negative example from Italy -- because there was a decision of targeting the "herd immunity". Germany's curve remained very low, as they had low prevalence at the time their measures started to be applied.
It's all about the measures and the adherence of the people to them.
In Italy, it gets worse the older the population gets.
It is also an issue in Germany: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4499202/
I make no claims other than: 1) there is a very strong correlation between vitamin D insufficiency/deficiency and poor outcomes for COVID-19, and 2) many populations, including those in sunny countries, suffer from widespread vitamin D insufficiency.
I for one have been taking 1,000 IUs of vitamin D every day since March, and trying to get sun exposure mid-day whenever I can.
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS...
The comparison is possible because it’s per million. See Italy and Spain hit before they were aware what is going on., then introducing lockdowns.
See Sweden’s and the US denial, then limiting the initial outbreaks but continuing just not doing enough.
See Greece and Germany doing early enough good enough measures, and still doing it.
It’s that simple. The US not being aware how wrong they are doing is a crime to their own people. It’s historical failure.
You claim: “there is a very strong correlation between vitamin D insufficiency/deficiency and poor outcomes for COVID-19“ — show me that on the graph above. It’s obviously a red herring talking about Vitamin D once one sees it.
No. USA: 608 per million. Sweden: 580. [1]
But the current trajectory is also important. In Sweden, the last day with more than 0.6 deaths/million was July 21 (according to actual date of death, not the date when death was reported), while the US currently is about 2-3 deaths/million/day.
Here in Sweden the right-wing folks want to lock everything down and the left-wing want to keep deferring it to the experts. In the rest of the world it seems to be the other way around.
https://www.thelocal.se/20200530/swedish-opposition-demands-...
While the official stance for all parties is that they support the strategy (the most right-wing party being the exception who is heavily criticizing it), it's more telling in social media.
Hanif Bali, one of the most prominent right-wing figures in social media, has really been pushing for lockdowns/masks and is cheered on by his tail of alt-right followers. Meanwhile the left is mocking him, lockdowns and masks in general.
The leader of the Swedish Democrats, the most right-wing in the Swedish parliament, called for the state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnells, to take responsibility and resign immediately: https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/jimmie-akesson-tegnell-mast...
Interesting enough it's also the same kind of fringe-right that are protesting in against restrictions in Germany that is calling our approach genocidal here:
"Tegnell is a danger to society" https://projektsanning.com/2020/03/12/coronaviruset-statsepi...
"Tegnell reported to the Police due to the mass death among elderly" https://www.friatider.se/tegnell-polisanmald-massdoden-bland...
Generally, the order of magnitude of a number is the smallest power of 10 used to represent that number.[2] To work out the order of magnitude of a number N, the number is first expressed in the following form:
N = a × 10^b
Nothing to be proud about for either of them. Anyway, until e.g. month ago Sweden had the lead.
Anyways, I don't think comparing the US to most countries in Europe really makes sense, considering the size and population differences.
According to ourworldindata, in reported Covid-19 deaths per million, on Sept 12:
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS...
> I don't think comparing the US to most countries in Europe really makes sense
You are missing "per million" which is what I used. Comparing absolute numbers has of course no sense. When comparing relative numbers ("per million"), the big country spread across big area, like U.S. is, would be expected have huge advantages compared to any country in Europe (due to slower spread over the distances, much less dependency on public transportation). Moreover, the countries worst hit in Europe were only those where the spread happened first -- others took note and introduced measures early enough. Not the U.S. which totally botched its response even ignoring the initial hit in NY. Compare the slopes of all other European countries for months, v.s. what's going on in the U.S. The response in the U.S. is criminally bad, and continues to be so -- and not looking at the "cases" but simply and tragically, deaths. Those that are reported.
I admit that comparing some other estimates of "excess deaths" could give some other numbers, but I don't see any way in which U.S. can look good, especially as it was Italy being hit the first and everybody else having the time to react somehow.
Also see daily average of deaths per million, to get the idea how bad it is still:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-mi...
Seems some people are too trigger happy and unwilling to explore charitable interpretation of posts.
Listening to epidemiologists alone was/is a bad choice because they study the spread of disease. You also to consider long-term effects on the immune system, the economy, education, social structure, politics.
The second-order effects have already been surprising:
- Social unrest in the US - China restricting freedoms in Hong Kong - Bifurcated "K" economy - Covid case surges in countries that "did it right" with hard lockdowns
I mean if we really want to start projecting our own agendas or anti agendas, the whole notion of "evidence" leaves a bad taste in my mouth given the WHO went on record saying "there is no evidence of human transmission". And I am saying this as a scientist!
Our obsession with evidence and data is important (as what are we without empiricism) but boy has it seemed more like a curse rather than a blessing at various stages throughout this pandemic. I am definitely team Bayes on these matters, common sense and experience do hold some value sometimes.
I do raise an eyebrow however when there's so much rigmarole around "evidence" and mask wearing. Just like there was rigmarole around hand washing when Semmelweis promoted it. What a bizarre hill people have made to die on.
And how slow the WHO were to declare the dangers of covid in its early stages.
-homeless
-celebrities
-children
What do all these groups have in common?
Age? well count out celebrities, ie. Tom Hanks, Prince Philip(both are in advanced age).
Good health? I'd count out homeless as a lot suffer from chronic ill-health.
Weight? Some heavier celebrities have had covid and been fine, its an important metric though.
Exposure to a lot of viruses? Yes, all three groups are in constant exposure to a multitude of viruses, from children in daycare, to celebrities interacting with tons of people to always traveling, to homeless getting exposed to viruses in trash and living in unsanitary conditions.
I've had one prediction all along, which is that parents of small children would probably also have lower rates of symptomatic disease, lower severity, etc. than matched controls, because they'd also be exposed to prexisting coronaviruses and therefore have some cross-immunity.
You could probably extend this to other groups too.
I admit it might be totally wrong but it seems straightforward to test with the right data, and if it were wrong that would also be interesting.
the genetic makeup of covid-19 has been well studied and this is not the case. If it were multiple different diseases, it would be very obvious.
* few children seem to be sick from that virus * geographical disparity in Europe (compare northern Germany vs. northern Italy), even considering population density * the high number of reportedly asymptomatic cases * uneven distribution of infectiousness ("superspreaders")
My pet theory so far is that one or more very similar viruses have been in circulation for a while and that "asymptomatic" carriers of COVID-19 are in fact at least partially immune due to exposure to these similar viruses.
Note that this also means that COVID-19 is much scarier than it looks. Because if you are not among those with prior immunity, you are much more likely to suffer from the bad effects of that virus.