Bijou Drains
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ONS recorded 1,413 suicides for 4Q19, compared with just 1,130 over the same period in 2017, resulting in a massive 25% increase.
But in real terms it’s a rise of only 283 individuals, as the size of the number of people who commit suicide is a relatively small number in terms of the overall population.
That is an extra 1200 per year without lockdown!
That is only a rise of that size if the trend from quarter 4 continues into the following 3 quarters of the year, you have no evidence to support this other than speculation on the results of the lockdown. It may well be that without the pressure of having to drag their bones out of bed every moring and go to work, some people are much happier having the chance to have a lie in, get some well deserved rest and enjoy a few box sets. Incidentally and in contrast, reports are that there has been a 82% drop in road deaths during the lock down and a 20% fall in violent crime
From your earlier post you quoted a epidemiologist saying about swine flu:
“But this is not the definition of a pandemic I learned, which has to be severe, with a much higher than usual death rate.”
The 2009 swine flu pandemic had a reported Case Fatality Rate (CFR) of 0.03% (from the same BBC article), with an estimate of between 700 million and 1.4 billion infections, this resulted in a total death toll of between 150,000 and 570,000
The current estimate is that there have been at least 1.87 million cases of Covid 19, and I accept that this is probably a big underestimate due to asymptomatic cases. So far there have been reported deaths of 108,000 people from Covid 19. An estimate (again probably an overestimate) of the CFR from the Chinese outbreak is 3%, the CFR from South Korea is 1.95%.
Your main argument seems to be that there is very little difference between the Covid 19 outbreak and the swine flu outbreak, the statistics show otherwise. This outbreak is “severe with a much higher that usual death rate”, it is by definition a pandemic. This outbreak has been linked to nearly as many deaths as the lower estimate for swine flu and this has been produced by an estimated 1.97 million cases. It took at least 700 million cases of swine flu to produce that level of morbidity. Even with the wildest allowances for poor statistics, the comparison is facile.
You made earlier attempts to compare this with seasonal flu which kills approximately 500,000 world wide annually. Coronavirus, as stated earlier, is estimated to have killed 108,000 people so far and has a doubling rate of between 7 and 8 days (Also consider that this is the rate of death and doubling that follows practically world wide distancing and lock down measures, which are not in place during the annual flu season). Therefore, at the current rate, and there is no reason to believe it will slow down, by 20th April the death toll will be 216,000, by the 28th April it will be 432,000 and by the 6th May it will be approaching 1,000,000. So in just over 5 months it will have doubled the annual death toll for seasonal flu and whilst it will not continue to rise at either an exponential or a geometric rate, it will continue to rise at more than an arithmetic rate. Once the outbreak moves into the slums and shanty towns of South America, Africa, the Indian Subcontinent, the rate will increase again.
The idea that this is some kind of overreation is countered not only by the statistics but by the facts. Doctors and nurses who were not likely to die because of pre existing conditions are dying in numbers never seen during seasonal flu outbreaks and not seen during the swine flu epidemic. They are burying people in Central Park, ffs.
“Professor Neil Ferguson, who is recovering at home from Covid-19, told the Science and Technology Committee that experts were now expecting around 20,000 deaths, although said it may turn out to be a lot less.”
If it’s less than 20,000 I’ll show my arse in HO front window the next time we get to have party conference
Put it this way Dave, can you point to any week in the last 40 years where flu has been recorded as a cause of death on nearly 5,600 death certificares in any single week (rough figures this week) and can you then point to another single week where more than 7,000 have had flu as a cause of death in that week, (which is I suspect roughly the figures to expect next week.)
Lets look at the stats you use in a bit more depth
According to UK office of national statistics
week 13 2020 = 150,017 have died
including 642, by then , covid deaths .
By week 13 of 2018 which ends 30<sup>th</sup> march
Week 13 2018 = 164,625 had died.
This high figure was generally attributed to an influenza outbreak.
[Which actually seemed to run on a bit for another 3 weeks or so
if elevated deaths above the normal for that time of year is any indication.]
So far so good
Anyway by this time in 2018 14,500 more people than now had died ; because of a influenza outbreak.
Actually, no. Those are the figures for reporting week 13, which if you look at the ONS site, clearly shows that these were the figures which were extrapolated at the a later date from data that came in at a much later date, when all causes of death were known.
This is not the case now, all deaths have not been reported and analysed at this point, it will be many months before this is complete. Also as your figures only refer to the deaths at week 13, including Covid deaths of 642, the two figures are in no way comparable. There have been an addtional nearly 7,500 Covide deaths since this point
As you say in your stats the flu season in 2018, had by this time produced approximately 14,500 extra deaths. However the flu season was at its peak in week one of 2018, having followed on from the 2017 late flue season peak figures, and by week 13 was pretty close to the end of its impact. Even so that gives a figure of about 1,000 extra deaths per week due to flu in 2018. We are currently experiencing a death rate of at the very least 5,250 per week, as reported in government figures, however that does not include the hundreds, possible thousands of non hospital deaths (deaths in care homes, etc.). To go back to the point I made earlier, when all deaths from Covid 19 are reckoned, ususally weeks and months later, the actual figures are likely to be very much higher.
So where does this leave us in the comparison of flu deaths and Covid 19 deaths. Well we are probably reaching the same figures now as we had for the flu season in 2018, however that has been reached when all of the efforts about social distancing, lockdown, etc. have taken place. Ask yourself this, what would the death rate be like if that HADN’T TAKEN PLACE?
You go on to say
As covid in the UK does look like peaking
Even the most optomistic epidemiologists are talking about a peak being at least 2 weeks away, so what makes you think it is peaking now?
I happy to bet you any sum of money that the death rate in the UK will continue to rise further and that the number of additional deaths is higher than 30,000
[ using say South Korean data and time frame as a model]
The S Korean time frame is absolutely incoparable with the UK outbreak, as the detection and isolation of cases in S Korea was incomparable to the UK situation, the mass testing of South Korean citizens was many, many times higher than the UK and the lockdown and stringency of measures taken by the S Koreans were much more far reaching and earlier than the UK. In fact it looks likely that the S Korean outbreak was in comparison very small, however becasue of the % of tests per head of population, they arrived at much higher figures than that of say Western Europe, where even the most developed testing system in Germany is estimated to have not identified 87% of those infected with the virus.
The ONS data is only available up to week 13. and in that week only 539 people suspected of covid 19 infection died.
And although there is a detailed breakdown etc, there were too few deaths by that week to make any firm conclusions
So why are you trying to make them?
It is perfectly clear that Covid outbreak is in no way comparable to the flu epidemic of 2018. You ask how many people remember the Flu outbreak of 2018, well I remember it well, my mother died in it. But what I don’t remember is that there was any shortage of critical care beds in the ward she was on, I don’t remember doctors and nurses being so vulnerable that they were wearing high level PPE wherever possible, I have no recollection of Doctors, Nurses and Care Staff dying of Flu at that time. Neither do I recall a national lock down to slow down the rapid, out of control spread of flu, in 2018. I do however remember being able to be with her in the hospital as she died, something that would not be possible with Covid 19.
As to the Swedish approach, last week a petition signed by more than 2,000 doctors, scientists, and professors calling on the Swedish government to tighten restrictions and enforce strict containment measures.
“We’re not testing enough, we’re not tracking, we’re not isolating enough – we’ve let the virus loose,” said Cecilia Soderberg-Naucler, a professor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. “They are leading us to catastrophe.”
I have more faith in professor Soderberg-Naucler’s understanding of the situation, than I have of yours.
Here’s an idea what about doing as we have always done and describe ourselves as either Socialists or Communists.We don’t want to get ourselves mistaken for the so called and mysterious “fellow travellers” some comrades keep banging on about, as being the most important source of new recruits (although I can think of very few occasions in the 38 years I’ve been in the party when one of these “fellow travellers” have ever joined the party)
In my experience the fact that others have a misconception of what is meant by those terms is actually a good starting point ot engaging them, rather than a hinderance to discussion.
“As ALB and I not so long ago found, there will be plenty of anarchists on Libcom who won’t be at all pleased if we used the term “anarcho-socialist.”
Funnily enough there are quite a few socialists on this forum who also won’t be pleased at all if we used the term “anarcho-socialist”
Hydrochloroquinine is a particularly difficult drug, I have a bit of insight into it as my partner was using it for six months from May 2019 to Dec 2019. She has been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthristis and it is used as a second level immune surpressant after methotrexate.
I am guessing to an extent that the beneficial effect is from the immune supressant qualities. It has been reported that part of the problem with Covid 19 is the immune system reaction to it.
Again I am putting 2 + 2 together, but bats have the highest body temperatures of mammals. The immune response, especially the fever response is designed to raise the body temperature to a level where it kills off viruses.
Usually this works, however it appears that because Covid 19 has developed in bats, the extreme temperatures developed in human fevers, which kill off most ordinary viruses, are not impacting on this virus and are in fact are more harmful than the virus itself.
It would follow that a drug which reduces the immune response may help, however as Marcos says, this needs to be a balanced approach, too much immune supression not only leads to problems with Convid 19, but it also leads to problems with other infections such as pneumonia, etc.
As I said I have some familial experience of this drug and its side effects can be pretty nasty, including blindness and other liver and kidney difficulties, which is why my partner had to come off treatment.
To no ones great surprise it is not as simple as Dopey Donald thinks, as Marcos says it will take a balanced and individualised approach, if this medication is useful its usage will vary from patient to patient and situation to situation.
It may be helpful to treat this virus, however in my opinion the rush back to “normal life” threatens the lives of many, with profit again being placed above human need. It would be foolish to play down the long term impact of this pandemic an a world wide basis.
Ozzymandis wrote
In a typical year anything up to 650,000 people die globally of the flu (anyway) , yet we have a tenth of those fatalities currently registered. And we’ve got this?
Do the maths, this pandemic has not even started to bite, yet we are at 1/10 of the ANNUAL flu fatalities, this is despite world wide lockdowns and social distancing. The current daily death rate is nearly 6,000. If you multiply that times 365, that gives you 2.2 million deaths if the current rate of deaths continued for a year at the same rate, which it clearly will not. This figure is before the virus has any where near hit its peak in most of western Europe, North and South America, Africa, South East Asia, the Indian sub continent, in fact it hasn’t peaked in most parts of the world, despite what you say about plateaus in some territories (where is this?). The death toll globally from this virus will outstrip Spanish Flu by a long way.
Ask yourself this during the last “flu seasons” how many doctors and nurses hear about who were dying from flu?
There was a report in Scotland that 13 residents all died from Covid 19, do you recall that ever happening in a flu epidemic?
Another factor in this is the recovery time, flu cases in intensive care usually take about a week of intensive care to move out of the ward. With Covid 19 that is more like three weeks, that trebles the use of ICUs and stretches the capacity of ICUs. This means increased likelihood that people who would survive without treatment will not get the treatment they need to survive. Similarly, just because there is this outbreak, people don’t stop having heart attacks, strokes, etc. If ICUs are full up these people will die from lack of treatment.
Why didn’t Capitalism nosedive 100 years ago like it seems to be doing now?
It did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post%E2%80%93World_War_I_recession
“What has once more been demonstrated is the potential we – and this time the we is world society – have to rapidly repair the damage inflicted by capitalism and re-construct its many structures to meet peoples needs”
Just think how quickly the banks and trading houses in places like the city of London, etc. could be converted into comfortable and beautiful living spaces for families.
Rumour has it that as a generous act to help spirits during the lock down, Phil Collins has graciously agreed NOT to release any songs, any on line concerts or make any fuck wit comments about a subject he is ill placed to make any rational comment upon
I’m not one for praising the rich and famous but I think Phil deserves a pat on the back. With a bit of luck the rest of the Z List celebrities jumping on the Coronavirus to boost their flagging careers will make similar public spirited gestures.
Bijou, I think you can take over from Dave B. Sc. as our Chief Scientific Adviser.
I wouldn’t want to risk the ire of L Bird!
Dave B wrote – I am giving my opponents a chance here by winging it.
You most certainly are!
I think the Princess Diamond dataset indicated that 85% of the cases where asymptomatic,
The numbers were as follows and show nothing of the sort:
eventually all 4,061 on board were tested, 705 tested positive, therefore 3,356 tested negative, a negative test does not mean you are asymptomatic, it means you do not have the virus it means the the virus is not currently active in your system. of the 705 who tested positive 392 or roughly 4/7ths were asymptomatic (have the virus active in your system but are not showing outward symptoms). This is very different from 85% asymptomatic
And in the village of 3000 called Eugano in Italy near Venice ? isolated and tested it was 75%
The actual story is as follows and relates to Vo Euganeo nor Eugano:
“Professor Cristani directs the Molecular Medicine Department in Padua. His team carried out 3300 coronavirus swabs on the entire population of one of the initial 11 lockdown towns in northern Italy, Vo Euganeo, the only one in the Veneto region.
No one else decided to test every single member of the lockdown community. The results immediately showed that 3 percent of all those tested were positive. “We did not realize at the time this was a huge number but we immediately were able to see that the majority of those who were positive did not have any symptoms”, said Cristani.”
This is from the RFI website who are – “a French news and current affairs public radio station that broadcasts worldwide in French and in 13 other languages”- “It draws on the expertise of its Paris-based editorial teams and unique global network of 400 correspondents to provide news bulletins and features”
Actually with even two different haplotypes of the virus ; I think that is the right spelling it might be halotype or something- this is a really interesting subject but will save that for later as they say.
The word I think you are talking about is haplotype. It might be easier to use the term strain, Haplotype has a couple of technical meanings, but strain is probably the best word to describe what I think you re referring to. There is evidence that there are two strains which have been labelled the L type (which is the more lethal) and the S type (which is less lethal). The L type was more prevalent in Wuhan (about 70% of cases were of this type), whereas the S type is the one that seems to be spreading most quickly. This fits in with what is generally understood about viruses, they tend to become more lethal as they multiply. There is a evolutionary reason for this, the mutations that don’t kill spend longer in their hosts, have a higher chance of multiplying and overtake the more lethal ones. From an evolutionary point of view a virus does not gain from killing its host.
There were empirical and theoretical reasons why it could be higher.
Some are arguing at 90%
But anyway for every symptomatic case there are 4 times as many asymptomatic.
No there are not, As you can see from the Diamond Princess statistic, it is closer to 4/7 ths, all be it in a skewed sample in terms of age profile health, etc.
So from that any number you want to come up eg 1% should be divided by 4.
No it shouldn’t
We don’t know or I don’t know who these symptomatic cases are that are being tested.
I don’t have the data.
Are they mostly over 70?
Do they live in cities with high nitrous dioxide [car exhaust] pollution.
It is weather, does the wind blow and geography as much as anything, so watch Madrid.
Are there lots of old fogies still on 40 unfiltered a day?
You say you don’t have the data, then go on to make an awful lot of assumptions about data that you don’t have! All of the evidence suggests that areas of dense population are the first to be hit and that the spread in these areas is the quickest. You don’t have to be a genius to work out that the most probable reason for this is the likelihood of human to human transition and lack of social distance in big cities, rather than the prevaling wind, cigarettes or car pollution!
I also find it somewhat amazing that a Socialist of all people would dismiss the possible early deaths of 1,000s of fellow workers in terms of “old fogies”. If it was mainly killing black people, or Asian people would you dismiss it that easily, is it not ok to be racist but perfectly fine to be ageist?
There is data of up to 8% mortality rates for common colds in old peoples homes; never mind flu.
What data, I have searched on line and found nothing to suggest such a death rate and also your lack of clarity is surprising what do you mean by the term “old people’s homes” are you talking about sheltered housing, residential homes, nursing homes, EMI units, there is a huge difference between them
Ah yes nurses! I think it is 8% of nurses are tested positive and asymptomatically self isolating.
That is a really interesting number!
That is overloading the NHS.
I have no idea what you mean by the term “asymptomatically self isolation”, but I am working on the assumption that by asymptomatic, you mean that they do not have the virus, this is not what asymptomatic means, as explained earlier it means you have the virus but do not display symptoms, you are however still infectious. If you think its a good idea that asymptomatic nurses go back to work then I assume you would be happy to have your dinner prepared by Typhoid Mary!
The evidence is stacking up that about 5% have it over a time period that might rank up to 30% had it and with ‘herd immunity’.
You have clearly put together a few random, figures, which are demonstrably wrong and come with an equally random and incorrect figure
I have just talked to a friend and said I can’t deal with this shit and bat flu drones telling me to get back in the house.
And if you end up on a life support machine because of your decision, that’s a life support machine that a fellow worker (aged or not) could have used to save their life, not a very fraternal or cooperative action, in my view.
Seasonal Flu related deaths 2015-19
2014-15 season – 28,330
2015-16 season – 11.875
2016-17 season – 18,009
2017-18 season – 26,408
Source Public Health England -Surveillance of influenza and other respiratory viruses in the UK Winter 2018 to 2019
Re the following advice:
It is believed that the coronavirus like other viruses cannot withstand high temperatures and for which reason it tends to proliferate in the sinuses which is the coldest part of the head. The remedy involves using a simple hairdryer and water spray to direct heated water molecules into the nostrils to penetrate the sinuses.
One of the reasons the body goes into a fever is that the temperature rise causes viruses to die, basically the body overheats to kill the invading virus. However, if this virus is from a bat, as has been suggested, we have a problem. Bats are unique amongst mammals in actually flying, as part of this they have to produce high levels of energy when they leave the roost and when they return to the roost. Consequently they have a body temperature that is much higher than most other mammals, including humans, and one which would be lethal to a human. So temperature will kill the virus, but might not be bearable for humans.
