Bijou Drains
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Alan, as Robert Tressell put it:
“mingling with part of the crowd were a number of well dressed individuals dressed in long garments of black cloth of the finest texture , and broad brimmed soft felt hats. Most of these persons had gold rings on their soft white fingers and glove like calf-skin boots on their feet. They belonged to the great army of imposters who obtain an easy living by taking advantage of the ignorance and simplicity of their fellow men, and pretending to be the “followers” and “servants” of the lowely Carpenter of Nazareth – the Man of Sorrows, who had nowhere to lay his head”
From BBC News
“The Archbishop of Canterbury has issued a plea to crematoriums and local authorities to ensure they treat those who die during the coronavirus lockdown with dignity.”
Humans should have dignity when they die, the follower of the Nazareen Carpenter isn’t too bothered about them having dignity when they are alive.
“If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor” (Matthew 19:21),
Church of England net worth – £7.8 billion, £5.2 billion in investments.
Hypocritical old fucker
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.
