Coronavirus

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I have not been following this thread fully so pardon me if I'm butting in and off the mark. A couple of people suggested I post my summary site here.

Since the beginning of this I have been concerned that the reporting on case counts was not really a good idea given the inconsistency in testing capabilities between jurisdictions. A great example is what was happening in Canada at that time. Things in BC really kicked off first but Ontario and Quebec were soon the top of the heap in terms of case counts. My question was how to compare them? BC had probably the best testing capabilities early on but a smaller population than Ontario and Quebec. Comparing Ontario and Quebec was also problematic, Quebec was testing more people so no surprise they had more cases. The issue was they found more cases. I had no idea if there really was more cases because Ontario was a testing mess back then (multi day delays, not enough testing supplies, extremely restrictive rules on who got tests).

I began looking for another way to track things. I settled on the death rate. While the death rate stat has some of its own issues (how a death is attributed) it has the advantage that we don't miss them. We are very good at counting them. Obviously deaths from Covid19 are a lagging indicator so we have to keep that in mind too. Not to mention that some countries are actively lying about their deaths (cough, cough, I'm looking at you China, Iran and Russia to name just a few) - I will not be including them in any charts - since - what's the point.

The other thing that we have all been trying to do by staying inside is reduce the pressure on our health care systems (if you look at the per capita deaths curves you can see what happened to Spain and Italy when their health care systems were overwhelmed). A good way to measure that is how many people are in hospital and how many need to be in the ICU. I started finding data for that for some Canadian provinces so I added them along with information about the number of ICU beds available. Thankfully we have, so far, not gotten anywhere near full ICU capacity. I recently found that the John Hopkins data has the hospitalization numbers for the US states - I am working on automating the update of charts for that data so you can stay tuned for that update.

Please check it out here and I am happy to receive any feedback you have. I'll happily hear it but I may not act on it :)

 
I have questions about death rates. There have been some doctors in the US who say they are being pressured to report deaths as COVID related even though they are not entirely sure the cause of death is COVID related. I have not followed up on those reports in-depth, but if this is true then one could question the death rates being reported. Also, the recovery numbers are very low, is that because no one is sure what recovery from COVID looks like, or because the disease just doesn't go away?

What is alarming to me is the reports from the USN and out of Wuhan that sailors and citizens that have had the virus and recovered have become re-infected. So that makes me ponder the validity of a vaccine based on anti-bodies. If a person has had the disease and who allegedly recovered should be able to resist re-infection better than a person who has not, right? So extrapolated this out, would a vaccine be effective?
 
A Canadian Cat said:
I have not been following this thread fully so pardon me if I'm butting in and off the mark. A couple of people suggested I post my summary site here.

Since the beginning of this I have been concerned that the reporting on case counts was not really a good idea given the inconsistency in testing capabilities between jurisdictions. A great example is what was happening in Canada at that time. Things in BC really kicked off first but Ontario and Quebec were soon the top of the heap in terms of case counts. My question was how to compare them? BC had probably the best testing capabilities early on but a smaller population than Ontario and Quebec. Comparing Ontario and Quebec was also problematic, Quebec was testing more people so no surprise they had more cases. The issue was they found more cases. I had no idea if there really was more cases because Ontario was a testing mess back then (multi day delays, not enough testing supplies, extremely restrictive rules on who got tests).

I began looking for another way to track things. I settled on the death rate. While the death rate stat has some of its own issues (how a death is attributed) it has the advantage that we don't miss them. We are very good at counting them. Obviously deaths from Covid19 are a lagging indicator so we have to keep that in mind too. Not to mention that some countries are actively lying about their deaths (cough, cough, I'm looking at you China, Iran and Russia to name just a few) - I will not be including them in any charts - since - what's the point.

The other thing that we have all been trying to do by staying inside is reduce the pressure on our health care systems (if you look at the per capita deaths curves you can see what happened to Spain and Italy when their health care systems were overwhelmed). A good way to measure that is how many people are in hospital and how many need to be in the ICU. I started finding data for that for some Canadian provinces so I added them along with information about the number of ICU beds available. Thankfully we have, so far, not gotten anywhere near full ICU capacity. I recently found that the John Hopkins data has the hospitalization numbers for the US states - I am working on automating the update of charts for that data so you can stay tuned for that update.

Please check it out here and I am happy to receive any feedback you have. I'll happily hear it but I may not act on it :)

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Tell yer fellow countrymen to do as they are told.......I'm supposed to be coming over in July next year and don't want to have to cancel a second time!!

Stay safe.

Steve
 
There's an interesting story from the NY Times about the difficulty of determining the lethality rate of Coronavirus...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/us/coronavirus-death-rate.html

It appears that the lethality rate is looking to be at least half of what's been reported by the media. The truth is you would have to include everyone that has the coronavirus antibodies, of which no one knows how many people that would be, but as mentioned before, certain studies of antibodies in those tested estimated at 50 to 85 times the number of people reported as confirmed cases have been exposed and possibly had extremely mild cases or been asymptomatic. So as of today there are about 5,100,000 cases worldwide with about 330,000 death or about 6.4 % lethality rate. But, if the actual infection rate is 50 (low estimate) times that, which studies indicate might be closer to the case, the lethality rate would be 0.12%.

I am not trying to downplay the severity of the virus, it is serious, but I will be very interested when this is all over to see what the final lethality rate ends up being.
 
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HOA_KSOP said:
I have questions about death rates.
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There are some issues around how each death is reported. There is no doubt about it, but normally in a pandemic the deaths due to the pathogen du jour are under counted. Drs. record that a heart attack was the cause when there was not positive test result for the virus and other things like that. In fact in NYC deaths occurring at home were not being counted as caused by Covid 19 at all for a time. On a day in April that I read about there were 600+ recorded deaths due to Covid19 and 200 deaths that occurred at home that were not added to the Covid 19 death count. The same day in the previous year 20 people died in NYC in their homes. Clearly many of those 200 deaths were likely actually caused by Covid 19. Historically the death tole for a pandemic disease will be revised up after the crisis has passed and interviews with family and additional test and investigations are conducted.

My main reason for using deaths is that the issues in counting are about the same in all jurisdictions (the honest ones anyway - see my comment about China et. al.). So, the problems with the data are about the same and at least you can compere them. Whereas with testing there is just no way. If one pace does 1000 tests and another does 2000 tests and the criteria for testing is different between them then what does it mean? On top of which I am not sure there are may jurisdictions that are actually even testing at a fast enough rate so a lot of people who are sick are totally missed.

HOA_KSOP said:
There have been some doctors in the US who say they are being pressured to report deaths as COVID related even though they are not entirely sure the cause of death is COVID related. I have not followed up on those reports in-depth, but if this is true then one could question the death rates being reported.
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I would be very careful with that. I guarantee you can find a specific case of a Dr. feeling like they were pressured to record a death as Covid 19 related they didn't think was. I think I can also guarantee you that you can find a specific case where a Dr. felt they were begin pressured to record a death as not Covid 19 when they though it was. Those kinds of stories are leveraged by people with an agenda and used to make arguments that everything is broken and we cannot trust anything.

Resist that. We are lucky to live in countries where by and large our doctors look after us and make honest assessments and recordings of data. That is the real truth of the world most of us live in.

HOA_KSOP said:
Also, the recovery numbers are very low, is that because no one is sure what recovery from COVID looks like, or because the disease just doesn't go away?
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I have no idea about that. I never paid the slightest attention to the recovery numbers. When you feel like I do that the testing numbers and the case numbers that come from those are not worth much for comparison then the recovery numbers are in the same boat since they have the same problem of you never really knew how many people were sick in the first place.

HOA_KSOP said:
What is alarming to me is the reports from the USN and out of Wuhan that sailors and citizens that have had the virus and recovered have become re-infected. So that makes me ponder the validity of a vaccine based on anti-bodies. If a person has had the disease and who allegedly recovered should be able to resist re-infection better than a person who has not, right? So extrapolated this out, would a vaccine be effective?
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I agree I was concerned too. My understanding of this was the case in South Korea that was investigated thoroughly the conclusion was that the tests for the virus was still reporting the person was infected because they still had fragments of the virus in their system that the test was detecting. But they were not really sick and did not really have an active infection.
 
IMO, a large percentage of COVID fatalities are probably from patients who have significant comorbidities (i.e. patients who are in otherwise poor health). If they die, then they are counted as a "COVID related fatality", even though, truth be told, they were not long for this world even without contracting COVID.
 
HOA_KSOP said:
I am not trying to downplay the severity of the virus, it is serious, but I will be very interested when this is all over to see what the final lethality rate ends up being.
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You are absolutely right. Some places have started random population samples for anti body testing to get an idea of how many people were actually infected. I had not heard a mortality rate as low as 0.12% that would be great (BTW that is still 10 times higher than the flu).

It gets even more difficult when you factor in the level of health care that is available. For example lets consider Ebloa I remember the first outbreaks the mortality rate was listed as 90% or higher. Those first outbreaks were in remote villages and basically no one got any care because no one knew about the outbreak until is was too late. Yikes. Then with the more recent outbreaks when MSF ran special hospitals they got it down to 20% just with basic supportive care (keeping people hydrated, clean etc). That is a dramatic difference.

How does that relate to Covid19? If there are so many cases that some people never get to the hospital or the hospitals are turning people away or there are so many sick people that they have to choose who gets care and who does not then the mortality rate is going to be quite a bit higher than if there are good medical facilities that don't get overwhelmed. That means that we have some control over what that final number is. If we hunker down and take the recommended precautions we can keep our health care system functioning we can actually contribute to a lower mortality rate.
 
Meat Grinder said:
IMO, a large percentage of COVID fatalities are probably from patients who have significant comorbidities (i.e. patients who are in otherwise poor health). If they die, then they are counted as a "COVID related fatality", even though, truth be told, they were not long for this world even without contracting COVID.
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Yeah, I get what you are saying. But I have a few issues with it. If we were in person face to face you would see that my answer is not from anger and I am not accusing you - just in case this comes off the wrong way.

For starters first as someone with asthma I am one of those people. But otherwise I am a very healthy 53 year old. I've got another thirty years left, knock on wood. But if I got this I have a much higher chance of dieing and then will I just be one of those poor souls that were not long for this world? I don't think so. And even someone who is quite unwell a later in their life - so? Many of those people have years left of enjoying their grand children and their garden. I personally would like them to get to have that time.
 
A Canadian Cat said:
Yeah, I get what you are saying. But I have a few issues with it. If we were in person face to face you would see that my answer is not from anger and I am not accusing you - just in case this comes off the wrong way.

For starters first as someone with asthma I am one of those people. But otherwise I am a very healthy 53 year old. I've got another thirty years left, knock on wood. But if I got this I have a much higher chance of dieing and then will I just be one of those poor souls that were not long for this world? I don't think so. And even someone who is quite unwell a later in their life - so? Many of those people have years left of enjoying their grand children and their garden. I personally would like them to get to have that time.
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I hope I didn't come off the wrong way with that statement. I wish you and all your loved ones long and happy lives. It's just that I've worked in hospitals/trauma centers, dealing with critically ill patients, for thirty two years now. I've witnessed a lot of death in that time, and I've seen some patients kept alive that probably should not have been. I've seen quite a few patients who, were I them, I would rather be dead than in their condition. I've also seen a lot of death in my own family. I guess I can sometimes come off as jaded. Apologies, if so.
 
Meat Grinder said:
I hope I didn't come off the wrong way with that statement. I wish you and all your loved ones long and happy lives. It's just that I've worked in hospitals/trauma centers, dealing with critically ill patients, for thirty two years now. I've witnessed a lot of death in that time, and I've seen some patients kept alive that probably should not have been. I've seen quite a few patients who, were I them, I would rather be dead than in their condition. I've also seen a lot of death in my own family. I guess I can sometimes come off as jaded. Apologies, if so.
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No worries man. I was concerned I was coming off as upset - which I wasn't. Yeah I know my mother and I have had several conversations about what she doesn't want to live with. So far she's doing well but we are all aware of the possibly of getting to a place where we decided we've had enough.
 
A COVID-19 poster across the Quantico, Virginia, Marine base is warning military personnel to be part of the “resistance” against the virus and follow public health guidelines.
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