Coronavirus Information Charts.

[GeoffH]

5 hours ago, OnMyWay said:

Forgive me for being tactless.  The first wave killed the very old and very weak. Treatments have gotten much better.  Testing has increased everywhere, especially for healthy appearing people.  Younger people who have very little impact from the virus are being tested and found with it.

It's not tactless, it's just the truth.  And yes treatments have gotten better, a recent study came out which has been able to show that for people on ventilators several steroids reduce the death rate.  And testing has increased in many countries.

I wasn't trying to suggest that the deaths were going to get worse, just that many countries who had managed to suppress numbers are now experiencing a resurgence in case numbers (which is one of the more accepted ways of defining 'wave').

There is some evidence that the more recent (and now more prevelant) type of the virus is rather less fatal than the original zoanotic version also.

 

Way back near the start of all this I said "I'd be surprised if this pandemic didn't reach the death rate of the 1969 Hong Kong flu pandemic".   That pandemic caused 1 million deaths and we're still on target for that (it looks like it might even exceed it by a bit).  I also said that I did not believe that this was going to be as bad as the Spanish Flu.  I might yet be wrong but I'm sticking with my two original guesses.

 

FWIW you won't offend me by disagreeing, my skin is thicker than that :)

Edited September 6, 2020 by GeoffH

[earthdome]

On 9/6/2020 at 10:05 AM, GeoffH said:

Way back near the start of all this I said "I'd be surprised if this pandemic didn't reach the death rate of the 1969 Hong Kong flu pandemic".   That pandemic caused 1 million deaths and we're still on target for that (it looks like it might even exceed it by a bit).  I also said that I did not believe that this was going to be as bad as the Spanish Flu.  I might yet be wrong but I'm sticking with my two original guesses.

And back in 1969 no one went bat s___ crazy shutting everything down. The flower power generation survived that super spreader event called Woodstock.

Edited September 8, 2020 by earthdome

[GeoffH]

10 hours ago, earthdome said:

And back in 1969 no one went bat s___ crazy shutting everything down. The flower power generation survived that super spreader event called Woodstock.

If we had not locked down we would be looking at death numbers similar in percentages to Sweden in most first world countries instead of what we have now.  And we'd currently be approaching 2 million deaths not 1 million (you'd calculate from that alone closer to 5 million but there are other factors that reduce it).

Covid is not as bad by a long way as the Spanish Flu but it is more dangerous than the 1969 Hong Kong Flu and my original estimate did not allow for that (early data wasn't very accurate).   However it also didn't allow for widespread lockdowns (I assumed only communist countries would manage those) so it balanced out.

So the question really is "Are the lockdowns worth it to prolong the lives of roughly a million mostly older people or not?".

And no... it is not possible to protect older people needing institutional care in a society with high community transmission rates of Covid, it just isn't.

I happen to think it is worth it... but I'm older and I might just be a bit biased but you're free to disagree of course.

Edited September 9, 2020 by GeoffH

[Tommy T.]

9 hours ago, earthdome said:

And back in 1969 no one went bat s___ crazy shutting everything down. The flower power generation survived that super spreader event called Woodstock.

Ah... that super spreader event was drugs, sex and rock and roll... not a virus!

[RBM]

9 hours ago, GeoffH said:

 

So the question really is "Are the lockdowns worth it to prolong the lives of roughly a million mostly older people or not?".

 

There are a heap of interesting, conflicting articles about exactly this subject. Lunacy lock downs comes to mind.

In trying to answer this one must look at the total picture including the effects on health, social problems of so many in lock down. perhaps Melbourne can provide some insite.

Just yesterday I read a very positive article on Sweden and there long term benefits in spite of the extremely high death rate, there is also some conjecture on how their count was managed. 

[GeoffH]

11 minutes ago, RBM said:

In trying to answer this one must look at the total picture including the effects on health, social problems of so many in lock down. perhaps Melbourne can provide some insite.

It might well be part of the information needed to make an accurate assessment of if it was 'worth it' from an economic and/or societal perspective but I don't think we'll have accurate information for some time after Covid is done and dusted and I'm hesitant to try and make estimates without better data and honestly... I'm too old and lacking in motivation to even try 

[Mike J]

I think maybe Brazil may be the best example of what could have happened world wide if this had been treated as typical flu?  And of course the pandemic is still on going for an unknown length of time.

[GeoffH]

3 hours ago, Mike J said:

I think maybe Brazil may be the best example of what could have happened world wide if this had been treated as typical flu?  And of course the pandemic is still on going for an unknown length of time.

I agree with your example of Brazil but it is worth noting that even when governments do treat Covid with caution that limited resources can still see things getting out of control... like in India which currently has the second highest number of cases with numbers increasing strongly.

[hk blues]

There is a school of though that the end result will be the same regardless of the steps taken, just the time taken to get there will be different. To some extent you can see some sense in that.

That said, I'm not in favour of such an approach given we have no precedence to guide us. Balanced measures taking into account local peculiarities works for me.

 

[Jay Smith]

The people saying the end result will be the same are the people who would make it that way. Of course it's going to be the same if people forget or ignore their protections. Masks, distancing, lockdown suck, and they suck more when your neighbors ignore them and spread things around because they think they are clean of infection. Two active cases in Ormoc right now and one is a police officer who ignored his protections and brought it in from Tacloban where he wasn't supposed to be. 

Point is, the measures we use to protect against the pandemic take everyone working together to be effective. This is, unfortunately, not the state of things.