Ain’t looking good folks.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/...rus-antibodies-fading-fast-focus-15414533.php
https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/...rus-antibodies-fading-fast-focus-15414533.php
COVID-19 Map worldwide, with statistics
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Brians356
Gold $$ Contributor
"So far, though, there have been only scattered reports of reinfection and no comprehensive studies have verified that it can happen. Experts say the disease hasn’t been around long enough to determine the likelihood of contracting the disease more than once."
On the other hand ... From The Telegraph (UK):
Scientists believe the “threshold” of herd immunity may have been lowered because many people may already be immune to the disease without ever having caught it. ...
Leading experts have already suggested that a sizeable number of people may have immunity against coronavirus because of its similarity to viruses including the common cold. ...
Last month, Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, who is working with a team at Oxford to develop a vaccine, said there was likely to be a “background level” of protection for a “significant number of people”.
“There is probably background T-cell immunity in people before they see the coronavirus, and that may be relevant that many people get a pretty asymptomatic disease,” he said. ...
Also from The Telegraph:
Exposure to the common cold could provide some measure of immunity to Covid-19, a new study suggests.
The key to this immunity lies in T-cells, a type of white blood cell that helps the immune system fight off viruses, which experts believe may have just as important a role to play as antibodies in fighting off the virus. ...
This is not the first time that exposure to the common cold has been linked to resistance to Covid-19 and there is some speculation that this is one of the reasons why children and younger people are seemingly more immune to the disease than older adults. ...
The findings may also go some way to explaining why some people who believe they have had the disease because they have experienced the classic symptoms of shortness of breath, tiredness and loss of taste and smell have tested negative in antibody tests, the researchers said.
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Brians356
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Actually "in use" or just standing by? Like most of them in Queens, NYC, and that massive hospital ship that was never utilized.
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Sure. But heart disease and "cancer" (a hodgepodge of many neoplasms with different etiologies) are not infectious -- i.e., my behavior doesn't affect your risk.
In just 4.5 months COVID-19 has killed more Americans than die of all other infectious diseases combined in the average year. COVID-19 is already the third leading cause of death in the U.S. since the first of March, and has killed more than twice as many Americans as lung cancer (the most common fatal "cancer" in the U.S.). Pretty impressive for a single viral agent which has a case doubling time of just over a month at the moment.
An interesting insight into the stats side of the pandemic has just come to light in England. (I say 'England' deliberately as opposed to 'The UK' as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are devolved government entities and have their own health authorities, policies, pandemic mitigation and statistics policies and practices.)
An Oxford University team has been looking at 'Covid deaths' in England (which accounts for the majority of UK cases nationally as it has the largest population by far and also most of the large cities / high population density areas). It turns out PHE (Public Health England) takes all recorded 'out of hospital' deaths in England and searches the Covid test records to find any matches. If the deceased has ever tested positive for the virus, it is chalked up as a 'Covid death' irrespective of whether the individual recovered from the disease, how long ago the test was, or the circumstances of the death. So, if I'd tested positive back in March and die tomorrow of traumatic injuries suffered in a road traffic accident, I'd go into the UK stats and on Worldometer as a UK Covid daily death. Should the policy continue indefinitely, all of the nearly 0.3M English people who've tested positive would inevitably and eventually be recorded as 'Covid deaths' unless an immortality drug appears even though some wouldn't show up in the records for 50, 60 years.
It is reckoned that this is doubling English daily 'Covid deaths' right now and explains why the death figures have failed to drop in line with the daily new case numbers, hospitalizations etc. In fact, the UK has now recorded three consecutive weeks where total deaths from all causes are lower than the five-preceding years' averages.
It's been said many times that a pandemic response is 'a numbers game', but getting the 'right numbers' is both difficult and vital, so this policy must rank high in the tables of institutional stupidity. The UK government Health Secretary has instituted an urgent review, so expect the UK Worldometer figures to be adjusted downwards. Conversely, it has been reported here that in some other countries where the per capita death rates are apparently much lower than ours, you have to die in hospital in a Covid ward almost with a ventilator tube stuck into you to be recorded as a Covid fatality.
An Oxford University team has been looking at 'Covid deaths' in England (which accounts for the majority of UK cases nationally as it has the largest population by far and also most of the large cities / high population density areas). It turns out PHE (Public Health England) takes all recorded 'out of hospital' deaths in England and searches the Covid test records to find any matches. If the deceased has ever tested positive for the virus, it is chalked up as a 'Covid death' irrespective of whether the individual recovered from the disease, how long ago the test was, or the circumstances of the death. So, if I'd tested positive back in March and die tomorrow of traumatic injuries suffered in a road traffic accident, I'd go into the UK stats and on Worldometer as a UK Covid daily death. Should the policy continue indefinitely, all of the nearly 0.3M English people who've tested positive would inevitably and eventually be recorded as 'Covid deaths' unless an immortality drug appears even though some wouldn't show up in the records for 50, 60 years.
It is reckoned that this is doubling English daily 'Covid deaths' right now and explains why the death figures have failed to drop in line with the daily new case numbers, hospitalizations etc. In fact, the UK has now recorded three consecutive weeks where total deaths from all causes are lower than the five-preceding years' averages.
It's been said many times that a pandemic response is 'a numbers game', but getting the 'right numbers' is both difficult and vital, so this policy must rank high in the tables of institutional stupidity. The UK government Health Secretary has instituted an urgent review, so expect the UK Worldometer figures to be adjusted downwards. Conversely, it has been reported here that in some other countries where the per capita death rates are apparently much lower than ours, you have to die in hospital in a Covid ward almost with a ventilator tube stuck into you to be recorded as a Covid fatality.
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KMart
Gold $$ Contributor
Similar goings on in the US. It has been reported that some testing facilities in Florida are reporting all (100%) of their tests as positive for Covid. Another strange incident there, a 20 year old was killed in a motorcycle accident. The death certificate shows cause of death as Covid. I guess the truth is too boring to print.
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In contrast, the U.S. has substantial excess deaths, likely indicating an undercount of COVID-19 deaths as well as deaths that have occurred because people with other life-threatening conditions were afraid to seek, or could not obtain, appropriate medical care because of the pandemic.
jds holler
Gold $$ Contributor
My wife badly cut her finger a couple days ago. Urgent care center said she had to go to ER for a tendon repair. We masked up and go to the hospital. They take her in, and tell me there is no place for me to wait, except for the parking lot. 
It occurs to me that everyone who is sick, mangled, dying, etc, is doing it alone. jd
It occurs to me that everyone who is sick, mangled, dying, etc, is doing it alone. jd
That was also the case in the UK in the early days which is why our ONS (Office of National Statistics) started producing weekly all-cause death figures v the preceding five-year average and studying their make-up very closely. Some of these early stage 'excess deaths' were attributed to Covid under-reporting especially in care and nursing homes, some to the NHS discouraging visits, stopping tests and many procedures / treatments mid-course. The interesting (surprising?) thing is the weekly figure now running a little below the 5-year average. This suggests that many early Covid deaths were of elderly / frail people who would have died sometime this year and that for the moment at any rate this displacement effect is outweighing the loss of cancer chemo-therapy, huge reductions in scans and elective surgery etc, etc we're seeing across our healthcare system.
Brians356
Gold $$ Contributor
What I was actually alluding to there (not explained) was how many of the Covid deaths - elderly, many in LTC facilities, most with underlying morbidities - would likely have succumbed anyway by the end of the year. After all, over 2 million of us die from some disease every year, and the vast majority (as with Covid) are elderly. What Covid is doing is shortening many lives by months, not years or decades. In Minnesota the median age of a Covid decedent is 83.5 years! Ponder that, it should give you pause. How many died with Covid as opposed to from Covid?
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How many die annually from the Flu?
Read back through this thread. It's been posted many times. Short answer: COVID-19 has killed more Americans than any flu, seasonal or pandemic, in the past century.
So, there should be virtually zero excess deaths since COVID-19 got going. And yet, ...
Brians356
Gold $$ Contributor
"Excess Deaths" is a good metric, and one I watch, but there's possibly a temporal displacement effect to consider. Many of those excess deaths in May and June may well largely be people whose deaths would otherwise have been spread over the next six months. What if there are significantly fewer than normal deaths down the road? Would that balance the ledger?
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Brians356
Gold $$ Contributor
Read back through this thread. Normalized for population, 1967 (0.05% of population killed) and 1957 (0.07% killed) were deadlier. For Covid-19 to be the deadliest in the past century will take 231,700 deaths, likely to become reality. But considering it'd be nearly an order of magnitude less devastating than 1918, a mean feat. That Spanish Flu killed indiscriminately, taking as many young healthy people as old infirm ones. I'd like to see the Excess Deaths figures for it.
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So we (still) agree that COVID-19 is going to be deadlier than any influenza in the past century, and can't be meaningfully equated to the seasonal flu.
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