wakka12 wrote: » I've taken a place where an known and established outbreak of coronavirus has occurred, there are not that many known large epicentres of contagion from which to draw assumptions. It, Lombardy, Madrid and Wuhan are where the bulk of the known information of how this virus spreads and affects people will come from, because of that reason, whether you like the information coming out of them or not Basically, its the best we have to go on. And youre countering the proof based on a number of unknowns..maybe its spreading in Africa or Texas or India or whatever example youre using and not causing large numbers of deaths becuse the population is young not urbanised whatever..but equally maybe its not..most likely not given theres no proof of it yet
wakka12 wrote: » Definitely weakens the theory that the COVID patients would have died anyway. Sweden and Belgium have experienced 25% and 12% increase in national mortality rates in the month of March. This would equate to 2300 additional deaths in Belgium and 1100 additional deaths in Sweden. In March Belgium reported 2373 coronavirus deaths while Sweden reported 1160. A strikingly similar correlation between number of excess deaths and reports of coronavirus deathshttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html
marno21 wrote: » I think the point being made was that many of the unfortunate deaths were patients with limited life expectancies which would only see them survive for months with no covid, whereby their death was accelerated by covid-19. The median age of deaths in Ireland being in the mid 80s would seem to provide some evidence to this theory, that a proportion of the deaths were older people who were weak and had limited quality of life. Of course, there is a large proportion of deaths occurring in much younger people also.
YFlyer wrote: » Mortality rate is measured according to positive cases not total population.
“According to our modellers, we are starting to see so many immune people in the population in Stockholm that it is starting to have an effect on the spread of the infection,” Tegnell said. “These are mathematical models, they’re only as good as the data we put into them. We will see if they are right.”
plodder wrote: » Odd quote from Anders Tegnell in today's IT A lot of people won't read past the first sentence and take from "we are starting to see" as actual emperical evidence, but it's just more mathematical models.
robinbird wrote: » Not really. If you take out the elderly and those with already serious underlying medical conditions as well as the obese, there are very few.
charlie14 wrote: » That, plus there is no evidence that those who have been infected have developed immunity.
Breezin wrote: » The outcomes of mathematical models based on data are empirical evidence.
Chinese doctors in Wuhan, where the coronavirus first emerged in December, say a growing number of cases in which people recover from the virus, but continue to test positive without showing symptoms, is one of their biggest challenges as the country moves into a new phase of its containment battle. Those patients all tested negative for the virus at some point after recovering, but then tested positive again, some up to 70 days later, the doctors said. Many have done so over 50-60 days.
IAMAMORON wrote: » Also no evidence that they haven't either.... A lot of armageddonist's trying to sell this particular fear. " it comes back" , you can get it "twice". It is certainly suiting the doomsday mantra. Fact remains that you can be 99% certain that if it is a corona virus ( as we are being told it is ) , it will act and replicate its previous mutations such as SARS 1 etc. Otherwise millions and millions of people are going to die. Given current death rates this does not seem feasible. We would already be seeing clear evidence of viral reinvention in Asian cases previously diagnosed. We aren't. The WHO's negativity behind widespread antibody testing is a practical one. Most global health systems simply have not got the infrastructure to carry out a successful widespread antibody testing program, there is simply not enough test kits to test 8 billion humans.
Diarmuid wrote: » Well to be more precise it's (number of death) /(number infected) (number infected) is not necessarily the same as (number of positive tests) unless you test 100% (or a statistically representative number) and your test is 100% accurate. That's why all these posts taking the number of deaths in Italy / number of cases are completely wrong and misleading.
robinbird wrote: » It could well turn out in time that the whole lockdown, social distancing thing was pointless or indeed may have been the worst approach. And that the countries that didn't lockdown will fare best in the long run. With the proviso of course that nursing homes and the vulnerable such as those in their eighties or fat should have been isolated. So per capita per million Sweden 156 Ireland 139 And our daily death rate is now higher so catching up fast.
plodder wrote: » Not really. The output of a model is not empirical evidence. eg the Imperial College predictions for mortality based on their model were not empirical evidence of mortality. How could they be? I hope he is right and maybe the data going into the model he is using is favourable, but for me it's not evidence of immunity yet. There was some information in today's Guardian also coming from Wuhan which is not so positive. Though it has to be said, that kind of negative evidence, tending to disprove the immunity theory, is much easier to find at this stage than evidence which supports it. It is a lot harder to prove that someone cannot infect another person than that they can.
plodder wrote: » Not really. The output of a model is not empirical evidence. eg the Imperial College predictions for mortality based on their model were not empirical evidence of mortality. How could they be?
I hope he is right and maybe the data going into the model he is using is favourable, but for me it's not evidence of immunity yet.
Breezin wrote: » It just is empirical, although more accurately it's a finding, however tentative, based on empirical evidence. It's based on data, and on specific treatment of the data. No model is perfect, and so long as its limitations are transparent, its output is empirically-founded. Like any model, its outputs need to be evaluated with caution, but it is information that is of use.
charlie14 wrote: » Hopefully it will only replicate and not mutate so that anyone who gets it will develop immunity, but those 179 cases in South Korea who have tested positive again after having it are worrying.
IAMAMORON wrote: » Does anyone have historical Swedish data, or a link to it ?
normanoffside wrote: » On This point, you would actually have to test the entire population at least once a week to get a true figure of infection. Just because someone is not infected today does not mean they weren't infect last week or indeed won't be tomorrow
IAMAMORON wrote: » Even the current mooting of developing a comprehensive contact tracing mechanism to isolate future outbreaks once the lockdown is eased stinks of window dressing to me.
IAMAMORON wrote: » The testing mantra is becoming farcical. I see opposition politicians are attempting to develop it into a flagging issue and beat the HSE with it like a stick. However the fact remains unless the entire population gets tested at one particular point in time it is pointless. Even the current mooting of developing a comprehensive contact tracing mechanism to isolate future outbreaks once the lockdown is eased stinks of window dressing to me. Once the lockdown is eased people are going to be in contact with a thousand more random permutations an hour. It is impossible to pin down. I cannot see it being efficient.
plodder wrote: » But, if the current lockdown here will (or is) effectively controlling the spread, and that is without an effective testing regime, then it's reasonable to suppose that a limited removal of restrictions together with better testing will still keep it under control. So, you might be in contact with more people, but you are more likely to be able to trace those people, or put it another way, the only way a particular restriction can be lifted is if contacts are traceable (schools, many workplaces yes, pubs no, shops with present distancing measures etc). Might need some level of random testing of the population as well to catch outbreaks as early as possible.
