Finally a voice of reason

PeterNSteinmetz said:
You are correct, the normal seasonal flu is not a coronavirus. Nonetheless, many viral infections follow a seasonal pattern, with infections lower in the summer. As you note, some of these are colds, which are coronaviruses. Pretty active debate amongst experts right now if COVID-19 will follow a seasonal pattern. We can hope but remain vigilant.
Click to expand...
It is widely believed that at least one major reason for the seasonal variation in influenza and viral URIs is the social distancing of schools out and less indoor gatherings. Let’s not slow all efforts at social distancing.
 
wrbix said:
It is widely believed that at least one major reason for the seasonal variation in influenza and viral URIs is the social distancing of schools out and less indoor gatherings. Let’s not slow all efforts at social distancing.
Click to expand...

Peak flu season is February and March. It recedes to baseline way before the school year ends.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
(some data from Europe that Covid-19 displaces other deaths but has not contributed to an increase in overall deaths).
Click to expand...

Any citations? Because that does not match what my in laws are reporting who live in Europe. It also does not match what I read from BBC, and TV Monde 5 (I cheat and use Google Translate on TV Monde 5).

Tim
 
tspear said:
Any citations? Because that does not match what my in laws are reporting who live in Europe. It also does not match what I read from BBC, and TV Monde 5 (I cheat and use Google Translate on TV Monde 5).
Click to expand...

Sure, always happy to provide pointers to what I am looking at it. I will note that this is fairly new and could turn out to be weird variation.

This has been noted in the UK (https://www.ft.com/content/f3796baf-e4f0-4862-8887-d09c7f706553).

And then more recently the latest European figures show excess mortality for Italy but not Europe overall where mortality is actually lower in the last reported week and that for flus overall is not so high as in prior years. (https://www.euromomo.eu/index.html).

Other commenters have noted that this seems quite surprising if it is true and continues. One possible explanation is that the measures which have been taken have reduced overall mortality, offsetting any increase in Covid-19 deaths. Another is that Covid-19 deaths are largely just displacing other causes of death in susceptible individuals. Or perhaps it is a combination of a number of such factors.

I am very curious to see what similar numbers in the US are like. Very preliminary and sort of puzzling.
 
@PeterNSteinmetz

FT is behind a paywall.
If you use the EuroMOMO statistics, then you need a pandemic on the scale of the 1918 Spanish Flu to appreciably move the needles.
The reality, roughly 2.5 million people die a year in the USA. I assume Europe is roughly the same. So a few thousand either way will not move the numbers in an appreciable manor.
Now, if we let the COVID-19 run wild; worst case models predicet around 2 million would die from the disease. I am sure some of the 2 million would be the 2.5 million that would have dies anyway; but I doubt it would be all of them. One model, actually predicted due to COVID-19 consuming medical resources; that non-COVID-19 deaths will increase. e.g. ER/ICU staff exhausted makes more mistakes, or cannot give adequate attention to each patient.
Somehow, I think most people would like to prevent this spike.

Tim
 
This thing kills 50 and 60 year olds. Not everyone who dies from this was a terminal nursing home patient. Yes, technically everyone dies of something eventually, but given how this picks off people in other age brackets, I find that argument rather specious.
 
tspear said:
@PeterNSteinmetz

FT is behind a paywall.
If you use the EuroMOMO statistics, then you need a pandemic on the scale of the 1918 Spanish Flu to appreciably move the needles.
The reality, roughly 2.5 million people die a year in the USA. I assume Europe is roughly the same. So a few thousand either way will not move the numbers in an appreciable manor.
Now, if we let the COVID-19 run wild; worst case models predicet around 2 million would die from the disease. I am sure some of the 2 million would be the 2.5 million that would have dies anyway; but I doubt it would be all of them. One model, actually predicted due to COVID-19 consuming medical resources; that non-COVID-19 deaths will increase. e.g. ER/ICU staff exhausted makes more mistakes, or cannot give adequate attention to each patient.
Somehow, I think most people would like to prevent this spike.

Tim
Click to expand...

Strange about FT because I can access that article without a subscription.

I don’t quite understand what you mean by “you need a pandemic...” Perhaps you could expand?

The big problem with the modeling right now is that our knowledge of the underlying parameters is so limited presently.

That is why I find this data so intriguing. Why isn’t there a big spike in excess deaths? If there is an increase in Covid-19 deaths but no increase in overall mortality, what happened?

Or do you mean that the number of Covid-19 deaths is so small as to be unnoticeable in the total number of deaths? If this latter, I guess that brings me to the next point.

As I noted before, how people want to trade off Covid-19 deaths against other deaths or resources is a political question. There is certainly a non-zero cost associated with interventions to reduce Covid-19 deaths, either in terms of money or deaths due to other causes — it is not zero. And with all such costs, different people will have different preferences. But that balance is a political question that I would suggest we avoid here to avoid thread lock.
 
Last edited:
weilke said:
This thing kills 50 and 60 year olds. Not everyone who dies from this was a terminal nursing home patient. Yes, technically everyone dies of something eventually, but given how this picks off people in other age brackets, I find that argument rather specious.
Click to expand...

Well, as noted above, the number of deaths tends to be a more reliable number, though assignment of cause(s) is clearly a softer call.

But in terms of the numbers, if Covid-19 deaths are up substantially and overall mortality is down, what happened? Or say overall mortality remains the same, what happened?

Presumably either some deaths were just relabeled essentially as Covid-19 or in fact other deaths are down to offset the Covid-19 deaths.

I don’t see the latter as particularly improbable. If you force people to stay home, they are probably not engaging in a number of activities of daily living which otherwise kill them - like driving cars, getting drunk in bars and fighting, etc.

Of course this may all be a weird anomaly in the data at this point - maybe some underreporting? We need to see how it develops.

I guess I don’t understand what you think is specious -perhaps expand?
 
weilke said:
Peak flu season is February and March. It recedes to baseline way before the school year ends.
Click to expand...
Yeah....but I tend to believe the folks who actually apply science and thoughtful analysis to these issues, over SGOTI:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656132/
.....not the only factor but a factor always cited in these discussions...along with viral changes, changes in indoor humidity, etc.
Winter school breaks decrease incidence by upwards of 25%, and there likely is progression of herd immunity over the course of the school year.
Continuing social distancing, thanks.
 
Last edited:
wrbix said:
Yeah....but I tend to believe the folks who actually apply science and thoughtful analysis to these issues, over SGOTI:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656132/
.....not the only factor but a factor always cited in these discussions...along with viral changes, changes in indoor humidity, etc.
Winter school breaks decrease incidence by upwards of 25%, and there likely is progression of herd immunity over the course of the school year.
Continuing social distancing, thanks.
Click to expand...

The cited article does not support your argument.
 
wrbix said:
Yeah....but I tend to believe the folks who actually apply science and thoughtful analysis to these issues, over SGOTI:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656132/
.....not the only factor but a factor always cited in these discussions...along with viral changes, changes in indoor humidity, etc.
Winter school breaks decrease incidence by upwards of 25%, and there likely is progression of herd immunity over the course of the school year.
Continuing social distancing, thanks.
Click to expand...

I am puzzled by citing that article in particular, given the last statement here. That article’s abstract states near the end, referring to another paper “The authors demonstrate an impressive statistical association between vapor pressure, influenza transmission, and virus survival.” None of these things seem to relate directly to social distancing and most of the article is discussing other extrinsic factors. The summarized items about incidence during the school year are a relatively minor part of the article, almost an aside. The article is also from 2009, which doesn’t mean it is incorrect, but suggests there may be newer research. I suspect there may be newer articles, or better yet, reviews, which deal with the relative causation of seasonal cycles in influenza.

In any case, returning to the subject of whether Covid-19 may be seasonal, I have seen academic articles arguing for and against that proposition. At lot to be learned about this.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
You are correct, the normal seasonal flu is not a coronavirus. Nonetheless, many viral infections follow a seasonal pattern, with infections lower in the summer. As you note, some of these are colds, which are coronaviruses. Pretty active debate amongst experts right now if COVID-19 will follow a seasonal pattern. We can hope but remain vigilant.
Click to expand...
Some colds are coronaviruses. Most of them are picornaviruses, generally rhinoviruses, which are not coronaviruses.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
In any case, returning to the subject of whether Covid-19 may be seasonal, I have seen academic articles arguing for and against that proposition. At lot to be learned about this.
Click to expand...

Chip Sylverne said:
Fauci addressed that issue last night on ABC. His answer, "We don't know". I'll take that answer at face value.
Click to expand...

Sounds to me like Peter N Steinmetz and Fauci are basically in agreement here. Some say one thing, others say the opposite. There is much to be learned about this virus.
 
That was pretty much the gist of a recent article in Science, as well.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
Yes, most seasonal flus die down in the summer. There are several hypotheses for why that is the case, amongst them warmer temperatures, though there are others, such as people spending less time indoors and kids being out of school.

OTOH, it is unclear that SARS and MERS followed that pattern, so since those are more closely related to Covid-19, Covid-19 may not follow a seasonal pattern.

I suspect it will take quite a bit of research after the fact to really pin down which factors were causative and by how much. At lot we don't know about this one at this point.
Click to expand...

This research suggests otherwise in regard to SARS.

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/av/2011/734690/

It appears the inflection point for when SARS is no longer reasonably viable on a solid surface is somewhere between 33-38*C.
 
Different viruses behave different ways with respect to seasonality, though there is some commonality within virus families. We just don't know yet with this one. Clearly it is good if it is seasonal because that will at least buy some time.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
Different viruses behave different ways with respect to seasonality, though there is some commonality within virus families. We just don't know yet with this one. Clearly it is good if it is seasonal because that will at least buy some time.
Click to expand...

Do rates in the southern hemisphere tell you anything, or is the fact it is either fall or spring worldwide right now make it indistinguishable?
 
weilke said:
This thing kills 50 and 60 year olds. Not everyone who dies from this was a terminal nursing home patient. Yes, technically everyone dies of something eventually, but given how this picks off people in other age brackets, I find that argument rather specious.
Click to expand...

It's hit plenty of people in their 30's and 40's as well. I have a buddy of mine in KC who is 21 aspiring CFI/ATP on a first class medical. He's currently in a coma on life support fighting for his life. This stuff is serious.
 
labbadabba said:
It's hit plenty of people in their 30's and 40's as well. I have a buddy of mine in KC who is 21 aspiring CFI/ATP on a first class medical. He's currently in a coma on life support fighting for his life. This stuff is serious.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. As this spreads among the most active, there is a large number of younger patients in the hospitals. Its just that for each young person in the ICU there are 50 patients who are just coughing in the community while for a 80 year old there are only 5 less symptomatic patients.
 
The state of Georgia has listed the 163 deaths so far here. Included is the age, sex, county of residence, and if that person had preexisting conditions.

For that wag who dubbed Covid-19 the "boomer remover", his ignorance is showing. Most of the victims are from the Silent Generation, born 1945 and earlier, ages 74 and up. Boomers were born 1946-1964, making them ages 55-73, Gen X, born 1965-1980, ages 39-54, make up a sizeable chunk of those on this list.
 
Van Johnston said:
Do rates in the southern hemisphere tell you anything, or is the fact it is either fall or spring worldwide right now make it indistinguishable?
Click to expand...

Good question. My limited understanding is that presently it is difficult to interpret any hemispheric differences right now because of differences in how much the virus has spread between countries in the northern and southern hemisphere. Perhaps next winter will provide more data on that.
 
steingar said:
I didn't vote for my Governor but I like him plenty now. Took proactive steps to limit the spread of the virus and it's worked.
Click to expand...
I did vote for the Governor, but next time I'm voting for Dr. Amy Acton (should be "Action, really, she's on top of this!). Eat your hearts out America, this darling Buckeye is all ours:


Gonna watch her right now (2:00PM every day):

http://www.ohiochannel.org/governor-live-stream.html
 
tspear said:
What happened to all the reason of a couple weeks ago?

Tim (could not resist)
Click to expand...
Back in Feb.. and (very) early March I was in the camp of "we're probably making a big deal out of this and the media is having a click bait field day - I think that was fueled in part by a "boy who cried wolf" syndrome.. when the typical push notifications for news on my phone are things on the lines of "Is Broccoli Actually Deadly?" or similar absurdity I was tempted to toss this off. Plus, the initial data also showed this may not be too bad, China, for a huge population, had around 40K cases and roughly 1K deaths at the time.. it didn't seem like the super bug it was. Cruiseships often have some kind of outbreak, and with so many people in close contact I wasn't worried about the cruise ship stats at first

**However**.. I quickly came around after looking at the data and rates myself, and seeing that this starts slow, but left unchecked it rapidly infects a ton of people, and we knew for quite a while that you can pass it without symptoms and it lives for a long time outside the body

Hindsight is 20/20 .. but there are a lot of steps we could have taken internationally, nationally, and locally when we new this was in our country and spreading in the community, but I won't say more than that to keep this politics free.

This is also our first modern wide scale pandemic.. things like SARS, etc., really didn't impact the average person's day to day life.. this does. Hopefully there will be some good takeaways and learning points from this moving forward

PS.. what surprises me is that there are still big groups of people at this point who don't understand the severity of this. A *lot* more people die now daily in the US from COVID than they do of the flu.. which is what this was initially compared against. If we assume 60K flu deaths on a bad year then we're already 1/10 of the way there, and at an increasing rate, after only a few weeks. In the last two 24 hr periods this killed about 1K people each day.. the flu doesn't kill anywhere near that many people per day on average.

PPS.. all of the one off "I am only going to see my one friend, it's a closed loop" stuff is total BS.. that's not how this spiderwebbing effect works. You also see people with remarkably bad habitual hygiene practices still, like the lady who took her licked her finger to turn the page after telling everyone not to do that. Imagine how many people have touched that paper, the podium, etc. It's crazy town

 
@Tantalum

We have had pandemic and epidemics before. For those who specialize in this area; there is a lot of knowledge and COVID-19 was predicted and was viewed as inevitable. All it took was listening to "experts" and not pundits/politicos.

Tim
 
tspear said:
@Tantalum

We have had pandemic and epidemics before. For those who specialize in this area; there is a lot of knowledge and COVID-19 was predicted and was viewed as inevitable. All it took was listening to "experts" and not pundits/politicos.

Tim
Click to expand...

True, but, how many other things have experts (and I do mean experts, no air quotes!) warned about that haven't happened or happened yet? That's one of the things that makes me a little nuts is people looking backwards from an event or situation and finding all the clues and saying "Why didn't we DO something?" without realizing that those clues were buried in a sea of other clues that point at other things.

This is a general complaint and comes up often in response to terrorist activities so I'm not making any particular claim as to Covid-19 nor our response to it.

John
 
No question the boy has cried wolf too many times. Whether that is because of inaccurate reporting of their words by the media, or the experts recommending action repeatedly without compelling evidence, I'm not sure. But there have been warnings of likely pandemics coming for quite a while now - epizoonotic viruses being the likeliest source. So we should really not have been surprised by this. The fact that previous scares have proven to be not as serious as first thought is NOT a rational cause for complacency about this threat. Unfortunately, human nature isn't entirely rational... :(
 
Tantalum said:
...You also see people with remarkably bad habitual hygiene practices still, like the lady who took her licked her finger to turn the page after telling everyone not to do that. Imagine how many people have touched that paper, the podium, etc. It's crazy town

Click to expand...
According to this article, that doctor was the first health official in the country to call for a stay-at-home order. I think she has probably saved a lot of lives by now. The finger-licking could be considered a gaffe, but I think it shows that anyone can have unconscious habits that might have unfortunate consequences.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03...us-none-of-us-really-believed-we-would-do-it/
 
jsstevens said:
True, but, how many other things have experts (and I do mean experts, no air quotes!) warned about that haven't happened or happened yet? That's one of the things that makes me a little nuts is people looking backwards from an event or situation and finding all the clues and saying "Why didn't we DO something?" without realizing that those clues were buried in a sea of other clues that point at other things.

This is a general complaint and comes up often in response to terrorist activities so I'm not making any particular claim as to Covid-19 nor our response to it.
Click to expand...


 
azure said:
No question the boy has cried wolf too many times. Whether that is because of inaccurate reporting of their words by the media, or the experts recommending action repeatedly without compelling evidence, I'm not sure. But there have been warnings of likely pandemics coming for quite a while now - epizoonotic viruses being the likeliest source. So we should really not have been surprised by this. The fact that previous scares have proven to be not as serious as first thought is NOT a rational cause for complacency about this threat. Unfortunately, human nature isn't entirely rational... :(
Click to expand...

And it’s not just crying “wolf”. The nature of things is there is tons of data and possibilities to sift through at any given time. Only in hindsight can you look at them and say with certainty “This we should have paid attention to.” We do not have resources to provide for every eventuality nor even a significant minority of them. Experts in various fields should and do prioritize what more likely in their field. Leaders have to prioritize between various experts opinions of what’s likely.

I was not privy to any of these discussions and I will refrain from passing judgement on what was prioritized in years past.
It’s the collective “Oh my gosh! How could we not have prepared for this! Look at all the indicators!” (Needles easily picked out from the haystack in retrospect.) that bugs me.


John
 
Just a thought on the total deaths not changing discussion. Considering the number of deaths in the Western world from automobile accidents, I might actually expect total deaths to go down during strict movement restrictions. COVID 19 may save lives.
 
ebetancourt said:
Just a thought on the total deaths not changing discussion. Considering the number of deaths in the Western world from automobile accidents, I might actually expect total deaths to go down during strict movement restrictions. COVID 19 may save lives.
Click to expand...
I think you're right that the stay-at-home orders will reduce traffic deaths. Maybe it will be enough to make up for the increase in deaths that some people have been predicting from the economic damage caused by the shutdowns. :dunno:
 
jsstevens said:
True, but, how many other things have experts (and I do mean experts, no air quotes!) warned about that haven't happened or happened yet? That's one of the things that makes me a little nuts is people looking backwards from an event or situation and finding all the clues and saying "Why didn't we DO something?" without realizing that those clues were buried in a sea of other clues that point at other things.

This is a general complaint and comes up often in response to terrorist activities so I'm not making any particular claim as to Covid-19 nor our response to it.

John
Click to expand...

Dr. Faci had a great statement early on. It was something along the lines of: if we flatten the curve correctly than people will say we over reacted.


Tim
 
tspear said:
Dr. Faci had a great statement early on. It was something along the lines of: if we flatten the curve correctly than people will say we over reacted.


Tim
Click to expand...
He's said that a number of times I think, in slightly different versions. The version I heard was: if people think we overreacted, then that might mean we did it just right. Overreacting is the right response to this, a normal reaction just isn't enough.
 
jsstevens said:
And it’s not just crying “wolf”. The nature of things is there is tons of data and possibilities to sift through at any given time. Only in hindsight can you look at them and say with certainty “This we should have paid attention to.” We do not have resources to provide for every eventuality nor even a significant minority of them. Experts in various fields should and do prioritize what more likely in their field. Leaders have to prioritize between various experts opinions of what’s likely.

I was not privy to any of these discussions and I will refrain from passing judgement on what was prioritized in years past.
It’s the collective “Oh my gosh! How could we not have prepared for this! Look at all the indicators!” (Needles easily picked out from the haystack in retrospect.) that bugs me.


John
Click to expand...

Let’s hope everyone remembers this when the Monday morning quarterbacking begins in a couple of months.
 
azure said:
He's said that a number of times I think, in slightly different versions. The version I heard was: if people think we overreacted, then that might mean we did it just right. Overreacting is the right response to this, a normal reaction just isn't enough.
Click to expand...

You can over treat a cancer patient with chemo. It will probably get rid of the cancer, but at the risk of killing the patient. Is it worth it only to wind up with a dead patient? o_O
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top