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Well, here is the news from a small Russian city where my parents live. The city hospital canceled all appointments and switched to hospital mode for the virus. All those in need of routine medical care are sent to the hospital in a neighboring village.
Today I learned from my cousin that someone brought in the virus there too. As it turned out, his wife visited Moscow and infected him.
Now that second hospital is quarantined. Conditions that are often in the elderly, such as hypertension, also require the attention and control of doctors. And since doctors are now forced to be in quarantine, now my parents have nowhere to turn to.
I am really worried and terribly angry at such careless people who cannot maintain isolation and cannot do without trips.Kim
Thank you so much for such a comprehensive round up of events. I missed the Andrew Marr show and now I have a good update and also of the 5 o’clock propaganda broadcast.Taking up some points: Jenny Harris and Apples and Oranges is of course true, but not in the sense she means. It is not that of demographics or ethnic mix or susceptibilities, but it is true that Germany has not deindustrialised unlike UK, where we cannot manufacture anything anymore, and we are unable to be self-dependent in many fronts. Germany has also paid much more attention in maintaining higher spending on healthcare, higher beds, and doctors per 100000 population, higher ITU beds and higher ability to manufacture testing kits for example.
But in all this crisis the Tories have believed on our exceptionalism. After all we managed to have our sovereignty back after Brexit and we must make full use of it. To start with we must have an exceptionally incompetent government, unfit to deal with anything unexpected, like international crises, flooding and now this Covid-19 pandemic. The MO is to declare that we are the best, to declare that we are going to do this and that, and then as you say, to blame everyone else when these plans do not materialize. It’s as if they believe that the moment they have wished something to happen, they are exonerated.
But another amazing revelation that has now become apparent is that the so called scientific advisor posts within the government, appear to be thinly veiled political appointments, in the sense is that they are not really “guided by the science”, as they keep reminding us, as subjugating the science to their political will. This was so clear from the outset when the herd immunity red herring was floated when there was so little understanding of immunity to this virus. Yes, it revealed that the government understood herd instincts, but had very poor grasp of the concept of immunity. I do not understand how these government appointed scientific staff can sleep at night knowing how they must act against all they have been trained to do.
But here are also some of the crazy ideas that have become part of the propaganda.
Preventative measures: for what is essentially a respiratory virus transmitted by droplets and aerosols and perhaps other bodily fluids, the government advocated the ritual of the 20 seconds handwasher. To this day there are still discussions as to whether face masks, are protective. I have to say that the doubt has also been sown by the WHO, and their advice is ambivalent about their usefulness in slowing the epidemic by widespread use in the population. In fact, the most laughable thing I heard, and this time by respectable medics, is that face masks can cause more harm than good if it makes you touch your face! I am not saying that hand hygiene is not important, but it is not the sole way of prevention in a respiratory virus. These same scientific advisers also said at the outset that cancelling mass gatherings would have minimal effects on slowing the infection rate, and decided to allow the importation of 3000 Spanish fans for a match in Liverpool at a time the infections in Spain were at a high level.
The other insanity is the whole abandonment of the basic tenets of dealing with an epidemic, widespread testing, isolation of case and contact tracing. Although this was started at the outset, it was abandoned when the government decided to adopt the strategy of herd immunity. This should really be the highest priority now as a prerequisite to easing the ‘lockdown’. But there is no chance of that happening soon as the government is failing all targets to ramp up testing on both the logistical and organizational level.
The rather early major focus, to belatedly encourage local industries to produce ventilators, fell also on many stumbling blocks and instead of concentrating on sourcing tested ventilators from known sources, the government wasted precious time on this rather difficult to achieve endeavor but also without appropriate structural commitment. In any case, it is not just ventilators that are needed, industries cannot just conjure up trained staff to run them especially in the post austerity NHS.
But what has caused me some alarm is that now the Blood transfusion service would like to collect serum from individuals who have recovered from covid-19 in order to attempt to try and see if this can help those who have the disease to recover quicker and possibly to avoid fatalities. But has this project really passed critical scrutiny? What is known about immunity to SARS cov2? The current state of knowledge is incomplete. What has been suggested so far is that there is slow and weak development of a humoral immune response, as outlined above by Kim from the interview of Prof Sarah Gilbert with Marr. But also from what I understand about the pathology that the virus causes in certain individuals, the major lethal complication in this disease is the ARDS which is not a direct result of virus multiplication, and does not occur in in the acute phase but usually a week or more after the start of the infection, and is possibly related to uncontrolled stimulation of the immune system. What would a little bit of convalescent serum do to treat a ‘cytokine storm’?
So, in all of this it seems that headlines are more important than details and I am afraid this is a result of politicizing a very medical problem.
SA – “So, in all of this it seems that headlines are more important than details and I am afraid this is a result of politicizing a very medical problem”
That succinctly expresses my criticism of media coverage, which you asked me about elsewhere. It expresses it much better than my own criticism, which was inadequately thought out and badly worded. Thank you.
It reminds me of the problem with coverage of global warming; always “what will be the immediate economic effects”. It is always the same with the “news” media, which is overly focused upon established political positions. Analysis proceeds from that establishment political narrative; this is a very specific form of tunnel vision.
Tatyana, my sympathy to you and yours.
I am attempting to counter the “it’s not serious, abandon all restrictions” narrative elsewhere. Such people seem lacking in empathy and patience. They lack foresight by ignoring the rapidly rising numbers.
Clark
Thank you for your appreciation. I always read what you have to say but don’t always comment because I take in the information. It is rather distressing to see how many swallow the misinformation and are willing to cherry pick what they choose to believe in, often even misrepresenting or misunderstanding the message. But whatever, please cheer up, there is a lot to celebrate in the world despite the evils of mankind. In fact it looks that many people are beginning to understand the value of not rushing around, spending time with family and appreciating the joys of nature and wildlife as a result of this crisis. Maybe we will all come out better in the end, who knows?One Big country is China,
one little country is BelgiumBelgium has had more deaths from covid-19, than has China.
There are less than twelve million people living in Belgium.
There are more than 1.4 billion people living in China.Strange that China has done so well, and Belgium does so bad.
The explanation I can come up with is,
something very fishy in China.Michael, first, a big disclaimer; I haven’t researched what follows this paragraph, and there has been a lot of China-bashing about for years, eg. we often hear about China’s high CO2 emissions, but it’s rarely mentioned that (1) the per-capita emissions are lower than Western countries, (2) much of China’s emissions are from manufacturing for export, and it’s predominantly the West buying the products, (3) China has more installed renewables than any other country, and is installing more faster than anywhere else, (4) China has been more successful in decoupling economic growth from rising emissions than any other country and (5) a lot of the new coal burning capacity being built is factories rather than power stations, which are being authorised by local authorities in contravention of central government; big place, China. That’s quite a lot of good news you very rarely hear about China. So, with China bashing in mind…
Back in February or March I saw a video interviewing leading UK virology and epidemiology experts. One of them said that China’s published case and death figures must be between a tenth and a hundredth of reality.
China wouldn’t give the WHO free access; they negotiated for a couple of days or more, and then Chinese officials accompanied the WHO and permitted them to certain places only.
I also have two links, but I have no idea how propagandistic the media sources are. Treat with caution. The first is about crematoria:
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/wuhan-deaths-03272020182846.html
This second one claims to show figures that were leaked or escaped, and says they match a mathematical epidemic simulation:
Remember also that the Chinese lockdown has been absolutely brutal, especially in Wuhan, and this would be more effective. Doors of apartment blocks welded shut; people carted off to quarantine by teams of four in biohazard suits just on the basis of a forehead temperature reading, not even asked to come voluntarily. Such incidents have been caught on cellphone cameras. Also a lawyer who was videoing the massive backlogs at crematoria was arrested, not heard from for a fortnight and then didn’t post any more videos.
I have long thought that China was greatly suppressing its figures.
Clark,
today we learn that China has counted 4,632 deaths from covid-19 ( pop. 1,400,000,000)
and the U.K. has counted 17,337 deaths from covid-19 ( pop. 67,000,000)They really have in under control in China
and we are bloody incompetent?Or China are telling little porkies?
Clark, something is very naive in the article you’ve linked.
“…84 furnaces with a capacity over 24 hours of 1,560 urns city-wide, assuming that one cremation takes one hour” One hour is not enough
I would very carefully accept such information. Human psychology is capable of greatly exaggerating the number of victims. For example, once in my region a severe flood happened, people also told absolutely frightening figures. But my husband was a volunteer and I know for sure how this does not correspond to reality.
Tatyana
“porkies” is London slang
Porkie Pies = LiesSmells Fishy = Lies
Thanks, Michael 🙂
I’m here with a new and absolutely fascinating report from medics.
The virus attacks hemoglobin
https://chemrxiv.org/articles/COVID-19_Disease_ORF8_and_Surface_Glycoprotein_Inhibit_Heme_Metabolism_by_Binding_to_Porphyrin/11938173/6Now recall it came from the bat and here we are with a new interpretation of Dracula.
Tatyana, thanks for checking. As I said, I had not.
Michael, the UK ‘lockdown’ is working. But it was imposed rather late, and the current deaths are from the many infections that occurred before it was imposed.
The predicted effects of the various level of restriction match the figures really rather well.
So here’s the model of new infections daily in the UK; the sudden drop is the predicted effect of the lockdown. Actual infections can’t be shown, because testing has been neither widespread nor random enough to get a reliable sample of the entire population:
This shows the forecast deaths in blue, against the counted deaths as a brown bar chart, and the fit is very good:
Rt is the predicted reproduction rate of infections. This shows the estimated decrease for the various measures:
And this is the second graph again, but with deaths plotted logarithmically and a bit more of the forecast shown:
More information here.
Tatyana
This is a spoof and is utter rubbish
“This article is for academic discussion only, without experimental prove. we hope that qualified laboratories can do experimental verification .”Clark
April 20, 2020 at 22:39
Radio free Asia is a US government Cold War tool just
like the notorious Radio Free Europe, a propaganda outfit.The European Union Times – Media Bias/Fact Check
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-european-union-times
Founded in 2009, The European Union Times is a far right conspiracy website that does not always publish factual news. According to their about page the “European Union Times …SA, thanks for mediabiasfactcheck.com
The eutimes.net article specifies a source:
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3871594
– “Tencent may have accidentally leaked real data on Wuhan virus deaths”
mediabiasfactcheck.com tells us: “Overall, we rate Taiwan News Left-Center Biased based on socially liberal editorial positions. We also rate them Mostly Factual in reporting, versus High, due to a failed fact check.”. That’s better than, for instance, mediabiasfactcheck.com’s rating of the Daily Express.
Another route is to pick some text from the article that looks fairly specific to it, and search on that. I chose “Hiroki Lo”, and found the same information posted elsewhere.
I have also heard that the Chinese authorities stopped publishing their routine regular overall mortality figures, something they’d have to do to cover up excess deaths. I looked up Tencent and found them to be a massive and highly influential Chinese company, a sort of Chinese Google. I rate the story credible, unproven, possibly a China-bashing ruse but not necessarily. There’s only so deep I can dig, but diverse snippets from diverse sources quite strongly suggest that China has downplayed the case and death numbers.
Troubling news in Nature :
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-0321-6
– The potential danger of suboptimal antibody responses in COVID-19
– There is a desperate need for effective therapies and vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 to mitigate the growing economic crisis that has ensued from societal lockdown. Vaccines are being developed at an unprecedented speed and are already in clinical trials, without preclinical testing for safety and efficacy. Yet, safety evaluation of candidate vaccines must not be overlooked.
– Recent studies of antibody responses in patients with COVID-19 have associated higher titres of anti-N IgM and IgG at all time points following the onset of symptoms with a worse disease outcome. Moreover, higher titres of anti-S and anti-N IgG and IgM correlate with worse clinical readouts and older age, suggesting potentially detrimental effects of antibodies in some patients.
Clark
Like you I don’t normally watch TV, too busy living and doing things I enjoy, to be spoon fed propaganda and entertainment. But for social reasons I had to watch a lot during this crisis and find that some journalists have risen to the challenge and some good programmes. An example was Channel 4 last night: Can science beat the virus?It is a pity that many of the journalists now including Peston and Maitlis and even Piers Morgan are now asking searching questions and exposing the government’s inadequacy but did not di so during the elections but chose to attack Corbyn instead.
SA, Moon of Alabama is really good on covid-19. Thanks for pointing it out on another thread:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/04/the-moa-week-in-review-open-thread-2020-31.html
What does the forum think of the footag3 of the cmo of california state telling a journalist at a briefing that covid19 cmr was just over .1%. The figures given certainly came to that.
Clark what you describe there from that nature article sounds very similar to anaphylactic shock.
CMR I take it means Case Mortality Ratio. That’s usually taken as the ratio of confirmed cases to mortality. I’ve never seen it anything like that low anywhere there’s been an outbreak. So looking at California’s figures right now, 1,438 total deaths for 37,787 confirmed cases is about 3.8% which is more usual.
The infection fatality ratio IFR is all infections, detected and undetected, versus total deaths, and is therefore lower than CFR. IFR from a simulation looks like 0.1% as an outbreak is spreading unrestricted, in that by the time there are x deaths, the model predicts that there are about 1000x infections in total, detected and undetected. But this is misleading through being a static snapshot of a developing situation, because some of those 1000x will die over the coming weeks, by which time the number of infections will have increased. Neither CFR nor IFR can be properly calculated until infections come to equilibrium, and that’s a long way off.
if you understand russian, you may be interested to get news from a doctor (intensive therapy department), he answers questions in the comments
https://pikabu.ru/@K0L0K0L82his latest post says:
“… we had another death (patient 80+, with a lot of concomitant pathologies). I took him from the floor and was amazed at how quickly a person worsens. In a matter of minutes. What they say on TV / write on the Internet is completely true. I also thought about exaggeration, but no. The patient worsens in 5 minutes.
Good news – our youngest patient was transferred to another hospital (I hope the traffic jams resolved) to ECMO (ExtraCorporal Membrane Oxygenation) – a treatment method in which the patient’s blood is taken, then a special device removes carbon dioxide from it, saturates it with oxygen and returns it back, in non-stop mode).
Well, we have 9 patients left. And again, everything is not very good. 6 of them on mechanical ventilation. Another, apparently, will be on a ventilator in the near future. So that the number of extremely severe patients is growing, although not in progression…”
