COVID-19

[blumenkraft]

Let's talk about where Americans can find leadership...

[JMP]

Thanks so much for posting this. 

[El Cid]

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30243-7/fulltext

https://www.livescience.com/death-rate-lower-than-estimates.html

"Our estimated overall infection fatality ratio for China was 0·66% (0·39–1·33), with an increasing profile with age. Similarly, estimates of the proportion of infected individuals likely to be hospitalised increased with age up to a maximum of 18·4% (11·0–7·6) in those aged 80 years or older."

[KiwiGriff]

Data on cases and deaths on the Diamond Princess cruise ship
In early February 2020 a cruise liner named the Diamond Princess was quarantined after a disembarked passenger tested positive for the virus. Subsequently all 3711 passengers on board were tested over the next month. We extracted data on the ages of passengers onboard on Feb 5, 2020, the dates of positive test reports, which were available for 657 out of 712 PCR-confirmed cases, and the dates of ten deaths among these cases from the reports of the Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare19 and international media.

Opps the death toll from the ship is now 12 and its still not fully resolved
I dont like it when you can get a paper published by experts and find fault ,I dont like assumptions of hidden cases either .

Even according to their method S  Korea is the best data set we have.

[nanning]

U.S.A.
'A perfect storm': US facing hunger crisis as demand for food banks soars

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/02/us-food-banks-coronavirus-demand-unemployment
  by Nina Lakhani in New York


 Excerpts:
Food banks are reporting unprecedented demand across the US as millions lose jobs, investigation shows.

An unprecedented number of Americans have resorted to food banks for emergency supplies since the coronavirus pandemic triggered widespread layoffs.

The demand for food aid has increased as much as eightfold in some areas, according to an investigation by the Guardian, which gives a nationwide snapshot of the hunger crisis facing the US as millions become unemployed.

The national guard has been deployed to help food banks cope with rising demand in cities including Cleveland, Phoenix and St Louis amid growing concerns that supplies may run low as the crisis evolves.


“I’ve been in this business over 30 years, and nothing compares to what we’re seeing now. Not even when the steel mills closed down did we see increased demand like this,”

This week, the Guardian contacted food banks and pantries in nine states, which all reported unprecedented demand, plummeting donations from retailers, and a fall in personnel due to the coronavirus crisis.

Half of American adults have either no emergency savings or not enough to cover three months of living expenses, according to Bankrate’s 2019 Financial Security Index.


“First we saw people who lived paycheck to paycheck, got laid off and didn’t know where the next meal was coming from, followed by those who had a couple of weeks of savings. Now, people who knew about us because they donated or volunteered are coming in for food,”

[JMP]

"we estimated a crude case fatality ratio (adjusted for censoring) of 3·67%"
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30243-7/fulltext 

We all are so fucked.   

Hope, hope. hope,  we find treatment, vaccine, cure ASAP.   

[JMP]

The effects of this will play out opportunistically.
It may not be fair but (according to what we've seen so far) it will also be random.   
Please, please, please,  maintain a heightened awareness of how posts might be used by political extremists.  Better safe than sorry.
I know it's scary... butt... still.... 
You'll all likely be fine if you shelter in place and wear a mask when you have to go out. 

Stay home and stay safe!!!   

[El Cid]

"we estimated a crude case fatality ratio (adjusted for censoring) of 3·67%"

By now even I (no medical background) have learnt the difference between CFR and IFR. You should look it up too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_fatality_rate
And read the study a bit further

[kassy]

An interesting bit of information.

Excess mortality in the Netherlands was 500 over the expected value in week 12.
Until week 11 mortality was slightly below last year.

No link but its from NOS teletekst page 107.

[oren]

How does it compare to reported CV19 deaths kassy?
I am concerned by the article posted upthread that showed excess deaths in a town in Italy 4 times the reported CV19 deaths.

[Alexander555]

U.S.A.
'A perfect storm': US facing hunger crisis as demand for food banks soars

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/02/us-food-banks-coronavirus-demand-unemployment
  by Nina Lakhani in New York


 Excerpts:
Food banks are reporting unprecedented demand across the US as millions lose jobs, investigation shows.

An unprecedented number of Americans have resorted to food banks for emergency supplies since the coronavirus pandemic triggered widespread layoffs.

The demand for food aid has increased as much as eightfold in some areas, according to an investigation by the Guardian, which gives a nationwide snapshot of the hunger crisis facing the US as millions become unemployed.

The national guard has been deployed to help food banks cope with rising demand in cities including Cleveland, Phoenix and St Louis amid growing concerns that supplies may run low as the crisis evolves.


“I’ve been in this business over 30 years, and nothing compares to what we’re seeing now. Not even when the steel mills closed down did we see increased demand like this,”

This week, the Guardian contacted food banks and pantries in nine states, which all reported unprecedented demand, plummeting donations from retailers, and a fall in personnel due to the coronavirus crisis.

Half of American adults have either no emergency savings or not enough to cover three months of living expenses, according to Bankrate’s 2019 Financial Security Index.


“First we saw people who lived paycheck to paycheck, got laid off and didn’t know where the next meal was coming from, followed by those who had a couple of weeks of savings. Now, people who knew about us because they donated or volunteered are coming in for food,”

In many area's the poverty rate is like 35 %. And importing more people will not adjust your economy. Especially not if you are a netto importer. Than they just import more. And the extra people just create jobs like flipping hamburgers. So you get high crime and poverty rates. If you add on top of that the imports of fiscal globalist refugees from all across the planet. Than they just lift real-estate price some more. For the rest they are useless, or just some more hamburger flipping jobs for people that can not afford the basic stuff they need. The battelfield USA, soon be followd by battlefield EU.

[Pmt111500]

Finalized cases in S.Korea 2,8%. I don't know why this number would be interesting when the pandemic is going on. Some countries have way higher and many have lower ones.

[Tom_Mazanec]

Could the Covid19 Response be More Deadly than the Virus?
https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/01/could-the-covid19-response-be-more-deadly-than-the-virus/

The total deaths attributable to the COVID-19 response, from just this limited examination, are estimated to be:

Suicides 59,000
Drug abuse 87,000
Lack of medical coverage or treatment 1,350,000
Poverty and food access 780,000
These estimates, totaling more than two million deaths above the estimated 150,000 expected from the virus itself, do not include other predictable issues with the COVID-19 response. An example is the lack of medical services as stated above. Other examples include the EPA’s suspension of environmental regulations. It has been estimated that the EPA’s Clean Air Act alone has saved 230,000 lives each year.

Moreover, the anticipated failure of the US Postal Service (USPS) will lead to more illness and death. The USPS “delivers about 1 million lifesaving medications each year and serves as the only delivery link to Americans living in rural areas.”

Even using these low estimates, however, we can see that the response will be much worse than the virus. The social devastation and economic scarring could last more than six years, with one expert predicting that it will be “long-lasting and calamitous.”

If I were POTUS I would have pushed for the lockdown myself (and still would), but this is something to think about.

[TerryM]

My ~70 yr old neighbor says she's suffering from pneumonia, but that she's not infected with CV-19?
Her door is across the hall from mine. I was too shocked to ask her more.


............
I wanted to find out more about "Herd Immunity", but none of the Beothuk's that might have had first hand experience survived to tell the tale. The genocide that so many First Nations experienced when faced with smallpox or measles doesn't provide the kind of assurance I'd like to find.


..............
Some have been waiting for a vaccination to prevent HIV for 40 years. Those surviving CV-19 may still be waiting for a vaccination in 2060. Don't hold your breath.


.............
This is not going to work out well for anyone.


Stay at home unless your services are needed.
Wear as much protective gear as you have access to whenever you must be outside.


Most of us can't help, but with luck we won't require help from others.
Terry

[dnem]

This is a very interesting article about market distortions being caused by massive CV-related behavior changes. In the US there have been persistent shortages of toilet paper and other paper products (what we call napkins (paper to wipe your mouth at the dinner table) and paper towels). The almost universal explanation has been that consumers are "hoarding" these products. This is not the reason. The reason is that BCV, paper mills made a fixed mix of commercial products and domestic products. The products are produced, packaged and shipped differently. Demand for the commercial products (used in office building lavs, sports stadiums, theaters, etc. etc.) has dropped dramatically. Demand for the domestic products sold in stores to consumers has surged. The mills cannot quickly retool their product mix and shortages of the domestic product have developed.

This basic issue is afflicting other supply chains as well.  It is hard for producers to retool not knowing how long this huge shift in demand patterns will persist.

https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-the-toilet-paper-shortage-c812e1358fe0

[blumenkraft]

Suicides
Drug abuse
Poverty and food access

The numbers look more like guesswork than everything else.

We have all this without a deadly pandemic going around. They are mostly a function of governments denying people a living wage.

Lack of medical coverage or treatment

Special to the US... (if we talk industrialized countries)

[dnem]

ABSOLUTELY. This is what I keep telling everyone. Even without a vaccine, once the first wave is beaten back, using widspread testing+contact tracing and caution this thing can be contained.

A lot of people keep stating this as if it's easily done. It CAN be done, but I have very little confidence that we will do a good job of it here in the US.  Here's a twitter thread by the US Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut.

THREAD ON THE PATH FORWARD: 1/ Other countries taught us we cannot turn the corner on coronavirus w/o a comprehensive system of TESTING, TRACING, and QUARANTINE. The Trump Administration has zero plan to stand up that system nationally. That's frightening and it must change.

2/ The first step is to test widely. That might not mean testing the asymptomatic. But it certainly means aggressively testing anyone with symptoms, doing it quickly, and getting the results quickly. That's not happening now, and Trump has no plan to ramp up.

3/ 2nd step is to quickly trace back & find everyone the infected person was in physical contact with. That takes personnel, effort and expertise. Other nations didn't just leave it to the individual to do it alone. But again, Trump has no interest in creating this capacity.

4/ Finally, all those people must be quarantined. But for the disabled, elderly, or people that have to go to work, quarantine is really hard. Taiwan paid people to quarantine. Maybe we don't do that, but there must be a system of supports in place to make quarantine feasible.

5/ And it's madness to require every state, or every country, or every city to become overnight experts in TEST, TRACK, AND QUARANTINE. This is complicated, nuanced public health policy. And having thousands of different, conflicting systems makes no sense either.

6/ The Trump Administration either has to implement a national program, or develop and establish a program and then fund the states to implement it. But right now, Trump isn't doing either, and worse, doesn't seem to care about or understand the danger of inaction.

https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1245532642101145602?s=20

[Archimid]

A lot of people keep stating this as if it's easily done.

It can be easily said and explained. The path to follow is clear. The difficult part is in doing it. It is a truly monumental task requiring global, national and local level unity of purpose.

It CAN be done, but I have very little confidence that we will do a good job of it here in the US.

I voted <10,000 on the poll above. I did so because I thought the USA would test and trace the shit out of this and help other countries do the same. They didn't. The US cowered in fear. They can still rise to the occasion. So can Europeans, South Americans, and Africans. I think that if at any point in time the US decides to get serious about this they can stop it.

5/ And it's madness to require every state, or every country, or every city to become overnight experts in TEST, TRACK, AND QUARANTINE. This is complicated, nuanced public health policy. And having thousands of different, conflicting systems makes no sense either.

It's not madness at all. Tracing might be hard work, but it is not terribly complicated, specially if technology is leveraged to make tracing more efficient.  The only impediment for effective tracing programs is the will to do it and money. Given how Congress and Trump are giving money away like early Christmas one would think that a short term but large scale tracing program can be implemented.

[Archimid]

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30243-7/fulltext

https://www.livescience.com/death-rate-lower-than-estimates.html

"Our estimated overall infection fatality ratio for China was 0·66% (0·39–1·33), with an increasing profile with age. Similarly, estimates of the proportion of infected individuals likely to be hospitalised increased with age up to a maximum of 18·4% (11·0–7·6) in those aged 80 years or older."

IFR in Europe will be higher and IFR in the US will be higher still.

They shouldn't confuse the untested with the asymptomatics. Many people with symptoms will never visit a testing facility.

[RikW]

Slightly positive news from the Netherlands, it appears we are managing to flatten te curve, in this link, unfortunately only in dutch, you see graphs of cases tested, cases hospitalized en cases who died.

https://www.rivm.nl/documenten/epidemiologische-situatie-covid-19-in-nederland-3-april-2020

RIVM = the dutch equivalent of the CDC for the USA/ Robert Koch for Germany etc.

They publish this PDF daily with updated numbers, Dark blue is 'old' data; Light blue is newly added data; So data of the last couple of days is always incomplete because of delay in reports, but you can discover a trend;

They also show some heat maps and graphs per province. Noord-Brabant was the first province and it went wrong there.

second to last page is ICU admissions; Max ICU capacity available for Corona will be around 1.900 so that will be a close call.

[pietkuip]

Dutch mortality data:


The excess mortality is about twice as high as the number of confirmed corona deaths in that period.

There was a slight excess for people 45-54 years old, an excess for the 54-64 year-olds, and a large excess for the older people.

https://www.rivm.nl/monitoring-sterftecijfers-nederland

[nanning]

Re: the graph above.
In the winter of 2018 our ICU's weren't overrun.

Re: RikW
Max ICU capacity for COVID-19 patients in the Netherlands is being expanded to 2400.

[blumenkraft]

Re: the graph above.
In the winter of 2018 our ICU's weren't overrun.

Yeah, what happened there? What's the reason for that spike?

[Tom_Mazanec]

Suicides
Drug abuse
Poverty and food access

The numbers look more like guesswork than everything else.

We have all this without a deadly pandemic going around. They are mostly a function of governments denying people a living wage.

Lack of medical coverage or treatment

Special to the US... (if we talk industrialized countries)

Yes, but I am sure these are being exacerbated. I don't know by how much, probably not as much as they estimate, but the effect is there.

[pietkuip]

Re: the graph above.
In the winter of 2018 our ICU's weren't overrun.

Yeah, what happened there? What's the reason for that spike?

In the first months of 2018, there was the seasonal flu. About 9000 excess deaths in the Netherlands, 0.05 % of the population. Often in care homes or just at home. One sees a lower than usual mortality in the months after that peak.

Notice also the small global-warming related spike last summer.

The last data is deaths from a week ago. It will continue rising.

[blumenkraft]

Ah ok. Thanks

[The Walrus]

Suicides
Drug abuse
Poverty and food access

The numbers look more like guesswork than everything else.

We have all this without a deadly pandemic going around. They are mostly a function of governments denying people a living wage.

Lack of medical coverage or treatment

Special to the US... (if we talk industrialized countries)

The estimates of total fatalities from the virus are guesswork also.  These numbers are a big reason that we need to get this under control, and soon.  Several economists are making similar claims.  We cannot let the cure be worse than the disease.

[bluice]

The Italian article upthread claims 1% IFR after counting also deaths not reported to Covid

[RikW]

Re: the graph above.
In the winter of 2018 our ICU's weren't overrun.

Re: RikW
Max ICU capacity for COVID-19 patients in the Netherlands is being expanded to 2400.

True, but ~500 are needed for non-COVID patients

[El Cid]

ABSOLUTELY. This is what I keep telling everyone. Even without a vaccine, once the first wave is beaten back, using widspread testing+contact tracing and caution this thing can be contained.

A lot of people keep stating this as if it's easily done. It CAN be done, but I have very little confidence that we will do a good job of it here in the US.

I also have little confidence that my country will be able to do this. Nonetheless. This CAN be done. And eventually as there are no alternatives it WILL be done.

[Niall Dollard]

Deaths per million population at 1pm UTC 3rd April.

Note: Some countries have not yet updated their figures for today.

[RikW]

Does the fact the western european countries are in the 'top' with deaths/million say something about how bad we are reacting on the virus or how bad the statistics in other countries are?

[pietkuip]

Does the fact the western european countries are in the 'top' with deaths/million say something about how bad we are reacting on the virus or how bad the statistics in other countries are?

It depends a bit on the size of sampling. Some states of the US would be very high too.

Many peripheral regions will get it later.

[vox_mundi]

Google to Publish User Location Data to Help Govts Tackle Virus
https://techxplore.com/news/2020-04-google-publish-user-govts-tackle.html

Google says it will publish users' location data around the world beginning Friday to allow governments to gauge the effectiveness of social distancing measures, brought in to stem the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/

The reports on users' movements in 131 countries will be made available on a special website and will "chart movement trends over time by geography", according to a post on one of Google's blogs.

Trends will display "a percentage point increase or decrease in visits" to locations like parks, shops, homes and places of work, not "the absolute number of visits," said the post, signed by Jen Fitzpatrick, who leads Google Maps, and the company's chief health officer Karen DeSalvo.

Google’s analysis of location data from billions of users’ phones is the largest public dataset available to help health authorities assess if people are abiding with shelter-in-place and similar orders issued across the world.

Its reports show charts that compare traffic from 16 February to 29 March at underground, train and bus stations, grocery stores and other broad categories of places with a five-week period earlier this year.

Like the detection of traffic jams or traffic measurement Google Maps, the new reports will use "aggregated, anonymised" data from users who have activated their location history.

No "personally identifiable information," such as an individual's location, contacts or movements, will be made available, the post said.

[Tor Bejnar]

I searched for "Florida" on this and the previous page and didn't find it, so I presume nobody has disclosed that the Florida governor's COVID-19 Executive Order includes:

"essential activities"  means and encompasses the following: 1. Attending religious services conducted in churches, synagogues and houses of worship; and ...

Elsewhere in the order he specifies 'social distancing', but not for attending religious services.

"Long live Floridians," at least those who choose not to follow this first 'essential activity.'

[blumenkraft]

From the 'who could possibly know' department...

CA Dismantled Its Mobile Hospital System, Ventilator, Respirator Stockpiles in 2011

If Garcetti had access to three mobile 200-bed hospitals with ICU units and surgical suites, “50 million N95 respirators, 2,400 portable ventilators, and kits to set up 21,000 additional patient beds wherever they were needed,” he would probably feel a bit more prepared to handle the predicted onslaught.

California had such a system, implemented by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006. Schwarzenegger was troubled by the suffering he saw along the Gulf coast after Katrina and was concerned about a possible bird flu pandemic. Knowing that devastating earthquakes and “wanted to prepare the state for future calamities.”

Link >> https://www.redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2020/03/29/ca-dismantled-its-mobile-hospital-system-ventilator-stockpile-in-2011/

[cognitivebias2]

Religious Services are exempted/considered essential in 12 states.  5 (AZ, CO, KY, TX, WI) of those require social distancing or other limitations.  But the other 7 (DE, FL, NM, MI, NC, PA, WV) do not.  PA also allows child care for parents involving in essential activities.

Watch if the latter set has a worse outcome...


https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/02/us/stay-at-home-order-religious-exemptions-states-coronavirus/index.html


 

[blumenkraft]

We cannot let the cure be worse than the disease.

So, you are willing to die?

[Paddy]

Does the fact the western european countries are in the 'top' with deaths/million say something about how bad we are reacting on the virus or how bad the statistics in other countries are?

A little of both, plus a few other factors. 

Western European countries have generally been hit harder than East Asian countries, which may be partly attributable to the SARS experience in East Asia previously, and general precautionary attitude maintained by much of the population with regards to respiratory infections, e.g. widespread wearing of masks etc.  Some Western European countries may have been particularly complacent (e.g. the UK). 

As for the stats, there may also be some dodgy stats from China, but Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea all genuinely seem to have escaped the worst of this and kept such outbreaks as they have had under control.

A particularly vulnerability of Western European countries to this has lain in many having generally high population density + old populations + lots of airport links with the rest of the world, which is not so much a matter of a bad reaction as just bad luck in this regard.

Then, of course, you have other countries whose outbreaks are just getting going now.  We don't know how bad things are going to get in the USA, Russia, or Brazil, for example, but there seem to be issues in the response in all these countries... and a fair few factors to suggest it's going to get pretty bad. 

I imagine future epidemiologists will pore all over the data in months and years to come.  And many historians and political pundits will argue the toss over the justifiability of different countries' responses.

[Richard Rathbone]

As of 9am on 3 April 2020, 173,784 people have been tested, of which 38,168 were confirmed positive.

4450 positive, 10590 tests, slight upticks in both, health minister promised 25k tests per day by mid April and 100k by end April yesterday.

As of 5pm on 2 April 2020, of those hospitalised in the UK who tested positive for coronavirus, 3,605 have died.

684 yesterday, still increasing at a rate consistent with 3-day doubling. Peak estimated to still be 9 days off, so its going to get quite a bit worse.

[The Walrus]

We cannot let the cure be worse than the disease.

So, you are willing to die?

Yes, if it means that my children and grandchildren have a better chance.

[etienne]

Somebody asked earlier if the size of the country had an impact on the number of cases. Finally, everybody agreed that it was the case. Here is the graph of the evolution in time from the 1st death to the 100th.

Luxembourg is in the top 10 of the death per 1M, but it extremely low in absolute value.

[sigma_squared]

Interesting Bloomberg article. Will post medRxiv paper separately.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-02/fewer-coronavirus-deaths-seen-in-countries-that-mandate-tb-vaccine
April 1, 2020

Nations with Mandatory TB Vaccines Show Fewer Coronavirus Deaths

New study finds a correlation, but clinical trials are still in progress

Countries with mandatory policies to vaccinate against tuberculosis register fewer coronavirus deaths than countries that don’t have those policies, a new study has found.

The preliminary study posted on medRxiv, a site for unpublished medical research, finds a correlation between countries that require citizens to get the bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine and those showing fewer number of confirmed cases and deaths from Covid-19. Though only a correlation, clinicians in at least six countries are running trials that involve giving frontline health workers and elderly people the BCG vaccine to see whether it can indeed provide some level of protection against the new coronavirus.

Gonzalo Otazu, assistant professor at the New York Institute of Technology and lead author of the study, started working on the analysis after noticing the low number of cases in Japan. The country had reported some of the earliest confirmed cases of coronavirus outside of China and it hadn’t instituted lockdown measures like so many other countries have done.

Otazu said he knew about studies showing the BCG vaccine provided protection against not just tuberculosis bacteria but also other types of contagions. So his team put together the data on what countries had universal BCG vaccine policies and when they were put in place. They then compared the number of confirmed cases and deaths from Covid-19 to find a strong correlation.

Among high-income countries showing large number of Covid-19 cases, the U.S. and Italy recommend BCG vaccines but only for people who might be at risk, whereas Germany, Spain, France and the U.K. used to have BCG vaccine policies but ended them years to decades ago. China, where the pandemic began, has a BCG vaccine policy but it wasn’t adhered to very well before 1976, Otazu said. Countries including Japan and South Korea, which have managed to control the disease, have universal BCG vaccine policies. Data on confirmed cases from low-income countries was considered not reliable enough to make a strong judgment.

Caution Urged

With nearly 900,000 cases and 45,000 deaths, the world is struggling to control Covid-19. Any vaccine for the disease is more than a year away from being available and the effectiveness of drugs under trial won’t be known for months to come. That’s why it’s reasonable to look at whether BCG vaccine could provide protection against Covid-19, said Eleanor Fish, professor at the University of Toronto’s immunology department. Otazu’s study is yet to undergo review by peers, a strict criteria for science studies.

“I would read the results of the study with incredible caution,” Fish said.

Otazu, who said he’s already received comments from other experts, is working on a second version of his study that will address some of their concerns. He has also submitted the study for a formal review process with the journal Frontiers in Public Health.

[etienne]

We cannot let the cure be worse than the disease.

So, you are willing to die?

Yes, if it means that my children and grandchildren have a better chance.

I believe that the cure was needed anyway because of AGW. The question of how the world will restart after the pandemic is a major issue. I first hoped that we could learn something out of it and become more local, but I feel that it doesn't go that way.

We have these discussions now because the lockdown is getting everyday more difficult to support, an I'm still a lucky one living in a nice countryside.

Added : just a picture of Luxembourg so that you can see how is the weather today and that I have no reason to complain about the lockdown. Even so, I find it not so easy to support.

[blumenkraft]

Yes, if it means that my children and grandchildren have a better chance.

OK, boomer. They brainwashed you hard.

[sigma_squared]

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.24.20042937v1

Correlation between universal BCG vaccination policy and reduced morbidity and mortality for COVID-19: an epidemiological study
Aaron Miller, Mac Josh Reandelar, Kimberly Fasciglione, Violeta Roumenova, Yan Li, Gonzalo H Otazu
Posted March 28, 2020

Abstract

COVID-19 has spread to most countries in the world. Puzzlingly, the impact of the disease is different in different countries. These differences are attributed to differences in cultural norms, mitigation efforts, and health infrastructure. Here we propose that national differences in COVID-19 impact could be partially explained by the different national policies respect to Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) childhood vaccination. BCG vaccination has been reported to offer broad protection to respiratory infections. We compared large number of countries BCG vaccination policies with the morbidity and mortality for COVID-19. We found that countries without universal policies of BCG vaccination (Italy, Nederland, USA) have been more severely affected compared to countries with universal and long-standing BCG policies. Countries that have a late start of universal BCG policy (Iran, 1984) had high mortality, consistent with the idea that BCG protects the vaccinated elderly population. We also found that BCG vaccination also reduced the number of reported COVID-19 cases in a country. The combination of reduced morbidity and mortality makes BCG vaccination a potential new tool in the fight against COVID-19.

[SteveMDFP]

From the 'who could possibly know' department...

CA Dismantled Its Mobile Hospital System, Ventilator, Respirator Stockpiles in 2011...California had such a system, implemented by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006. Schwarzenegger was troubled by the suffering he saw along the Gulf coast after Katrina and was concerned about a possible bird flu pandemic. Knowing that devastating earthquakes and “wanted to prepare the state for future calamities.”[/size]

Link >> https://www.redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2020/03/29/ca-dismantled-its-mobile-hospital-system-ventilator-stockpile-in-2011/

RedState is a horribly biased right-wing site.  They strategically omitted *why* California had to dismantle this pandemic preparation.  The reason is the GFC and subsequent Great Recession.  In this period of time, California faced massive red ink, and was forced to deeply cut essential services, including medical services.  Meanwhile, the equipment was sitting idle, while requiring pricey climate-controlled storage.  They made a difficult decision after extensive deliberation.

The equipment was not simply discarded.  The PPE was re-purposed for use by firefightes dealing with the notorious, recurrent wildfire crises.  Ventilators were sold to hospitals.  Very little was wasted.

[sigma_squared]

Re: BCG studies

I'm still reading and digesting the medRxiv article, but I think it raises a few questions and potential implications:

• Can the vaccine be used against COVID? Studies in Melbourne and elsewhere have started. It will take time to get results, but less than developing a new vaccine. Scaling up could also be a problem, but a good problem to have if it works.
• Can this effect partially explain the current course of the epidemic in Japan, South Korea, and possibly China?
• Is this a partial reason why Italy and the US are currently getting hit hard?
• Are current epidemiological models using the data from China to extrapolate the course of the epidemic elsewhere, and is the BCG effect possibly biasing the conclusions, i.e. predicting a lower outcome than will happen in reality to populations that haven't received the vaccine?
• Could this be partially protective in other areas of the world that have had a robust BCG vaccination program against tuberculosis?

BCG atlas showing vaccination history in different countries:
http://www.bcgatlas.org/

[Archimid]

We cannot let the cure be worse than the disease.

So, you are willing to die?

Yes, if it means that my children and grandchildren have a better chance.

It doesn't mean that at all. If you die, or someone you love dies, the future that you have planned for will not happen. A few months of lower revenues?  pffft

Besides, the true answer to that question can only be known right before they intubate you, right after a week of high fever and coughing up pink foam. At that moment they will ask you, do you want to breathe or do you want to give your ventilator to somebody else, "for the economy". Only then can that question be answered truthfully.

And since you are the type of ignorant fool that would pretend the answer is yes when everything is fine and dandy, then it is almost certain that you are the type of person that would hypocritically choose life over "the economy". Almost everyone would choose life then. The type of person that would reject life to save others would not choose "the economy" over life.


But again. That is not a choice. We either attempt to stop it and save the economy along with our lives or lose both. There is no such thing as just driving through this. That's fear speaking.

[blumenkraft]

RedState is a horribly biased right-wing site.  They strategically omitted *why* California had to dismantle this pandemic preparation.  The reason is the GFC and subsequent Great Recession.  In this period of time, California faced massive red ink, and was forced to deeply cut essential services, including medical services.  Meanwhile, the equipment was sitting idle, while requiring pricey climate-controlled storage.  They made a difficult decision after extensive deliberation.

The equipment was not simply discarded.  The PPE was re-purposed for use by firefightes dealing with the notorious, recurrent wildfire crises.  Ventilators were sold to hospitals.  Very little was wasted.

Good info, thanks, Steve.

Still, having a reserve of ICUs wasn't that bad of an idea from Schwarzenegger even if it means it stays idle for a long time. The money is there, it's only a question of priorities.