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How many will die of Covid19 in the 2020s directly and indirectly

Less than 10,000
10 (14.7%)
10,000-100,000
9 (13.2%)
100,000-1,000,000
9 (13.2%)
One to ten million
13 (19.1%)
Ten to a hundred million
14 (20.6%)
Hundred million to one billion
9 (13.2%)
Over a billion
4 (5.9%)

Total Members Voted: 59

Voting closed: March 03, 2020, 12:39:52 AM

Author Topic: COVID-19  (Read 1692051 times)

vox_mundi

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10400 on: December 25, 2020, 05:45:46 PM »
Good cheer to all!

... and in this time in history endeavor to keep all things in perspective ...

Desiderata

... Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
  :)
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

vox_mundi

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10401 on: December 25, 2020, 06:39:46 PM »
Lebanon Says First Case of New Coronavirus Variant Detected On Flight From London
https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-lebanon/lebanon-says-first-case-of-new-coronavirus-variant-detected-on-flight-from-london-idUSL1N2J506A

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon has detected its first case of the new variant of the coronavirus, which has been spreading rapidly in parts of Britain, on a flight arriving from London, it said on Friday.

“The detection of the first case of the new variant of Covid-19 on Middle East Airlines flight 202 coming from London on Dec. 21,” the country’s caretaker health minister said on Twitter, urging all passengers on the flight and their families to take precautionary measures.

A surge in coronavirus infections is straining Lebanon’s healthcare system, which was already struggling amid a financial crisis and following the huge port explosion in August which damaged several hospitals in Beirut.

--------------------------------------------

Japan Reports Five Cases of Coronavirus Variant Found In UK
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/25/japan-reports-cases-coronavirus-variant-spreading-across-uk

Five cases of the new coronavirus variant spreading fast across the UK have been found in Japan, and Russia has become the latest country to impose stricter quarantine on travellers from Britain.

The five people infected with the more highly transmissible form of Covid-19 had all recently arrived from the UK. They have been quarantined, Japanese media reported, and health officials are trying to trace their contacts and possible routes of infection.

Japan has already banned entry to travellers from the UK, apart from returning Japanese nationals and residents.

--------------------------------------------

COVID-19 Hospitalizations Push California’s ICUs to a Record Low 1.1% Available Beds
https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2020/12/24/covid-19-hospitalizations-push-californias-icu-capacity-to-dire-levels/

California’s hospital capacity dwindled yet again ahead of Christmas Day as the state navigated an overwhelming load of coronavirus infections and more patients than ever required care.

More than 19,700 people were hospitalized with the virus, according to the California Department of Public Health, an increase of 400 patients since the start of the week. Available space in intensive-care units across the state has dropped to 1.1% from 1.4%, while the Bay Area’s availability has decreased to 11.4% from 13.5%. Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley are at full capacity.

In total, just 1,373 ICU beds are available statewide for all medical emergencies. California has a population of 39.5 million.

The hospitalization crunch comes amid the pandemic’s worst surge so far. On Wednesday, the state surpassed 2 million coronavirus cases just six weeks after hitting 1 million. Cases have leveled off slightly after an all-time high of more than 61,000 was reported Monday; the seven-day average is 44,329 cases as of Thursday, according to data compiled by this news organization. Another 352 deaths raised the seven-day death average to about 251.

California’s test positivity rate has likewise steadily climbed, a contrast to the months it trailed national trends. As the U.S.’s test positivity rate has leveled to about 11% over the last few weeks, California’s has increased to about 13% before dipping over just the past two days, according to the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine coronavirus tracker.

Still, the state is faring slightly better than several of its neighbors and other populous states. Texas’s test positivity rate is nearly 18%, while Nevada’s is about 16% and Arizona’s nearly 14%.



----------------------------------------------

... and as though Tennessee hospital ICUs don't have enough on their plate ...

Blast That Rocked Downtown Nashville Appears to be 'Intentional Act', Police Say
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/25/explosion-nashville-intentional-act-police-say
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

vox_mundi

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10402 on: December 25, 2020, 11:34:55 PM »
Boston Doctor Reports Serious Allergic Reaction After Getting Moderna’s Covid Vaccine
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/25/health/Covid-moderna-vaccine-allergies.html

The patient, who has a severe shellfish allergy, recovered quickly with treatment. Until now, reports of severe reactions had been linked to the Pfizer vaccine.

The case was the first of its kind reported to be linked to Moderna’s vaccine. Federal agencies are investigating at least six cases involving people who suffered anaphylaxis after receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which contains similar ingredients, during the first few weeks of its distribution in the United States.

The incident on Thursday involved Dr. Hossein Sadrzadeh, a geriatric oncologist at Boston Medical Center, who has a severe shellfish allergy and had an appointment to get the Moderna shot in the afternoon.

Dr. Sadrzadeh said he brought his EpiPen to his vaccine appointment because of his serious allergies. He said that within minutes of the vaccine injection at 3:30 p.m., his heart rate had spiked to 150 beats per minute, about twice its normal cadence; his tongue prickled and went numb. Before long, he was drenched in a cold sweat and found himself feeling dizzy and faint. His blood pressure also plummeted, he said.

Dr. Sadrzadeh used his EpiPen and was taken on a stretcher to the emergency room, where he was given several medications, including steroids and Benadryl, to calm the immune reactions that had overtaken his body. A record of his visit stated that he had been “seen in the ER for shortness of breath, dizziness, palpitations and numbness after receiving the Covid-19 vaccine.”

Four hours later, Dr. Sadrzadeh was released from care. As of Friday morning, he said he felt fully recovered. But the previous day’s events shook him. “I don’t want anybody to go through that,” he said.

The recent allergic reactions linked to Pfizer’s very similar vaccine prompted heated discussions during advisory panel discussions held this month by the F.D.A. and the C.D.C., with experts noting that anaphylaxis seemed to be occurring at an unusual frequency so soon into distribution. Current cases are occurring approximately every 125,000 injections. (Under normal circumstances, allergic reactions to vaccines are thought to occur at a rate of about one in a million.)

-----------------------------------------

UK Scientists Trial Drug to Prevent Infection That Leads to Covid
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/25/uk-scientists-trial-drug-to-prevent-coronavirus-infection-leading-to-disease

British scientists are trialling a new drug that could prevent someone who has been exposed to coronavirus from going on to develop the disease Covid-19, which experts say could save many lives.

The antibody therapy would confer instant immunity against the disease and could be given as an emergency treatment to hospital inpatients and care home residents to help contain outbreaks.

Dr Catherine Houlihan, a virologist at University College London Hospitals NHS trust (UCLH) is leading a study called Storm Chaser into the drug. It has been developed by UCLH and AstraZeneca, the pharmaceutical company that has also, along with Oxford University, created a vaccine that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency is expected to approve for use in Britain next week.

The drug involves a long-acting antibody combination known as AZD7442, which has been developed by AstraZeneca. Rather than antibodies produced by the body to help fight an infection, AZD7442 uses monoclonal antibodies, which have been created in a laboratory.

It differs from other antibody cocktails, in requiring 2 single injections rather than a long infusion.

In documents on a clinical trial that AstraZeneca has registered in the US, it explains that it is investigating “the efficacy of AZD7442 for the post-exposure prophylaxis of Covid-19 in adults. The Sars-CoV-2 spike protein contains the virus’s RBD [receptor-binding domain], which enables the virus to bind to receptors on human cells. By targeting this region of the virus’s spike protein, antibodies can block the virus’s attachment to human cells, and therefore is expected to block infection.”

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04625972

In a separate trial, called Provent, UCLH is investigating whether the drug could also protect people with compromised immune systems, such as those undergoing chemotherapy for cancer, who have recently been exposed to the virus but have either not had a vaccine or in whom it has not resulted in immunity because of their underlying condition. Both the Provent and Storm Chaser trials are now in phase 3.
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

vox_mundi

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10403 on: December 26, 2020, 12:48:26 PM »
Spain Confirms UK Variant In Madrid
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/dec/26/coronavirus-live-news-tier-4-england-uk-eu-vaccine-rollout

Four cases of a coronavirus variant believed to be particularly infectious that recently emerged in Britain have been confirmed in the Spanish city of Madrid, the regional government said Saturday, the first cases detected in the country.

All four cases involved people who recently arrived from the UK, the Madrid regional government’s deputy health chief Antonio Zapatero told a news conference.

----------------------------------------

French Officials Announce First Confirmed Case Of New Coronavirus Variant
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55449528

France has confirmed the first case in the country of the more contagious coronavirus variant recently identified in the UK.

The French health ministry said the person was a French citizen in the central town of Tours who had arrived from London on 19 December.

The ministry said he was asymptomatic, and currently self-isolating at home.

----------------------------------------

US CDC Testing Requirements for UK Travelers Like 'A Chain Link Fence to Keep Out a Mosquito'
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/12/25/health/covid-19-negative-test-travel-restrictions-uk-us/index.html

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has announced new testing requirements for travelers arriving from the UK, but research by the agency's own scientists shows the rule may have only a small impact on the spread of the new UK strain of coronavirus.

Starting Monday in the UK, passengers must have a negative Covid-19 test within three days of boarding a flight to the United States.

... But according to researchers on the CDC's Covid-19 response team, testing three days before a flight might not accomplish very much -- reducing the risk of spreading the virus by just 5 to 9%.

On the other hand, testing on the day of departure may be more effective, reducing the risk of transmission by 37 to 61%, according to the CDC scientists' November report, which is based on mathematical modeling and has not been peer reviewed.

----------------------------------------

L.A. County is Probing Whether a New, More Contagious COVID Strain is Spreading Locally
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-25/l-a-county-is-probing-whether-a-new-more-contagious-covid-strain-is-spreading-locally?_amp=true

Los Angeles County scientists have begun to test samples of the coronavirus from local patients to determine if a new, more contagious strain that is circulating in the UK has arrived, as some officials believe is likely amid a major surge of infections.

L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said a public health laboratory has begun to do gene sequencing to test virus samples collected in L.A. County, but it will take about a week to finish the process.

... A memo issued by the L.A. County Department of Public Health on Christmas Eve asked labs to review recent data from positive coronavirus tests to be on the lookout for a specific gene detection pattern, as well as any unusual molecular patterns.

... “The last thing we want to do is let a new strain of COVID come and spread more rapidly or easily across the state,” Ghaly said.

--------------------------------------

Covid-19 in China: People Asked to Stay Home for the Holidays as 20 New Infections Reported
https://scmp.com/topics/coronavirus-outbreak/

City and provincial governments across China have asked people to remain in their regions over the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday in February in a bid to prevent the spread of Covid-19 amid reports of several new local infections.

---------------------------------------------
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Sigmetnow

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10404 on: December 26, 2020, 06:05:11 PM »
Quote
Urs Hölzle (@uhoelzle) 12/10/20, 11:31 PM
Amazing graph from the [New England Journal of Medicine] paper on the Pfizer vaccine. For the first 10 days after getting the shot, vaccine and placebo perform the same, but after 10 days the vaccine group gets almost no new cases whereas the control group just keeps getting more.
https://twitter.com/uhoelzle/status/1337253599508774913

The NEJM paper is here: https://t.co/V4csSLdzqC
People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

TeaPotty

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10405 on: December 26, 2020, 06:56:33 PM »
49 suspected cases of new virus variant said found in samples at one Israeli lab
https://www.timesofisrael.com/49-suspected-cases-of-new-virus-variant-reportedly-found-at-israeli-hospital/
Quote
In the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center outside Tel Aviv, testers found 49 suspected cases of the new virus strain.

19 suspected cases were found in another lab in southern Israel. Some of the patients with the suspected variant had not left the country recently, heightening fears the new virus strain was spreading inside Israel, the report said.

Levy said that hundreds of test samples were currently undergoing genetic mapping for the mutated strain, and indicated that it is likely more cases with the new variant will be confirmed.

The developments came as infections continued to surge in Israel and the country prepared for its third national lockdown that will take effect on Sunday evening.

The Health Ministry reported 4,046 new cases on Thursday — the highest daily number since the last lockdown

Israeli labs today also confirmed seeing significantly higher viral loads, theorized by many to be the cause of increased transmission: https://news.walla.co.il/item/3407308 (Don't have an English source)


Archimid

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10406 on: December 26, 2020, 07:45:04 PM »
Sigmetnow, now you resort to giving me hope here... Santa is that you?

Thanks for that link.
I am an energy reservoir seemingly intent on lowering entropy for self preservation.

TeaPotty

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10407 on: December 26, 2020, 07:47:02 PM »
Genetic epidemiology of variants associated with immune escape from global SARS-CoV-2 genomes
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.24.424332v1
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.24.424332v1.full.pdf

Quote
Our analysis suggests that a number of genetic variants associated with immune escape have emerged in global populations.

...86 of the 120 genetic variants associated with immune escapes were found in a total of 26,917 genomes from 63 countries

...Put together, our analysis suggests that a number of genetic variants which are associated with immune escape have emerged in global populations, some of them have been found to be polymorphic in many global datasets and a subset of variants have emerged to be highly frequent in some countries

vox_mundi

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10408 on: December 26, 2020, 11:14:26 PM »
U.K. Variant of Coronavirus Appears in Canada, Elsewhere, Despite Containment Efforts
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/12/26/variant-coronavirus-spreading-beyond-uk/?outputType=amp

The highly transmissible variant of the coronavirus first detected in England had by Saturday been documented in several European countries, as well as Canada, Japan, Australia and Lebanon, despite efforts to curb its spread through massive global disruptions in travel and movement.

The variant has also been detected in France, Denmark, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy.

In Canada, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer announced Saturday that they had confirmed two cases, the first detection of the variant in North America. The patient, a couple, had no known travel history, meaning it was likely a case of community spread.

While the United States has not yet reported a case, experts say it is probably due to the nation’s very low rate of genetic sequencing of the virus to check for such changes, despite Americans leading the world in coronavirus infections and deaths.

... Scientists are additionally closely following news of another variant of the novel coronavirus first detected in South Africa that experts say also appears to be highly transmissible. British health officials have already documented cases of the South African variant in the United Kingdom.

-------------------------------------------



25 December 2020 (Desdemona Despair) – The per-capita death rate from Covid-19 in the United States exceeded 100 for the first time today, according to mortality data from John Hopkins University. The milestone comes on the heels of this week’s announcement from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) stating that the U.S. death toll may rise to well over a half million by 1 April 2020, exceeding 567,000, with no peak in sight.


Total Covid-19 mortality in the United States, 4 February 2020 – 24 December 2020 and projected To 1 April 2021. Graphic: IHME

The number 100 isn’t significant from the epidemiological perspective, but it’s a grim milestone that puts the U.S. in the same company as nations like Andorra and Slovenia.



The IHME model also projects that the daily death rate will peak at nearly 4,000 per day in January:

“In our reference scenario, which represents what we think is most likely to happen, our model projects 567,000 cumulative deaths on April 1, 2021. This represents 252,000 additional deaths from December 20 to April 1. Daily deaths will peak at 3,890 on January 11, 2021.”

Even in the best-case scenario, the vaccines won’t arrive in time to abate the pandemic in the U.S. this winter.

-----------------------------------

Black Doctor’s Death Becomes a Symbol of Racism In Coronavirus Care
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/26/black-doctors-death-becomes-a-symbol-of-racism-in-coronavirus-care

A Black doctor who died battling Covid-19 described racist medical care in widely shared social media posts days before her death, prompting an Indiana hospital system to promise a “full external review” into her treatment.

... The case of Dr Susan Moore has become a powerful and stark symbol of that inequity, garnering coverage in publications from the New York Times to USA Today and major television networks.

Moore, 52, tested positive for Covid-19 late last month and was admitted to IU Health North Hospital in Carmel, Indiana, according to a Facebook post. Acutely aware of her condition and medical procedures, the physician said she had to repeatedly ask for medication, scans and routine checks while admitted at a hospital in Carmel, Indiana.

She noted a white doctor in particular who seemingly dismissed her pain and said she didn’t trust the hospital.

... Black Americans are more vulnerable because of systemic racism, inequity in health care access and economic opportunity and the fact that many work in jobs that put them on the front lines of the pandemic.

Many Black Americans also report that medical professionals take their ailments less seriously when they seek treatment.
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Archimid

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10409 on: December 27, 2020, 12:37:20 PM »
567,000 / 365 = 1553 COVID 19 deaths per day.

The leading cause of death in the US is heart disease with 655,381 in 2018

655,381 / 365 =  1795 heart disease deaths per day.

If it wasn't for the lockdown in April and all the safety measures implemented since then, Covid 19 would have been the leading cause of death in 2020.

Vaccines need to be distributed as fast as possible and in the optimal order to end this pandemic.
I am an energy reservoir seemingly intent on lowering entropy for self preservation.

vox_mundi

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10410 on: December 27, 2020, 12:40:14 PM »
LA's Covid 'Tsunami': Inside the New Center of America's Raging Pandemic
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/26/los-angeles-coronavirus-surge-hospitals

... “Do we need to start filming people dying?” said Marcia Santini, a nurse at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), medical center, who is recovering from a brutal Covid-19 infection that forced her to be hospitalized at her own workplace. “People need to understand, there is no place to take care of you. You can’t have this mindset that this isn’t going to happen to you. It doesn’t work like that any more. The virus is rampant.”

Heading into the darkest holiday season some have ever endured, there were grim reminders across the LA region that the virus is spreading uncontrolled. The city’s mayor briefed the public while in quarantine after his daughter became infected. Hospitals were setting up triage tents. Residents waited in line for hours for Covid tests at Dodger stadium. The region recently ordered more body bags.

Outbreaks were afflicting grocery stores, restaurants, stores, shopping malls, Amazon warehouses, manufacturing plants, government buildings, police and fire departments, jails and prisons and film sets.

Officials in LA county estimated that one in 95 residents were currently infectious, and that two residents were dying of Covid every hour. More than 6,000 Covid patients are in the hospital, and intensive care units (ICU) are filled to capacity.

LA is now reporting an average of more than 14,700 cases each day, a 78% increase from two weeks ago, according to LA Times data. Seven hundred people are hospitalized daily; in October there were fewer than 150 daily hospitalizations. By January, officials say it could be 1,400 admissions each day. More than 9,000 people have died.

The situation inside some hospitals this week became untenable, and workers were bracing for it to get worse.

... MLKCH, a 131-bed hospital in a predominantly Black and Latino area in South LA, is caring for 200 patients, requiring doctors to use tents and waiting rooms for patient care, and forcing some staff to do frontline work outside of their normal positions, Reyno said on Wednesday. The hospital went from one Covid unit to three and is now seeking more ventilators: “We are just seeing an unrelenting and crushing volume of very sick patients,” he said. ...

The overflow is so severe that the lobby has been converted to a place to care for patients while an outside tent has been erected to act as a waiting room. Gurneys are now stored in the hospital's gift shop.

"Everything is backed up all the way to the street," said Dr. Oscar Casillas, the medical director of the hospital's emergency department told the Times.

The hospital serves the low-income South Los Angeles area, which has a 72 percent higher mortality rate than the rest of L.A., according to MLKCH. Though the hospital only has 133 beds, as of Tuesday, it had 206 patients, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.

"The testing site on our campus, has a COVID positivity rate of 25 percent, versus 12 to 13 percent countywide. We're a small community hospital, 131 beds, and we have already exceeded our surge capacity. We started this morning with 206 patients in our 131-bed hospital, and 70 patients in the emergency department—that is a 29-bed emergency department."

-------------------------------------------

Overwhelmed L.A. Hospitals Brace for Post-Christmas Coronavirus Wave
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/overwhelmed-l-a-hospitals-brace-for-post-christmas-coronavirus-wave/
https://ktla.com/news/california/california-hospitals-delay-surgeries-face-difficult-decisions-amid-coronavirus-surge/

In Covid-19 ravaged California on Christmas Day, remaining ICU capacity for the first time fell to zero across the entire state.

Some counties, like Los Angeles and Orange County have been at 0% for over a week, but the state at large has recently floated between 1 and 3%.

... There are still beds available in the state because, as health officials have explained, the official omits NICU availability — for kids — and other beds not appropriate for the majority of the state’s adults.

Still, scenes of patients lined up on stretchers outside of emergency rooms are beginning to emerge. They are frighteningly similar to images seen earlier in the pandemic in New York and in hard-hit countries like Italy or Wuhan, China.

-----------------------------------------------

... Some hospitals in L.A. County are running dangerously low on their supplies of oxygen, a person familiar with the matter told The Times.

Oxygen is critical to treating severely ill COVID-19 patients who have begun to suffocate because the virus has inflamed their lungs. So now, hospitals need 10 times more oxygen than they did before. There have been periods of time when hospitals have run dangerously low on their stores of oxygen before obtaining additional supplies, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Hospitals are also running short of other key supplies, such as the special sterile  plastic tubes used to bring the oxygen into the lungs.

----------------------------------------------

... California hospitals are facing increasingly difficult decisions about which services to postpone amid a crushing load of coronavirus patients. All regular intensive-care beds are full in Southern California and the Central Valley, and hospitals elsewhere are nearing capacity.

“While our state works to get the COVID-19 surge under control in the weeks ahead, we cannot allow patients’ healthcare needs to go unmet – medical care delay or avoidance could increase morbidity and mortality risk associated with treatable and preventable health conditions,” Michelle George, president of the California Ambulatory Surgery Association, wrote to the governor this month.

Hospital executives were reluctant to speak in detail about which surgeries are getting delayed and how severe conditions were, saying several factors are considered.

Kaiser Permanente has halted “elective, non-urgent surgeries and procedures” until Jan. 4 at 21 hospitals in Northern California and until Jan. 10 at its 15 hospitals in Southern California.

Dr. Rais Vohra, interim health officer for Fresno County, which is among the places seeing the greatest crush of cases, said hospitals are being asked to take a hard look at which surgeries can wait.

“Just because something is elective, like for example a tumor operation or spinal operation, that can’t go forever or else the patient is going to have a really bad outcome,” he said.

Dr. Anneli von Reinhart, an emergency physician at Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno, said plenty of important surgeries are considered “elective.”

“Elective doesn’t mean frivolous,” she said. “If you break your ankle into three pieces, we need to put you back together if you’re ever going to walk on it again, but we don’t necessarily need to do it today.”

At Pioneers Memorial Hospital in Imperial County, more than 65% of surgeries that are normally done “are not being done” since early December, said Larry Lewis, chief executive officer. He declined to elaborate on the type of surgeries, saying decisions vary case-by-case.

https://mobile.twitter.com/KPSCALnews/status/1341814218538926080

On Friday, director James Gunn tweeted about the heartbreaking trouble a friend’s family had finding treatment at a hospital because of Covid-related overcrowding. “My friend’s father had cancer surgery a week ago,” wrote Gunn. “Two days later he had complications. He went back to the hospital but he couldn’t get a bed because of all the Covid patients…”

... The next two to four weeks, ..., “will surely be difficult and more challenging.”
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Archimid

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10411 on: December 27, 2020, 01:00:33 PM »
Quote
“Do we need to start filming people dying?"

The ones that will have us suck Covid often require exactly that. Visual evidence. Else none of this is real.

I am an energy reservoir seemingly intent on lowering entropy for self preservation.

etienne

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10412 on: December 27, 2020, 01:44:51 PM »
Officials in LA county estimated that one in 95 residents were currently infectious, and that two residents were dying of Covid every hour. More than 6,000 Covid patients are in the hospital, and intensive care units (ICU) are filled to capacity.

Luxembourg peaked on November 12th with 11 532 active cases. That's about 1.7% of the population, one out of 59 if all cases would be resident, which we don't know. We have now 7177 active cases.

https://covid19.public.lu/fr/graph.html

It was chosen to wait until December 26th to start a new lockdown, but some measures like closing the restaurants and reducing the number of kids in the school helped to stop the increase of cases.

Christmas was no fun this year.

vox_mundi

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10413 on: December 27, 2020, 06:33:03 PM »
Hospitals In England Told to Free Up All Possible Beds for Surging Covid Cases
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/dec/27/hospitals-in-england-told-to-free-up-all-possible-beds-for-surging-covid-cases

NHS England has said the entire health service will have to stay on the highest level of alert until at least the end of March. It comes as NHS trust bosses in England said the intense pressures they were facing were “extremely challenging” and that hospitals had almost as many Covid patients now as in April.

In a letter, NHS Improvement bosses told hospitals that where possible they should send patients needing surgery to local private health facilities, discharge as many inpatients as possible and prepare for the Nightingale field hospitals to open.

https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/publication/important-operational-priorities-for-winter-and-2021-22

... “With Covid-19 inpatient numbers rising in almost all parts of the country, and the new risk presented by the variant strain of the virus, you should continue to plan on the basis that we will remain in a level four incident for at least the rest of this financial year and NHS trusts should continue to safely mobilise all of the available surge capacity over the coming weeks.”

A consultant at Southampton general hospital said: “Our general intensive care unit footprint is now completely overfull of Covid patients. We have expanded our ICU by 10 extra beds to take ICU patients from both Portsmouth and Kent as they are so hard-pressed. [The situation] is under control so far but unpleasant and scary.”

https://twitter.com/rupert_pearse/status/1342020644247130113

Hospital doctors warned that the service’s widespread lack of staff could pose a risk to patients.

Dr Sonia Adesara, a doctor in London, tweeted: “My hospital has currently no ITU beds. No spare CPAP (non-invasive ventilation) capacity. Spent the past 12 hours caring for people in their 50s, 60s, 70s who are on the highest oxygen we can give. Trying to keep them breathing until we can free up capacity.”

https://twitter.com/SoniaAdesara/status/1343130241145991170
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

pietkuip

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10414 on: December 27, 2020, 07:50:10 PM »
Latest data on the share of cases that have the new variant.
It is increases rapidly in almost all regions in England.

https://twitter.com/theosanderson/status/1343243906318807040

vox_mundi

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10415 on: December 27, 2020, 11:20:03 PM »
Hiding Covid-19: How the Trump Administration Suppresses Photography of the Pandemic
https://theintercept.com/2020/12/27/covid-photography-hospitals/



As Covid-19 tore through the United States in the spring, a senior official in the Trump administration quietly reinforced a set of guidelines that prevented journalists from getting inside all but a handful of hospitals at the front line of the pandemic. The guidelines, citing the medical privacy law known as HIPAA, suggested a nearly impossible standard: Before letting journalists inside Covid-19 wards, hospitals needed prior permission from not only the specific patients the journalists would interview, but also other patients whose names or identities would be accessible.

The onerous guidelines were issued on May 5 by Roger Severino, who worked at the conservative Heritage Foundation before Donald Trump appointed him to direct the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS. The guidelines made it extremely difficult for hospitals to give photographers the opportunity to collect visual evidence of the pandemic’s severity. By tightening the circulation of disturbing images, the guidelines fulfilled, intentionally or not, a key Trump administration goal: keeping public attention away from the death toll.

... Doctors were freed to discuss or transfer patient information with technologies that were not secure, such as email, FaceTime, and Skype. As it relaxed these restrictions, the agency said that medical providers would not be punished for breaches of patient confidentiality if they acted in good faith during the pandemic.

The government’s permissiveness did not extend to journalists. The media guidelines announced by Severino in May reinforced HIPAA’s restrictions and warned hospitals that violations could bring fines in the millions of dollars. The announcement was not reported by general-interest publications, but news outlets for the health care industry noticed what had happened. The headline of one of those industry stories was blunt: “Patient Privacy Prevails Over Covid-19 Media Coverage.”

Severino’s guidance, little known outside the health care industry, may help solve one of the mysteries of the pandemic: Why have Americans seen relatively little imagery of people suffering from Covid-19? While there is a long-running debate over the influence of disturbing images of death and dying — whether they actually move public opinion — the relative paucity of videos and photographs of the pandemic’s victims might help explain why Covid-19 skepticism has thrived as the death toll in America reaches the level of a 9/11 every day.

Quote
...“For society to respond in ways commensurate with the importance of this pandemic, we have to see it,” ... “For us to be transformed by it, it has to penetrate our hearts as well as our minds. Images force us to contend with the unspeakable. They help humanize clinical statistics, to make them comprehensible.”

Sarah Elizabeth Lewis - Art Historian

Michael Kamber, a former war photographer who directs the Bronx Documentary Center in New York City, recalls security guards shooing him off the sidewalks in front of Lincoln Medical Center. “This is the greatest loss of life on the American continent in such a concentrated time, and we’re seeing almost no images that really convey the devastation and the death,” Kamber said.

... “Photography has played such a key role in the civil rights movement, in ending the Vietnam War, and any number of key moments in American history — and it just seems missing in action on this crisis.”

Kamber, like other photographers, accepts that safety and privacy concerns need to be upheld, but he believes that those concerns are used as excuses for the repression of journalism that is manifestly in the public interest.

… The dearth of images of death and dying directly contributed to the disinformation [about Covid-19] and the ongoing disbelief in our country, full stop.

... The war metaphor sheds light on why 300,000 coronavirus deaths have elicited a shallower national response than the loss of life in previous catastrophes. Domestic opposition to the war in Vietnam was shaped by imagery of U.S. soldiers as well as Vietnamese civilians in agonizing moments of injury or death. Americans were horrified to see the true face of war. Having learned its lesson, the U.S. government suppressed imagery of American casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The unifying principle between repressing photography of a war and photography of a pandemic is that a population that cannot see human carnage will not object as strongly to its perpetuation and will not care as much about the incompetence that brought it on. ...
« Last Edit: December 27, 2020, 11:34:28 PM by vox_mundi »
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

TeaPotty

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10416 on: December 28, 2020, 01:26:44 AM »
S-variant SARS-CoV-2 is associated with Significantly Higher Viral Loads
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.24.20248834v1
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.24.20248834v1.full.pdf
Quote
This analysis suggests that patients whose samples exhibit the S-dropout profile in the TaqPath test are more likely to have high viral loads at the time of sampling. The relevance of this to epidemiological reports of fast spread of the SARS-CoV-2 in regions of the UK is discussed.

...The significant difference in population median Ct value, between S-dropout and S-detected samples, represents between 10 and 100-fold increase in target concentration for S-dropout.

...Therefore, our observed cluster of S-dropout samples at Ct less than 15 corresponds to a conservative estimate of a significantly larger population of infectious subjects that have an increased viral load up to 10,000- fold higher. Such capability of increased transmission has been ascribed to an S ‘variant of concern’ apparently spreading throughout the South-east of the UK, and possibly beyond

This same mutation, N501Y, is also in the SA variant.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2020, 03:50:43 PM by TeaPotty »

Richard Rathbone

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10417 on: December 28, 2020, 02:30:22 AM »

The unifying principle between repressing photography of a war and photography of a pandemic is that a population that cannot see human carnage will not object as strongly to its perpetuation and will not care as much about the incompetence that brought it on. ...

Its noticeable in the UK too. Its basically not allowed to show anything bad happening in a hospital in the UK. Pictures of ambulance queues or Italian hospitals are about as far as its allowed to go. I'm not sure if anything extra has been done to enforce it this year, or if its just the same conventions continuing to apply.

Is anything said about the rate COVID is caught by people in hospitals for non-COVID reasons in the US? It has remained pretty high in the UK (around 1 patient catches it in hospital for every 3 or 4 admitted with it) but hardly ever gets mentioned.

Hefaistos

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10418 on: December 28, 2020, 06:15:41 AM »
Killing with light. One minute exposure at the right wavelength kills almost all of them.
Seems like a good thing to do in e.g. airplanes or trains or buses or

"UV-LED disinfection of Coronavirus: Wavelength effect", by Gerchma et al.

Abstract
UV light-emitting diodes (UV LEDs) are an emerging technology and a UV source for pathogen inactivation, however low UV-LED wavelengths are costly and have low fluence rate. Our results suggest that the sensitivity of human Coronavirus (HCoV-OC43 used as SARS-CoV-2 surrogate) was wavelength dependent with 267 nm ~ 279 nm > 286 nm > 297 nm. Other viruses showed similar results, suggesting UV LED with peak emission at ~286 nm could serve as an effective tool in the fight against human Coronaviruses.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1011134420304942?via%3Dihub
open access

Archimid

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10419 on: December 28, 2020, 08:47:42 AM »
The concept that the government should hide potential dangers from people is beyond stupid.

The premise behind the concept is that people need to be lied about actual threats to their wellbeing because it is in their best interest. It is for their protection. The big powerful men will offer all the protection the people need.

In practice, the big powerful men have limited power against the laws of nature. The people are the ones who face this threat and the people are the ones who must come up with solutions with or without the warnings of those who knew but choose not to tell, or worse, those who choose to lie.
I am an energy reservoir seemingly intent on lowering entropy for self preservation.

Rodius

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10420 on: December 28, 2020, 09:05:15 AM »
The concept that the government should hide potential dangers from people is beyond stupid.

The premise behind the concept is that people need to be lied about actual threats to their wellbeing because it is in their best interest. It is for their protection. The big powerful men will offer all the protection the people need.

In practice, the big powerful men have limited power against the laws of nature. The people are the ones who face this threat and the people are the ones who must come up with solutions with or without the warnings of those who knew but choose not to tell, or worse, those who choose to lie.

The added problem of trust is the various Govts where Covid is doing its thing also have Govts that have proven leaders who do not off the protection the people need and they are equally as good at protecting their own self interests..... so when a vaccine is offered that the Govt says is good and to trust them, people simply wont trust them.

And I don't blame them.
I am not even sure I will be accepting a vaccine for Covid and I am pro vaccine and I think the only way Covid will be brought to heel is via a vaccine. If I am like that because of Govt bullshit and distrust, what are people sitting on the edge like?

vox_mundi

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10421 on: December 28, 2020, 09:36:30 AM »
Chinese Journalist Who Documented Wuhan Coronavirus Outbreak Jailed for 4 Years
https://m.dw.com/en/china-jails-journalist-over-wuhan-covid-outbreak-reporting/a-56071570
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/12/28/asia/china-journalist-zhang-zhan-intl-hnk/index.html

Chinese independent citizen journalist Zhang Zhan has received a prison sentence for her reporting from Wuhan during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, according to her lawyer.

A former lawyer, Zhang Zhan traveled to the central Chinese city in February to report on the pandemic and subsequent attempts to contain it, just as the authorities began reining in state-run and private Chinese media.

Her widely shared video livestreams and essays detailed overcrowded crematoriums and hospitals as Chinese authorities struggled to contain the virus.

She disappeared from Wuhan in May and was later revealed to have been detained by police in Shanghai, a city more than 640 kilometers (400 miles) away, and charged with "picking quarrels and provoking trouble," an offense commonly used to target journalists and human rights activists.

Zhang is the first journalist put on trial for her coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. However, three other citizen journalists who reported from Wuhan — Chen Qiushi, Fang Bin and Li Zehua — have all been missing since February. Eight whistleblowers have already been punished for criticizing the government's response to the pandemic.

Zhang was critical of the Chinese government's initial handling of the outbreak in Wuhan, writing that authorities "didn't give people enough information, then simply locked down the city."
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

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Archimid

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10422 on: December 28, 2020, 10:39:37 AM »
Why you wouldn't want this vaccine? I'm not sure governments did much about these series of vaccines other than getting in the way and print money.

Manufacturers did the research, the development and the ramp-up. Thousands of people all working as best as they know-how. regulators reviewed.
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Rodius

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10423 on: December 28, 2020, 01:10:03 PM »
Why you wouldn't want this vaccine? I'm not sure governments did much about these series of vaccines other than getting in the way and print money.

Manufacturers did the research, the development and the ramp-up. Thousands of people all working as best as they know-how. regulators reviewed.

I know what you mean.
And I will probably take the vaccine when it is offered.
BUT>.... the Govts of the world have been playing stupid games the entire time with little care for the people they are meant to protect. Is it really a stretch to think that they want a vaccine, any vaccine, to be distributed in order to protect what they actually protect.... the economy and power?
The cynic in me says they could push vaccines through that are less than ideal.

The brain in me says the consequences of releasing a vaccine that is worse than Covid would be catastrophic.... so of course they wouldn't be malicious.

I don't trust Govts much and the reasons I don't trust them are in full view now for anyone who wishes to look. They simply don't give a shit about the general population.
Still, surely the companies want to retain the image of safe provider of vaccines and drugs in order to maintain their profits.... in that regard, I think the vaccine is probably a far better option than not having it.... so... I will probably get it asap.

But I wont deny that there is a lingering doubt in the back of my mind.

 

SteveMDFP

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10424 on: December 28, 2020, 01:20:05 PM »

BUT>
....
The cynic in me says they could push vaccines through that are less than ideal.
....
But I wont deny that there is a lingering doubt in the back of my mind.
I can understand this.  Certainly, the FDA was under intense pressure to approve the vaccines.  It's not crazy to think that a seriously flawed vaccine could have been approved.

But I have some knowledge of the pretty exacting standards of independent review and procedures for clinical research.  Though it would be vastly preferable for all the proprietary research data to be made public immediately.  Still, when smart, reliable people like Fauci roll up their sleeves, I think that's an additional factor in judging the balance of risk/benefit.

If I were 20 years old and very low risk, I might rationally decline the vaccine.  As my personal risk is easily 100 times greater than that of a 20 year-old, I will have zero hesitation.

In the case of this peculiarly-acting virus, I think it's plausible that the mRNA vaccines could provide immunity superior to natural infection.  We won't know that for probably a couple of years.

harpy

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10425 on: December 28, 2020, 03:11:43 PM »
Considering that the Trump administration was directly responsible for funding the "vaccine", etc., my faith in its effectiveness and safety is approximately equal to drinking the tap water in Flint, Michigan.

silkman

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10426 on: December 28, 2020, 03:20:49 PM »

I don't trust Govts much and the reasons I don't trust them are in full view now for anyone who wishes to look. They simply don't give a shit about the general population.
Still, surely the companies want to retain the image of safe provider of vaccines and drugs in order to maintain their profits.... in that regard, I think the vaccine is probably a far better option than not having it.... so... I will probably get it asap.

For my sins I spent my whole 35 year career working in the “ethical” pharmaceutical industry, initially in a small company with some interesting technology and latterly with increasingly “big” pharma. During that time I worked in basic research as a pharmacologist before progressing to a development role and latterly into business development.

I got to know and to work with many scientists and business colleagues across the industry and I can honestly say that I never encountered anyone who didn’t reflect the “ethical” element of the industry’s title.

Yes, the profit motive was always a key driver and I suspect this is more the case than it was in my day but, in my experience that pressure was never allowed to undermine the integrity of the science.

From my perspective the collaboration that has developed in the past year to fight Covid is amazing, bringing together the contributions of academic researchers, the medical profession, biotech minnows and the global power of big pharma, putting us at the point where it really seems possible to tame this viral threat.

Each of these elements has been necessary but without the scale and expertise of the industry, in clinical trials, regulatory affairs, scale up and manufacture, the prospect of being able to vaccinate the billions of folk needed to achieve herd immunity in a period of months to a couple of years would have been a pipe dream.

Clearly the winners will profit but that’s equally or possibly more true of the successful biotech innovators and their academic colleagues. In my view there’s no case to question the commitment of all those involved to deliver safe and effective treatments.

There will be mistakes made and all treatments have side effects but it would be a tragic waste of an incredible global scientific endeavour if such fears were to undermine the positive outcome that is achievable.



sailor

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10427 on: December 28, 2020, 04:26:01 PM »
Considering that the Trump administration was directly responsible for funding the "vaccine", etc., my faith in its effectiveness and safety is approximately equal to drinking the tap water in Flint, Michigan.

I don't see the equivalence with the problem in Flint Michigan which is a prolonged embarrassment of public officials, Republican and Democrat governors and presidents since Obama's mise-en-scene.
The problem of Flint is that no president, no governor, nobody wants to invest publicly on what is needed to finally substitute all corroded pipes, publicly or privately owned. So it is a no-investment issue rather the opposite here, what Trump backed up, which is a billionaire support to vaccine development.

Vaccines efficacy (Pfizer and Moderna) is documented.

It is worrying however that the last corner cut --approve them on emergency basis after only months of their initial development-- will show their safety be somehow compromised compared to usual vaccines due to allergic reactions. But so long as these occurrences are low (1-10 in 100,000) and can be handled, which seems so (EpiPen), and their prevalence is much lower than, uh, death or disability by COVID-19, I think it is very very positive. About long-term effects, we enter a vaccine - anti vax discussion that does not pertain to this thread.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2020, 04:35:25 PM by sailor »

Grubbegrabben

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10428 on: December 28, 2020, 04:27:36 PM »
Considering that the Trump administration was directly responsible for funding the "vaccine", etc., my faith in its effectiveness and safety is approximately equal to drinking the tap water in Flint, Michigan.

The Covid vaccines seem to require two doses, 4 weeks apart and that's it. The substances are probably out of your system in a matter of weeks, the only permanent change is that your body now has the means to fight the Covid-19 virus.

Taking two sips of the tap water in Flint, Michigan is probably equally harmless but with no long term positive side effects.

etienne

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10429 on: December 28, 2020, 06:29:26 PM »
I am more in a slow hurry to get it. If more people had it before, the better the side effects are known and it could be known for how long it will be effective, if it is still efficient with the new mutations. End of the spring might be fine. Since I'm in no way a front line worker, this might even work out.

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10430 on: December 28, 2020, 07:08:22 PM »
For those interested, here is something for the record. In the spring, there was a study about CV mortality in Gangelt, Germany, which gained some attention also here in this forum. Now I discovered that there had been an update on this (seemingly) old story at the end of November. Lesson: never make a judgment too early...

The Gangelt deaths that were not counted

https://medwatch.de/2020/11/26/die-ungezaehlten-todesfaelle-aus-gangelt/

In the crucial phase of the contact restrictions in spring, a team led by the Bonn virologist Hendrik Streeck presented preliminary results from a study that it had carried out in the Gangelt community. In the place - which is in the Heinsberg district - the first major outbreak in Germany occurred in mid-February after a carnival event.

The NRW state government supported the Streeck study (...) and Streeck delivered. He calculated an infectious mortality (IFR) of 0.36 percent - after which one in around 280 infected people dies. The study was accompanied by a PR campaign that was not only organized by the "Storymachine" agency by ex "Bild" editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann, but also financed together with two companies.

(...) The calculated IFR clearly underestimates the mortality in Gangelt according to research by MedWatch. Because Streeck and his team had calculated this on the basis of the seven deaths that had been reported by the end of the study - i.e. up to April 6th. In their publications, they mentioned another person who died on April 9, the day of the press conference. At the same time, however, they had also included people in the study who had only tested positive these days. But on average, people who die of Covid-19 live around two weeks after infection - and some significantly longer. Other mortality studies take this into account.

When the researchers submitted their article to the journal Nature Communications on June 4, ten of the patients who tested positive by the end of March had already died, according to a request from MedWatch to the Heinsberg district. Another six people from Gangelt died by early October, all but one of whom had been infected in March. Several of them died more than three months after the positive test. Of these, only three deaths are "with a high degree of probability not due to the previous corona infection," explains a district spokeswoman. “In two other cases, the acute infection was more than three months ago, but the infection or its consequences are to be regarded as the cause of death. The other eleven deaths were closely related to the infection. The spokeswoman did not want to answer questions about the course of the disease of the patients who died months later, referring to the medical confidentiality and some missing data.

(...) Streeck as well as the biometrician responsible for statistics Matthias Schmid did not answer various inquiries from MedWatch. "The further course of the infection process in Heinsberg is the subject of current research and future publications," explained a spokesman for the University of Bonn after consulting the research team. Streeck later told the "Welt" that the information from the Heinsberg district was "scientifically not validated" and "useless for a scientific investigation". In doing so, he himself referred to the information provided by the local authorities in his article. However, he himself had used the information provided by the local authorities in his article.

The Australian epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz from the University of Wollongong cannot understand the approach taken by Streeck and his team. Academic publications do indeed take time, but there are “numerous possibilities” to update figures in the publication process, says Meyerowitz-Katz when asked. He himself published a systematic, not yet peer-reviewed review on mortality from Covid-19 and also criticized the low death rate among the Bonn researchers. "They had several rounds of revisions and months of preparation before it was released - so I don't see how they can justify not updating the information."

EDIT: Corrected misleading automatic translation
« Last Edit: December 29, 2020, 06:56:32 AM by zufall »

harpy

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10431 on: December 28, 2020, 07:51:22 PM »
Perhaps I will take the vaccine after several years of observing the reported side effects.  In the mean time, the experiment continues.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2020, 08:31:13 PM by harpy »

wili

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10432 on: December 28, 2020, 09:03:19 PM »
Since I do have some pretty severe allergies, I would have to see if one of the more recent or still-to-be-released vaccines avoid negative side affects associated with that population, or at least consult my doctor before taking it.

It is also not reassuring that there is so little transparency about the details of the deals that were cut with big pharma over this, and that it appears that they are off the hook for any law suits that arise from bad effects or deaths from their vaccines (but do correct me if I am mis-remembering this).

On the other point--it is rather obvious that no one died from or even suffered hunger because of covid. There is plenty of food (and plenty of money to buy food) around and available. People are suffering hunger because of obscene mal-distributions of wealth and food.

I'm sure that those here professing such concern for the poor will join me in calling for an immediate re-dstribution of wealth away from the 1% and to the 90% (and especially to the lowest 50%). :)
"A force de chercher de bonnes raisons, on en trouve; on les dit; et après on y tient, non pas tant parce qu'elles sont bonnes que pour ne pas se démentir." Choderlos de Laclos "You struggle to come up with some valid reasons, then cling to them, not because they're good, but just to not back down."

Grubbegrabben

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10433 on: December 28, 2020, 10:57:51 PM »
Since I do have some pretty severe allergies, I would have to see if one of the more recent or still-to-be-released vaccines avoid negative side affects associated with that population, or at least consult my doctor before taking it.

Yes, if you have servere allergies you must consult a doctor. The most common substances that cause perioperative anaphylaxis are muscle relaxants, latex and antibiotics, together they account for about 90 percent of the reactions.

Archimid

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10434 on: December 28, 2020, 11:33:54 PM »
I share similar concerns about government honesty, but the risk-reward of the vaccine seems like a slam dunk for almost anyone except perhaps allergy sufferers. The older and more obese the better the risk math. Short term, Covid is no joke. Long term effects of covid are much more unknown than known effects of vaccination.

I do not trust the Trump administration, but vaccine science is old and the people working to get it to have extreme incentives to get it right.

Frankly, I can't wait to get mine. Given my age group, weight and past smoking habits the risk-reward seems very good for my case.

I don't think governments should force anyone ( except health care workers) to get it. If 50% of the people get it and that 50% is heavily skewed towards older people, the problem of overloaded hospitals is solved. The problem is also solved for anyone that gets vaccinated.

Thus the ones that remain with the problem are anti-vaxxers. Fine by me.
Is not like there are 7 billion doses laying around. Give it to those who want it first. That might be enough.
I am an energy reservoir seemingly intent on lowering entropy for self preservation.

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10435 on: December 29, 2020, 12:33:04 AM »
... take the vaccine or take your chances ...

-----------------------------------------

65-year-old Greg Norman is back in hospital in Florida with “hideous” Covid-19 symptoms after the Australian golfing great tested positive.

Norman said that despite being fit and strong and having a high tolerance for pain, the “hideous” virus had “kicked the crap out of me like nothing I have ever experienced before”.

“Muscle and joint pain on another level. Headaches that feel like a chisel going through your head scraping little bits off each time, fever, muscles that just did not want to work like yesterday walking my dog Apollo my quads and hip flexors just did not want to work due to fatigue.

“Then my taste failed, where beer tastes bad and wine the same ... at times struggling with memory of names and things.”


--------------------------------------

Small Number of Covid Patients Develop Severe Psychotic Symptoms
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/health/covid-psychosis-mental.html

Almost immediately, Dr. Hisam Goueli could tell that the patient who came to his psychiatric hospital on Long Island this summer was unusual.

The patient, a 42-year-old physical therapist and mother of four young children, had never had psychiatric symptoms or any family history of mental illness. Yet there she was, sitting at a table in a beige-walled room at South Oaks Hospital in Amityville, N.Y., sobbing and saying that she kept seeing her children, ages 2 to 10, being gruesomely murdered and that she herself had crafted plans to kill them.

“It was like she was experiencing a movie, like ‘Kill Bill,’” Dr. Goueli, a psychiatrist, said.

The patient described one of her children being run over by a truck and another decapitated. “It’s a horrifying thing that here’s this well-accomplished woman and she’s like ‘I love my kids, and I don’t know why I feel this way that I want to decapitate them,’” he said.

The only notable thing about her medical history was that the woman, who declined to be interviewed but allowed Dr. Goueli to describe her case, had become infected with the coronavirus in the spring. She had experienced only mild physical symptoms from the coronavirus, but, months later, she heard a voice that first told her to kill herself and then told her to kill her children.

... Dr. Goueli was unsure whether the coronavirus was connected to the woman’s psychological symptoms. “Maybe this is Covid-related, maybe it’s not,” he recalled thinking.

“But then,” he said, “we saw a second case, a third case and a fourth case, and we’re like, ‘There’s something happening.’”


Indeed, doctors are reporting similar cases across the country and around the world. A small number of Covid patients who had never experienced mental health problems are developing severe psychotic symptoms weeks after contracting the coronavirus.

In interviews and scientific articles, doctors described: ...

A 36-year-old nursing home employee in North Carolina who became so paranoid that she believed her three children would be kidnapped and, to save them, tried to pass them through a fast-food restaurant’s drive-through window.

A 30-year-old construction worker in New York City who became so delusional that he imagined his cousin was going to murder him, and, to protect himself, he tried to strangle his cousin in bed.

A 55-year-old woman in Britain had hallucinations of monkeys and a lion and became convinced a family member had been replaced by an impostor.

Two patients with post-Covid psychosis: a 49-year-old man who heard voices and believed he was the devil and a 34-year-old woman who began carrying a knife, disrobing in front of strangers and putting hand sanitizer in her food.

Beyond individual reports, a British study of neurological or psychiatric complications in 153 patients hospitalized with Covid-19 found that 10 people had “new-onset psychosis.” Another study identified 10 such patients in one hospital in Spain. And in Covid-related social media groups, medical professionals discuss seeing patients with similar symptoms in the Midwest, Great Plains and elsewhere.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7316461/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165178120315092

How long the psychosis lasted and patients’ response to treatment has varied. The woman in Britain — whose symptoms included paranoia about the color red and terror that nurses were devils who would harm her and a family member — took about 40 days to recover, according to a case report.

The 49-year-old man treated at Montefiore was discharged after several weeks’ hospitalization, but “he was still struggling two months out” and required readmission, Dr. Gabbay said.

The physical therapist who planned to murder her children had more difficulty. “Every day, she was getting worse,” Dr. Goueli said. “We tried probably eight different medicines,” including antidepressants, antipsychotics and lithium. “She was so ill that we were considering electroconvulsive therapy for her because nothing was working.” ...

----------------------------------------
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Richard Rathbone

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10436 on: December 29, 2020, 01:36:42 AM »
Latest Public Health England briefing.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/948121/Technical_Briefing_VOC202012-2_Briefing_2_FINAL.pdf

Evidence for the increased transmissibility of B.1.1.7 just keeps piling up.

Quote
228,361 (9.9% attack rate) of all contacts notified by cases in this period became cases:
• 15.1% among those whose index case was confirmed to have the VOC
202012/01
• 9.8% among those whose index case was sequenced and confirmed with other
variants

No significant difference found in mortality using a matched cohort study.

Quote
The 28-day case fatality was assessed for variant cases and comparator cases.
Analysis was restricted to 2,700 cases with a full 28 days elapsed since the specimen
date. Among variant cases, 12 of 1,340 (0.89%) variant cases died within 28 days of
their specimen date compared with 10 of 1,360 (0.73%) wild-type comparator cases;
this difference was not signfiicant (Odds ratio:1.21, p=0.65).

...

Logit plots of how the proportion in the case load changed over time in UK regions. Its really hard to see how this doesn't result from anything other than increased transmissibility. Heading for over 90% of cases across the UK by Feb 1st.

https://twitter.com/TWenseleers/status/1343575693544796160/photo/1


harpy

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10437 on: December 29, 2020, 01:45:20 AM »
More like:   "Take the vaccine AND take your chances".




oren

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10438 on: December 29, 2020, 02:11:18 AM »
I want to get vaccinated as soon as possible. The risk reward situation is quite obvious.
Luckily, although Israel has managed the Covid crisis very poorly (now in its third full lockdown), on the vaccine front it is leading the world, following the arrival of the vaccine about a week ago. A prior agreement with Moderna and an over-payment to Pfizer mean that the vaccine supply is adequate. Thanks to a semi-centralized health system, and a high uptake by the population at risk (which has priority at this stage along with health system employees) Israel now has gone up to 100k vaccinations per day, or about 1% of the population, with plans to increase the rate to 150k/day soon. Immunity takes about a month to achieve after the first shot, but at this rate within a few months a large fraction of the population will be immune to the virus, unless uptake fails to follow through (which certainly could happen).
(Complete population vaccination = 200% total).
« Last Edit: December 29, 2020, 09:25:43 AM by oren »

Rodius

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10439 on: December 29, 2020, 03:22:52 AM »

I don't trust Govts much and the reasons I don't trust them are in full view now for anyone who wishes to look. They simply don't give a shit about the general population.
Still, surely the companies want to retain the image of safe provider of vaccines and drugs in order to maintain their profits.... in that regard, I think the vaccine is probably a far better option than not having it.... so... I will probably get it asap.

For my sins I spent my whole 35 year career working in the “ethical” pharmaceutical industry, initially in a small company with some interesting technology and latterly with increasingly “big” pharma. During that time I worked in basic research as a pharmacologist before progressing to a development role and latterly into business development.

I got to know and to work with many scientists and business colleagues across the industry and I can honestly say that I never encountered anyone who didn’t reflect the “ethical” element of the industry’s title.

Yes, the profit motive was always a key driver and I suspect this is more the case than it was in my day but, in my experience that pressure was never allowed to undermine the integrity of the science.

From my perspective the collaboration that has developed in the past year to fight Covid is amazing, bringing together the contributions of academic researchers, the medical profession, biotech minnows and the global power of big pharma, putting us at the point where it really seems possible to tame this viral threat.

Each of these elements has been necessary but without the scale and expertise of the industry, in clinical trials, regulatory affairs, scale up and manufacture, the prospect of being able to vaccinate the billions of folk needed to achieve herd immunity in a period of months to a couple of years would have been a pipe dream.

Clearly the winners will profit but that’s equally or possibly more true of the successful biotech innovators and their academic colleagues. In my view there’s no case to question the commitment of all those involved to deliver safe and effective treatments.

There will be mistakes made and all treatments have side effects but it would be a tragic waste of an incredible global scientific endeavour if such fears were to undermine the positive outcome that is achievable.

Thank you for sharing this.
This is the reason I am probably getting the vaccine..... Govts are asses, but scientists tend to want to get it right. Hearing this from you is reassuring.

be cause

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10440 on: December 29, 2020, 11:27:37 AM »
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/28/russia-admits-to-world-third-worst-covid-19-death-toll-underreported
  seems to have gone unreported here .. remember .. trust your government ! b.c.
Conflict is the root of all evil , for being blind it does not see whom it attacks . Yet it always attacks the Son Of God , and the Son of God is you .

pietkuip

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10441 on: December 29, 2020, 11:43:31 AM »
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/28/russia-admits-to-world-third-worst-covid-19-death-toll-underreported
  seems to have gone unreported here .. remember .. trust your government ! b.c.

The mortality statistics is generally reliable. But China has still not published theirs. Iran is also missing.

Financial Times published an update: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest  (free).

Général de GuerreLasse

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10442 on: December 29, 2020, 12:21:20 PM »
Could someone smarter than me explain it to me? If this person is right, then the people who will be vaccinated will be able to transmit the virus to those who have been vaccinated as well as those who have not been vaccinated? Is this true for all types of vaccines or only for RNA vaccines? Then vaccination will never reach the threshold to eradicate the disease???? Thank you for helping.

https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1343620091695538179
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Un petit croquis en dit plus qu'un grand discours, mais beaucoup moins qu'un gros chèque.
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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10443 on: December 29, 2020, 01:59:17 PM »
FWIW, the vaccine may not totally prevent the transmission of the virus but it does appear to dramatically reduce COVID-19 disease.  This is just a guess, but I would think that means that having the vaccine reduces the ability of the virus to replicate and hence reduces viral load.  You would have to guess that would reduce the transmissibility of a vaccinated but infected person. All of this should reduce R0 which could conceivably drive the R0 below the level that makes it self-sustaining.

This will not eradicate the virus as quickly as if it stopped all transmission, but a situation where vaccinated individuals do not, or very rarely, get any symptoms, and are less likely to transmit asymptomatically, is a clear improvement.

Général de GuerreLasse

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10444 on: December 29, 2020, 02:13:02 PM »
FWIW, the vaccine may not totally prevent the transmission of the virus but it does appear to dramatically reduce COVID-19 disease.  This is just a guess, but I would think that means that having the vaccine reduces the ability of the virus to replicate and hence reduces viral load.  You would have to guess that would reduce the transmissibility of a vaccinated but infected person. All of this should reduce R0 which could conceivably drive the R0 below the level that makes it self-sustaining.

This will not eradicate the virus as quickly as if it stopped all transmission, but a situation where vaccinated individuals do not, or very rarely, get any symptoms, and are less likely to transmit asymptomatically, is a clear improvement.


Thank you dnem, we don't live in a perfect world  ;). But what does it mean FWIW?
La cravate est un accessoire permettant d'indiquer la direction du cerveau de l'homme.
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vox_mundi

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10445 on: December 29, 2020, 02:22:11 PM »
Nearly Half Million May Have Had Covid-19 In Wuhan, Study Shows.10X Official Figure
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/12/29/asia/china-coronavirus-seroprevalence-study-intl-hnk/index.html

Nearly half a million residents in the Chinese city where the novel coronavirus first emerged may have been infected with Covid-19 -- almost 10 times its official number of confirmed cases, according to a study by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The study used a sample of 34,000 people in the general population in Wuhan -- the original epicenter of the pandemic -- and other cities in Hubei province, as well as Beijing, Shanghai, and the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangsu, Sichuan and Liaoning to estimate Covid-19 infection rates.

The researchers found an antibody prevalence rate of 4.43% for Covid-19 among residents in Wuhan, a metropolis of 11 million people. As of Sunday, Wuhan had reported a total of 50,354 confirmed cases of Covid-19, according to the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission.

Outside the province, antibodies were only detected in two people among the more than 12,000 residents surveyed.

http://wjw.wuhan.gov.cn/gsgg/202012/t20201229_1572409.shtml

The results of the study were revealed in a Chinese CDC post on social media Monday. It did not mention whether the study has been published in academic journals.

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/LXTfDmsQLf3qZnu_S_MxcA

Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the study points to a problem of underreporting in infections during the height of the outbreak in Wuhan, partly due to the chaos at the time and a failure to include asymptomatic cases in the official count of confirmed cases.

In January and February, patients with fevers flooded Wuhan's hospitals, which lacked the manpower, testing kits and medical resources to diagnose and treat them. Instead, many were told to go home and self-isolate -- some ended up infecting other family members, while others died at home without being recorded in the Covid-19 death tolls.

... Leaked documents from the Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention presented earlier to CNN by a whistleblower showed prior to that day, authorities had reported "clinically diagnosed cases" internally, but did not reveal them to the public. Hubei authorities also publicly reported a lower count of confirmed cases and deaths on February 10 and March 7 than they recorded internally, the documents showed.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/30/asia/wuhan-china-covid-intl/index.html

... The study highlights a huge contrast between the coronavirus antibody prevalence rates inside and outside of Wuhan.

Huang said the significantly lower rates in other Chinese cities suggest "Chinese containment efforts were indeed speedy and effective, especially compared to cities like New York."
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

harpy

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10446 on: December 29, 2020, 02:33:21 PM »
Actually, "RNA Vaccines", especially for use as an experiment on the general public, is unprecedented.

If you take a moment to read a review on the subject, it's a technology which "showed promise" in 2018.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243

For now, I'll stick to my Flint tap water.  At least we know how that will affect the human body.

sailor

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10447 on: December 29, 2020, 02:52:33 PM »

The researchers found an antibody prevalence rate of 4.43% for Covid-19 among residents in Wuhan, a metropolis of 11 million people. As of Sunday, Wuhan had reported a total of 50,354 confirmed cases of Covid-19, according to the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission.

That is very well aligned with
- the level of undertesting during the first wave that we suffered in Europe as well.
- the IFR of 0.5 to 1.0% that was determined in numerous studies for mid Latitude countries during the first wave.

Therefore, if the study is to be trusted, it just confirms that the Chinese numbers given for the first and lonely wave in Wuhan are at least as “trustable” as the European ones (factor of 10 underreporting of cases, factor of 1 to 1.5 underreporting of deaths depending on the country).

vox_mundi

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10448 on: December 29, 2020, 03:07:48 PM »
England Could See Tougher 'Tier 5' Covid Restrictions
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/29/tier-5-england-faces-possible-new-covid-restrictions-source-says

National restrictions are needed to prevent a “catastrophe” in the UK at the start of 2021, a member of the government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag) has warned. Andrew Hayward, a professor of infectious diseases epidemiology at University College London, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

... I think we are entering a very dangerous new phase of the pandemic and we’re going to need decisive, early, national action to prevent a catastrophe in January and February.

A 50% increase in transmissibility means that the previous levels of restrictions that worked before won’t work now, and so Tier 4 restrictions are likely to be necessary or even higher than that.

I think we’re really looking at a situation where we’re moving into near lockdown, but we’ve got to learn the lessons from the first lockdown.


A study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has also concluded that the UK must vaccinate 2 million people a week to avoid a third wave.


-------------------------------------------

The number of deaths in the Netherlands increased at the highest rate since the second world war this year due to the pandemic, the Dutch national statistics office (CBS) has said.

Up to last week, about 162,000 deaths were reported in the country of 17 million this year; 13,000 more than would have been expected, the CBS said.

... Such an increase of the number of deceased has not been reported since World War Two

About 9,000 people more than normal died during the first wave between early March and early May, the CBS said, while more than 6,000 extra fatalities have been reported since the start of the second wave mid-September.

The number of deaths was lower than normal in most other weeks, the statisticians said.

A total of 770,400 people in the Netherlands have tested positive since the start of the pandemic. More than 11,000 patients are known to have died from the disease.

The actual number of infections and fatalities is likely to be significantly higher, as a shortage of testing and lab capacity meant only seriously ill patients were tested during the first months of the pandemic

--------------------------------------
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Shared Humanity

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10449 on: December 29, 2020, 03:15:31 PM »
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/28/russia-admits-to-world-third-worst-covid-19-death-toll-underreported
  seems to have gone unreported here .. remember .. trust your government ! b.c.

This does not surprise me. I tend to ignore or disbelieve the case and death totals from many countries (India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, China etc.), anywhere that the health care system cannot possibly address the crisis so deaths simply go unrecognized and in nations where governments deliberately lie.

There are nations that I consider to be gold standards where nations like the U.S. should be compared. South Korea being a notable example, Japan another. By their standard, we have failed completely in handling this pandemic.