Coronavirus thread

[Karl Henning]

Must be that fine mental edge.

[Herman]

Unless you combine Europe and treat it as a whole, in which case they lead with 205,000+ deaths.  But you don't do that for a reason.

Not sure what you mean when you say "Europe"  -  a geographical unit, or a political entity  -  but when one is talking absolute nrs, like people dead from corona, it would help if you mentioned the EU is currently 445 million pop, so, at least a 110 million larger, or 130 percent compared to the USA's 100%. "But you don't mention that for a reason"?

Also there is the matter of how the corona deaths books are cooked...

[Todd]

Three days for that?

[Herman]

Sorry, I'm not obsessively monitoring and critiqueing posts as soon as they are posted.

[Todd]

Sorry, I'm not obsessively monitoring and critiqueing posts as soon as they are posted.

You are today, though, I see.

[Todd]

Fauci tells Americans to be mindful of these important limitations about any future coronavirus vaccine

[71 dB]

Two more coronavirus deaths in Finland: Now the count is 333.

[geralmar]

[arpeggio]

^^^^^^^^^^^^
I love it 

[MusicTurner]

Some info on the announced, new Russian vaccine, called Sputnik V, apparently to be used for mass distribution within a couple of months.
The news should be taken with a grain of salt, or more, though.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/08/11/putin-announces-worlds-first-coronavirus-vaccine-a71112
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/russia-registers-virus-vaccine-putins-daughter-72300985?cid=social_twitter_abcn

[Herman]

"Putin ordered state officials to shorten the time of clinical trials for potential coronavirus vaccines", mentions the second link.

That means that any number of deaths may occur as a consequence of an insuffiently tested vaccine.

[Que]

Things are going sideways....

Coronavirus in Europe: Infections surge in France, Germany and Spain

Q

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Some info on the announced, new Russian vaccine, called Sputnik V, apparently to be used for mass distribution within a couple of months.
The news should be taken with a grain of salt, or more, though.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/08/11/putin-announces-worlds-first-coronavirus-vaccine-a71112
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/russia-registers-virus-vaccine-putins-daughter-72300985?cid=social_twitter_abcn

I'm scared for the people of Russia!

Things are going sideways....

Coronavirus in Europe: Infections surge in France, Germany and Spain

Oh, God....don't know what to say, but you have my sympathies ....and support.

PD

P.S. I'm trying to fix this quoting, but alas, I am failing....pardon! fxd

[Jo498]

Things are going sideways....

Coronavirus in Europe: Infections surge in France, Germany and Spain

There is the persistent problem that all these number never distinguish between positive test results and "people being actually sick", thus including all false positive tests and all symptonless patients as "infection cases" and the only other number we get are deaths (which are very low in Germany). (For other numbers one has to search but serious cases are also very low and have been all the time.)
I actually would have expected numbers to rise considerably already in June when many of the restrictions were lifted to some degree and was surprised that nobody commented on the very low infection numbers (500 or so per day) for many weeks in June and July. As things had been presented in March/April I would certainly have expected much higher numbers with loosened restrictions. So I am not surprised now but 1000-1500 per day is still not very much for a large country (and again much information is lost by summing/averaging because regionally it is very low in many places). What also annoys me is that the generally accepted way is now  (as in March) more restriction on everybody, including high fines for not wearing masks etc. instead of curbing unnecessary travel and focussing on hot spots.

[Mandryka]

There is the persistent problem that all these number never distinguish between positive test results and "people being actually sick", thus including all false positive tests and all symptonless patients as "infection cases" and the only other number we get are deaths (which are very low in Germany). (For other numbers one has to search but serious cases are also very low and have been all the time.)
I actually would have expected numbers to rise considerably already in June when many of the restrictions were lifted to some degree and was surprised that nobody commented on the very low infection numbers (500

I've not seen any information on the expectation of false positives from the swab test. Do you have anything?

[Jo498]

Sorry, I cannot be more specific. I am a layman as well and many of the websites writing about the test specificity are cranky and mention up to 30% of false positives. There are different tests and they have different rates of false positive results. The rate of false positive for one? common test is around 1% which happens to be about the same as the positive return rate in Germany, i.e. there are so many people being tested, most of which are not infected that the number of tests will clearly have an influence. (1% false positives is not a big deal if 50% of those tested are infected but it seriously skews results if only 1% are.)

With some digging I found official numbers for patients in Intensive Care for Germany, as of Tuesday, 11t it was 234. Comparsion 1st of July 329, 1st of June 677, 1st of May 2.189. So there are similar rates of "new infections" (positive test results) per day as in May but there were 9 times as many patients in IC.

[Mandryka]

Thanks. It's complicated!

[MusicTurner]

(...)

With some digging I found official numbers for patients in Intensive Care for Germany, as of Tuesday, 11t it was 234. Comparsion 1st of July 329, 1st of June 677, 1st of May 2.189. So there are similar rates of "new infections" (positive test results) per day as in May but there were 9 times as many patients in IC.

We also have more people being tested positive, but a strong decrease in the number of people in IC, and without the numbers of tests going up that much. I have difficulties seeing the lower IC numbers being the result of better treatment. It could be that more younger people are getting the virus, cf summer socializing for instance, with less serious results. But I don't know; it is also known that immigrants now form an unusual large share of new cases ...

[prémont]

We also have more people being tested positive, but a strong decrease in the number of people in IC, and without the numbers of tests going up that much. I have difficulties seeing the lower IC numbers being the result of better treatment. It could be that more younger people are getting the virus, cf summer socializing for instance, with less serious results. But I don't know; it is also known that immigrants now form an unusual large share of new cases ...

I don't know. The treatment (medication) starts when the patients get in need of oxygene, and may in some cases result in reduced need of respirator and also shorten the duration of hospitalisation. (But so far I don't think we have any studies on the actual effect of treatment.) So treatment may contribute a bit to the low hospitalisation numbers. But as you wrote above it may partly be caused by the fact that the sick population at the moment is young people not in need of much treatment. The people in the vulnerable group take more care of themselves and don't contract the disease as much as before.

[BasilValentine]

Anecdotally, that is, from interviews with front line doctors in ICU wards in the U.S., treatment measures are considerably more effective now than at the onset of the plague. Notable is the use of two drugs, a corticosteroid, dexamethasone, and an antiviral, Remdesivir, effective at mitigating symptoms, shortening hospitalizations, and reducing the rate of fatality. It seems there have been other innovations that make a difference as well, including something as basic as patients being kept lying on their stomachs rather than on their backs and keeping non-hospitalized patients on supplemental oxygen.