OT - In these weird times

[Meth]

One question I have is re the bus scenario. Obviously, that’s meant is some kind of hyperbole. But is there any evidence to the claims of cancer/heart disease etc being classified as Covid-19? I’ve seen numerous suggestions of this.

 

[SpaceMonkey]

One question I have is re the bus scenario. Obviously, that’s meant is some kind of hyperbole. But is there any evidence to the claims of cancer/heart disease etc being classified as Covid-19? I’ve seen numerous suggestions of this.

The way it goes I believe is if you're being treated for COVID-19 and you die, it's counted as a COVID-19 statistic, even if another existing condition contributed or was the immediate cause of death. The government reports basically state as much (the deceased, aged 90 had several other health conditions..." etc). But this is pretty normal practice.
If you got run over by a bus? Probably not, but it would hardly maker a huge difference to the stats anyway.

 

[Blair]

One question I have is re the bus scenario. Obviously, that’s meant is some kind of hyperbole. But is there any evidence to the claims of cancer/heart disease etc being classified as Covid-19? I’ve seen numerous suggestions of this.

If your body was free of Covid-19, and you got run over by the Warriors team bus, in Tamworth, would that unfortunate scenario be counted as a 'Covid-19-related' death?!

 

[sup42]

Interesting question @Meth about the bus and death counts.
I agree with @SpaceMonkey that even if you included the imaginary figure that is hit by a bus, that it won't artificially inflate the death rate in any significant way.

It's always interesting to look at what the pandemic is teaching us as it evolves, and a lot of the lessons are very humbling.

If you look at the last truly 'Big One' the 1918 Flu pandemic, the death estimates range widely from 50-100 million.

The assumption has always been in modern times, that with our great knowledge of epidemiological modelling, and our better record keeping, that we would avoid such wide ranging estimates were another big one to come along.

It turns out that this is not as straight forward as was originally assumed. Most countries are only counting hospital deaths.

So even if there was a conspiracy to pressure Doctors into counting the guy who walks in front of the bus, if he to got run over in most places he wouldn't be counted as a Covid death unless he arrives at the hospital still breathing.

New yorks count is estimated to be forty thousand deaths under reported, so that is a lot of buses and a lot of wayward pedestrians to give you an over inflated estimate.

The UK is the same, estimates until recent widening of the count were at about twenty four percent under reported (they are now including resthome deaths and community deaths).

Then there is China. That country alone with it's reporting deceit, is a big enough buffer to round out any over reporting in other countries.

We are very fortunate our country has the will and the means to tell us the truth about our stats. And the world is VERY fortunate to be able to look to us and Australia in the final analysis for clean data.

Just on under reporting, (apart from China and places like North Korea) it's not happening because of willful deceit.

The vast majority of the under reporting has come about because we are discovering that even if you have the modelling, when countries get hit hard, they don't have the resources to do more accurate counts...so we are not so far removed from the problems seen in 1918 after all.
Problems with counts in a pandemic are symptomatic, if you are struggling to capture the death rate, then you can truly say 'this is a big one'.


There is an attempt being made now by many countries to retrospectively make more accurate estimates, and one of the ways they are doing this by taking a five year average of death rates, and comparing it to this years national death rate.

Those Graphs of five year average deaths vs the year Covid got going, are an eye opener.

 

[TheDMC]

Hi @sup42 thanks for such a generous response. I know that I (and others) appreciate your educated perspective, especially in times when there is such a volume of contradictory and speculative information out there.

Yes, was a very well articulated and thought out response from Sup.
Less so this one, but I'll share regardless. I think there is a bigger issue at hand than how bad arse COVID is and whether our responses have been proportionate. Personally, I'm shocked by how vulnerable the world's economy is. It just took a few 6 weeks of inactivity to collapse and will take a year or more to recover. The globalized world economy is essentially a giant house of cards that collapsed due to one sneeze from a virulent pangolin. And this has pretty much f**ked the human world for awhile. Can't wait till climate change starts ramping up...

 

[Blair]

Yes, was a very well articulated and thought out response from Sup.
Less so this one, but I'll share regardless. I think there is a bigger issue at hand than how bad arse COVID is and whether our responses have been proportionate. Personally, I'm shocked by how vulnerable the world's economy is. It just took a few 6 weeks of inactivity to collapse and will take a year or more to recover. The globalized world economy is essentially a giant house of cards that collapsed due to one sneeze from a virulent pangolin. And this has pretty much f**ked the human world for awhile. Can't wait till climate change starts ramping up...

The rest of the world being less reliant on China has to be something tangible to come out of this. Australia and NZ were way too eager here, often at the front of the queue.

I can't help but think of a scene from the film What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?

Apeman (the gang leader) to Sonny, Mookie and Tania (with a bag of cash and looking for an easy deal)...

"You young punks, you thought it'd be sweet!"

 

[SpaceMonkey]

Agree with sup that it’ll be the changes in background death rate that will be the most telling. In Aus/NZ there won’t (hopefully) be a perceptible change, which will go to show we’ve managed successfully. In other countries and regions there will be a visible and significant spike.

 

[Blair]

Another strong argument for going into lockdown was the fact there is no vaccine for this thing.

No one wants to catch it either. So much weight is put on death rates as opposed to simply 'testing positive'. There's this 'oh, you'll be OK, you won't die of it' mentality. I got it just today in the street (that attitude, not the 'thing', hopefully).

OK, given, I probably won't die, but I don't want any week-long sickness either. Nor do I want to give it to someone else, especially someone more vulnerable than me.

 

[sup42]

Another strong argument for going into lockdown was the fact there is no vaccine for this thing.

No one wants to catch it either. So much weight is put on death rates as opposed to simply 'testing positive'. There's this 'oh, you'll be OK, you won't die of it' mentality. I got it just today in the street (that attitude, not the 'thing', hopefully).

OK, given, I probably won't die, but I don't want any week-long sickness either. Nor do I want to give it to someone else, especially someone more vulnerable than me.

Good point about the Vaccine side of things.
An effective Vaccine in significant quantity is the fix.
Some things to mention about Vaccines:
Usually Vaccines take years to develop, 93 % of trials fail before they get to phase three (phase three is efficacy, how good it is, and safety) this is when you give it to thousands of people.

Then there is the year to wait and see how long the Vaccine lasts.

If a new Vaccine appeared magically tomorrow, the time it takes to get coverage of the population to achieve herd immunity is too long to stop the like of this first outbreak of a new virus...i.e. it will run a full cycle before you could Vaccinate enough of the population.

America withdrawing funding from the WHO sets up two problems in terms of Vaccine development. One is the WHO are the body who coordinates the global response to getting Vaccines on the ground...they also get scientists talking to each other and sharing data, they bring together groups that fund Vaccines for those that cant afford it. They get groups to have dialogue about who should get the Vaccine first and how to do this fairly.
Countries that develop Vaccines obviously get it first, because they developed it. But who gets it next? do we want a China or an America to control that narrative without the voice of a world body like the WHO involved?

The longer term issue is that we will need decent coverage over most of the planet, especially the third world, to decrease the ongoing threat to us. Otherwise you are going to probably have outbreaks which will perhaps be less costly, but costly none the less.

We source a lot of rare elements from third world countries to supply our lifestyles. That supply chain would be at risk without a global distribution of a Vaccine, again the WHO has people on the ground in these countries.

Also there is a not too insignificant moral issue around leaving the third world to suffer while we profit from their resources.

 

[SpaceMonkey]

On a lighter note how hilarious was Adern and Bloomfield treatment of the journalists fishing for comment about Trump’s disinfectant injecting comments yesterday? Particularly the PMs “is it?” slapdown to that dumb mole Tova O’Brien:

 

[Penrose Warrior]

Tova O'Brien needs to go and work for The Sun and hide out in people's wheelie bins.

God I hate click bait journalism. The reason I left the industry.

 

[SpaceMonkey]

Tova O'Brien needs to go and work for The Sun and hide out in people's wheelie bins.

God I hate click bait journalism. The reason I left the industry.

thats why it was SO good seeing the PM addressing her by name then putting her in her place like that. The world would be a better place if everyone took the same approach with those vermin. The look on Booomfield’s face in reaction to the previous question was priceless too.

 

[Fufu Andronez]

The "Is it?" was perfect

 

[sup42]

Trump just enacted the War powers act to force Meat Workers to continue to work in meat plants.

The US is faced with serious supply chain threats.

The first case of a dog with Corona Virus is in the US, a pet Pug. Three in that household had the virus.

So the US in four months have gone from one case, to having issues no other first world nation has faced.

 

[SpaceMonkey]

Trump just enacted the War powers act to force Meat Workers to continue to work in meat plants.

The US is faced with serious supply chain threats.

The first case of a dog with Corona Virus is in the US, a pet Pug. Three in that household had the virus.

So the US in four months have gone from one case, to having issues no other first world nation has faced.

Meanwhile in Sydney the only things noticeably still out of stock on sunday were hand sanitiser and flour. Our supply chain is about back to normal, I imagine NZ is much the same.

 

[Beavers Headgear]

Hope old mate Lion is ok in his bunker with 5 months of food and a water tanker keeping him company

 

[Rich102]

At least he won't run out of toilet paper any time soon.

 

[Juju]

Hope old mate Lion is ok in his bunker with 5 months of food and a water tanker keeping him company

I guess with stockpiling 6 months of water he was referring to the impending water crisis in Auckland.
Seems as though he may have a role where he did receive some inside info on the issues that will affect the populace. Pretty poor form to post it to a RL forum is a hysterical manner.

 

[Penrose Warrior]

I guess with stockpiling 6 months of water he was referring to the impending water crisis in Auckland.
Seems as though he may have a role where he did receive some inside info on the issues that will affect the populace. Pretty poor form to post it to a RL forum is a hysterical manner.

I mean the amazing thing was, he was absolutely right. He was saying what I was hearing from no one else anywhere. Look back at his posts - he predicted all the sporting competitions would stop, the Olympics would be canned, etc. I remember thinking he'd truly lost his f**king marbles. There was zero chance that was going to happen. But it did. I've never seen a prediction so wild in its nature that came true. And so clearly based on clear fact and knowledge.

And somehow, with that incredible insight that he had, he still f**ked it up and made himself look stupid. I'd be very interested to hear where he got that sort of knowledge. But I guess we'll never know.

 

[SpaceMonkey]

I mean the amazing thing was, he was absolutely right. He was saying what I was hearing from no one else anywhere. Look back at his posts - he predicted all the sporting competitions would stop, the Olympics would be canned, etc. I remember thinking he'd truly lost his f**king marbles. There was zero chance that was going to happen. But it did. I've never seen a prediction so wild in its nature that came true. And so clearly based on clear fact and knowledge.

And somehow, with that incredible insight that he had, he still f**ked it up and made himself look stupid. I'd be very interested to hear where he got that sort of knowledge. But I guess we'll never know.

nah he’s not Nostradamus. He just predicted the worst possible scenario so that when the eventuality ends up somewhere in the middle he gets to claim credit for the bits that are true. Society hasn’t collapsed or come anywhere near it, death tprates in NZ have been low. It’s an example of how if you throw enough shit at the wall a fair bit will inevitably stick.

the water crisis is being caused by a drought, not COVID-19, not giving him any credit on that one. And in any case it’s nowhere near the point of needing hoard drinkin water. We were in a significantly worse situation in Sydney until our drought broke early in the year, it just means dry gardens and dirty cars.