Data that proves it's all scaremongering

[ElderAve]

informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/covid-19-coronavirus-infographic-datapack/

A friend has posted this as proof that it's all scaremongering. I've been fairly calm so far and happy that the current government advice makes sense. I think restrictions are coming but it's important to time them right and it's too early yet.

However, death rates in Italy and US much higher than else where makes me question the accuracy of the data from other parts of the world.?

Presumably your friend is happy that over 3% of people who catch it will die (according to a chart on the link - I have no idea how accurate that is).

Presumably, your friend doesn't have any of the conditions which makes it more likely that he/she will have a very hard time of it or even die, nor has he/she any loved ones who fall into that category.

Presumably, your friend is satisfied that if they are unlucky enough to be hit quite hard with it, they will bounce back without suffering any lasting medical conditions.

Presumably, your friend has a job which will pay him/her whilst the country goes into lock - down for a few weeks.

If all those things apply well then, yes, it's all scaremongering.

This isn't an episode of Walking Dead and everything will return to normal in due course, with most people having survived. But anyone who looks at the charts she posted and shrugs off the clear indications that many people will suffer quite severely isn't someone I would particularly admire.

Case fatality rate recorded will vary according to
a) the maturity of the outbreak - one week into an epidemic your fatality rate will inevitably be zero because nobody has had time to die, and then it will creep up
b) how much testing is done and hence how many milder and asymptomatic cases get picked up
c) vulnerability of the population
The lower fatality rates in Germany, France etc will be due to a combination of the three factors - probably mostly a.

That website is missing the most interesting and scary statistic: the died to cured ratio. Obviously it always looks terrifying because it misses the asymptotic and mild cases, but it’s an interesting cross-check across countries to see the local maturity of the epidemic. Ask your mate to calculate those figures from Wikipedia and then see how relaxed she’s

I’m pretty sure deaths in the US were because CV was doing the rounds in a nursing home. Italy has widely spoken about the elderly population being hit.

Can your friend take my MS off me? That would be great.
Being concerned isn't scaremongering.

Smoking is certainly a factor. That visualisation mentions high smoking rates in Hubei - which might also explain why men are more likely to die from it. The same could be said of Italy - older, male SMOKERS.

That said, we are in a very early stage of a worldwide spread and the hospitalisations and fatalities will rise faster than nearly any country‘S healthcare infrastructure can cope with so it is absolutely NOT media scaremongering. It is a very real problem for the millions of people who could be affected by it this season.

Next year we can get a vaccine alongside our flu vaccines or it will be automatically added to it.

From another thread
Have a look at this website. It explains very well WHY there are such differences between countries, both in number of cases and % of death.
Have a look here

Yeh it is all scaremongering but don’t come knocking on my door for food. I planned 2 months ago.

The point is to lower the rate of infections down so that the health systems can cope....

as long as the rates are low , health care systems can cope and mortality is low.

apologies for facebook post that can explain it better than i can: www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10157837686055380&set=a.75282210379&type=3&theater

Hospitals in Italy are at breaking point. There is too many people needing intensive care -more than the system can cope with and the number of patients is increasing everyday. Doctors and nurses are getting infected and this is again reducing their ability to treat people.

What happens to people who have strokes or heart attacks or break a leg if the hospital has no space for them?

I have to agree with some other comments.
You may be safe but what about the people you pass it onto.
The pressure on Medical and emergency units and hospitals will be immense, which means the other day to day things will fall by the wayside.
It will show how under invested we are in vital services, and the world as a whole.
Off course many of us will survive, but to think it wont take a terrible toll and hardship on most is not realistic.

The reports from Italian intensive care doctors are terrifying - they're having to prioritise the 'young' and healthy (and by young, they're saying 65 or with underlying health conditions are being turned away and not treated.

So yeah, you can read those figures in a positive way if you're

I don't know what the true infection rates are, but the published figures are too low. This is because there aren't enough test kits around so not many people are being tested.

Therefore, we don't really know what the death rate is for infected people.

We can make a stab at the death rate for people in various groups who get diagnosed and hospitalised.

Since we have insufficient capacity for all the people who get very ill, not all of them will be hospitalised, so this will also be unrealistic.

My take is that the UK government policy will be "stay at home until you get better or you die" and most people will get better.

Incidentally, I hear that the US is unique in developed Western nations because some states do not have compulsory Statutory Sick Pay or equivalent entitlement. This, it is said, will cause US workers without adequate resources to continue going to work if they are sick, which will increase the speed of infection spread.
www.ft.com/content/00017d02-5f39-11ea-b0ab-339c2307bcd4

This is in total contrast to the European approach, which is "stay at home and self-isolate"

Lack of what Americans call "Socialised Healthcare" also results in people without insurance self-medicating or avoiding treatment due to its cost.

I have seen Trump's speech and he is a wilfully ill-informed idiot.

Tax cuts do not cure disease.

The main thing is, whatever the death rate may be, it is tragically high, AND we can make it a lot lower if we take "social distancing measures" right now in order slow down the spread.

www.flattenthecurve.com/

Why these are not being imposed by the government = because that is politically difficult: it is inconvenient, it would cause people to lose experiences they were looking forward to, it would mean government needs to either add extra temporary benefits or let people go hungry and lose their homes, etc.

But, it can all be done. And it could save a lot of lives.

Keep calm, but (for a little while) please don't carry on!

Your friend is an idiot.

There is a real note of eugenics creeping in to some people’s analyses of this outbreak.

As if the retired and chronically ill are totally expendable so what’s the fuss of they die?

These are the exact people who complain they don’t have any food when supply chains start breaking up.

Even if I could guarantee that myself and all of my loved ones would be completely fine with little to no symptoms if they caught the coronavirus I would still be anxious, still be washing my hands just as much, still avoiding going out in busy places, etc. Because I don't want the elderly person who will touch the lift buttons after me, or the immunosuppressed person who will use the self-serve checkout after me, or the person with a lung disease who happens to be stood next to me when I cough and so on to catch it.

Right now I feel completely helpless knowing that soon our NHS will be under even more strain than it already is and there is nothing I can do about that. I do not have a medical degree so I cannot help. But I can make sure I do my bit by being one less person in a crowded shopping centre, restaurant, theatre, cinema, etc.

53 year old diabetic woman just died of it. Teachers be worried.

53 year old diabetic woman just died of it. Teachers be worried

Do you have a source?

I heard one of the Italian doctors on the news earlier saying they're seeing more younger patients now. As if perhaps the younger people resisted the virus a bit longer so took longer to succumb, but now they are getting sick.

I think people's attitudes to this, and government response would have been VERY different if this was affecting younger adults and children more than older people.

The thing with data is that you can interpret it. Your friend has interpreted it to mean there's very little issue here (presumably she's in a currently low risk group?).

My view is that there's not enough data here to make that decision, given that testing is patchy within and between countries - there's no standard. If you tested everyone and it came back the same, then that's great for those at lower risk from this virus, but we aren't there yet.

I'm also curious about infection rates and longer term effects. It's too soon to know about those.

Sorry, reinfection rates

Source front page of daily fail. But true.

"Did Trump Administration Fire the US Pandemic Response Team?"

Yes.

[[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/}}

"Legum outlined a series of cost-cutting decisions made by the Trump administration in preceding years that had gutted the nation’s infectious disease defense infrastructure. The “pandemic response team” firing claim referred to news accounts from Spring 2018 reporting that White House officials tasked with directing a national response to a pandemic had been ousted.

Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer abruptly departed from his post leading the global health security team on the National Security Council in May 2018 amid a reorganization of the council by then-National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Ziemer’s team was disbanded. Tom Bossert, whom the Washington Post reported “had called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics and biological attacks,” had been fired one month prior.

It’s thus true that the Trump administration axed the executive branch team responsible for coordinating a response to a pandemic and did not replace it, eliminating Ziemer’s position and reassigning others, although Bolton was the executive at the top of the National Security Council chain of command at the time."

bah.

www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/