Heinsberg Study - preprint is out

[Prokupatuscrakedatus]

For those of you who know German

www.uni-bonn.de/neues/111-2020

oralengineer No, hospitals & ICUs in Germany had massive free capacity even at the height of the epidemic
and even taking in hundreds of ICU patients from Italy, France, Netherlands

Through the epidemic, about 18% of confirmed cases were hospitalised, 2% in ICU

Currently there are about 2,000 COVID patients in ICU, which has a death rate so far of 30%

They may be the most serious patients, but every one of them dying wouldn't suffenly make the German death total - under 7,000 for hospitals + care homes, institutions, prisons etc - look anything like the UK's

As you see, COVID patients ae a very small number of the total in German hospitals - normal non COVID care takes up nearly all the occupied beds,
but spare capacity is about 40% of the 32,000 ICU beds

"What actually is carnival though?"

I have been to umpteen carnivals here

It is open air, but usually very crowded and most people stay for a couple of hours or more.
People eating, drinking, talking very loudly because it is so noisy

Singing, usually live music, with wind instruments
Sometimes dancing, or acting in a play

2 of the "superspreaders" were performers, so they were maybe singing, or blowing an instrument

Singing and shouting is known to spread the virus over a wider distance
iirc in the S Korean churches which were the core of the epidemic there

What happens next is important:

so far the relaxation does not seem to have noticeably increased infections in Germany
No sudden increase in tests, but it is still early

Once schools open fully over the next few weeks .... we'll see if we get back into exponential growth
If so, Merkel has indicated she'll slam down lockdown again
The massive testing program here, ½ million per week, will give her early warning

She said that if R0 reaches 1.1 and stays there, then even the German health system, with its massive free capacity, will be overwhelmed by October
and won't be able to treat everyone

"it's just flu" is so foolish and either very ignorant or deliberately misleading

Personally, I want schools and the economy to restart and run over the summer months at 80-90% capacity (travel, leisure, entertainment will remain hit)

.... but that requires honesty and being straight with people about striking the balance, economy vs safety

Lying to try to con them won't work and makes it more likely that a frightened suspicious public will stay home and refuse to go to work & school until a vaccine

• that course would enable us to find out whether a modern industrialised country can go bankrupt, but I'd rather not try

Christ, no one said it was “just flu”. Not sure if saying someone did is being ignorant or deliberately misleading.,..

Anyway, the good news is the Uk is behind other countries opening now, which means by the time we open we will have info from those countries and can judge accordingly.

but regular home visits for others - testing blood O2 levels, BP, heart etc
and early admission to hospital as soon as blood O2 gets low, not waiting for breathing problems

This is key, according to the latest data

That article is flawed, because it fails to take into account that we vaccinate against flu.
That's irrelevant here. The article shows that we shouldn't compare estimates with confirmed cases. Estimates will always be much higher.

Ps- flu vaccines aren't distributed to everyone and some years have had a protection of around 50%, which is poor.

Quoting again:
Flu is highly contagious and has a much higher death rate

Sure, not "just flu", but milder, even.

I had a look at recent CDC flu shot uptake figures for the US. I'm reading 47% of the population, and that it's 37% effective against A strain & 50% effective against B strain.

5th Vit D3 study from Belgium.

Males showed markedly higher percentage of vitamin D deficiency ..Vit D deficiency is a possible risk factor for severe infection in males. Vit D3 supplementation might be an inexpensive, accessible and safe mitigation for covid

Link :
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.20079376v1