Westministenders: The Virus

[RedToothBrush]

Its like living in a Bad Disaster B Movie.

If you thought Brexit on your TV every day was Bad, The Virus is a whole new level.

The 5pm broadcast with Johnson and friends, and the public infomation video with the unblicking Chris Witty (who has such unfortunate mannerism he makes me think he's me a Dr Who alien akin to the Slitheen).

Who knows what will happen. Just that everything has changed and our entire economy is now on life support whilst we figure out how to deal with the crisis and what on earth our exit strategy is.

Johnson has however refused to join a joint EU purchase scheme designed to assist countries through the crisis.

Meanwhile the US is about to go nuts... so what does that do to a trade deal?

More money for the NHS? More hospitals?

Well its possible that might just happen...

Back to science ....

Epidemiology is not my field, but complex mathematical modelling is:

After one has built a model with discretisation, parameters and interactions etc representing the situation,
then a vital step is to validate that model using data from a real life case and tune the parameters,
before using it for the case you really want to forecast

So if that Chinese data was falsified, then the models validated using that would be skewed
and governments may have been making decisions based on those skewed models

I read that Imperial re-ran their model using Italian data and got quite different forecasts for the UK,
which was what they presented at that crucial 12 March SAGE meeting, when Cummings and Hancock changed policy completely

At the time, we put these new results down to the very different cultural habits, demographics etc in Italy / Europe compared to China
However, falsified data could certainly have a big effect, if it was indeed false

I trust it has been mentioned that people may be 3-4 weeks on a ventilator
and before that they have to catch the disease and then develop symptoms .....

DG Is that seismic article legit? It’s written by “Tyler Durden” and even has Brad Pitt’s picture in the thumbnail. It’s not a spoof or wind-up, is it?

OK, I take that back. www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/community/boise/article241668106.html

Yellowstone is volcanic, which is often associated with earthquakes. It hasn't erupted for more than half a million years, and I don't think anyone expects it to in the near future.

As to 'the big one' in California - yes an earthquake here is much more likely as a result of the San Andreas fault.

Even Trump - incoherently - says BJ's previous strategy (of herd immunity) would have been catastrophic

www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=32&v=nhaCQ7up4kk&feature=emb_logo

The Telegraph

US President Donald Trump claims the British government's initial strategy would have been 'very catastrophic'.

Speaking at a news conference on Tuesday, Donald Trump explains that the UK, 'were very much looking at it.

And all of a sudden they went hard the other way because they started seeing things that weren't good.'

Although, he does not mention the strategy, Mr Trump may have been speaking about the original plan to build a 'herd immunity'
suggested by Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser, before imposing a national lockdown.

Read more about about Donald Trump's claims about the British government 'putting themselves in a little bit of a problem' over its original plan to tackle coronavirus:

www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-uk-news-latest-deaths-tests-flights-nhs-ventilators/?WT.mc_id=tmg_youtube_offsite_televideo-youtubevideo_1AprilTrump&utm_source=tmgoff&utm_medium=tmg_youtube&utm_content=offsite_televideo&utm_campaign=tmg_youtube_offsite_televideo-youtubevideo_1AprilTrump

'Boris (Johnson) tested positive, and I hear he's I hope he's gonna be fine.
But in the UK, they were looking at that and they have a name for it.

But we won't even call but we won't even go by the name.
But it would have been, it would have been very catastrophic, I think if that would have happened,'

It's on a thread where people are grappling with the notion that CV cases in Italy are not falling despite being in lockdown for 3 weeks.

Thanks... I’ll be avoiding that thread then! My head will probably explode

It was concerning on that CV vacination thread that so few would have the vaccination

• because they never had the flu vaccination either

Best avoid the whole Health / coronavirus topic then, Elements

Some serious analysts - not the Fail dooooomsters - are now estimating 1,000 deaths a day is imminent
e.g.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/01/ventilators-may-be-taken-from-stable-coronavirus-patients-for-healthier-ones-bma-says

Stable coronavirus patients could be taken off ventilators in favour of those more likely to survive,
it emerged on Wednesday, as another sharp rise in deaths

left the UK braced for the outbreak to reach up to 1,000 deaths a day by the end of the week.

In a stark new document issued by the British Medical Association,
doctors set out guidelines to ration care if the NHS becomes overwhelmed with new cases as the outbreak moves towards its peak.

"he BMA published its proposals amid concern over limits to NHS resources, with officials admitting on Wednesday that
only 30 of the 30,000 new ventilators needed as the outbreak escalates will be available by next week."

That's what happens when a govt dithers 6 weeks and then orders from Brexit donors vacuum cleaner and construction firms

Johnson’s paymasters are starting to turn on him.

^China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country, under-reporting both total cases and deaths its suffered from the disease,
the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House, according to three U.S. officials.
....
the thrust, they said, is that
China’s public reporting on cases and deaths is intentionally incomplete.

Two of the officials said the report concludes that China’s numbers are fake.^

I'm reading this a lot, including from some switched-on people, and it's really bothering me. Forgive me for the long reply but this is complex.

Firstly, there is a large political element to this: blame deflection. Under reporting in China is being used as an excuse for western governments not reacting in time. And there is also a chunk of pure racism.

Secondly, cases and deaths are significantly underreported everywhere. Some countries (eg France) are being honest about this: they have admitted that deaths are undercounted and they are trying to count some of them (the figure at present is about an additional 500 deaths). But they won't be able to count all of the people who died of a CV infection, because some will be deaths at home of untested individuals without CV on the death certificate. We'll need population level data to capture those.

Italy and Spain are dramatically undercounting because their systems are so overwhelmed. You can see this in the all cause mortality rates for some towns which has spiked in March far beyond what the CV death toll suggests.

Why don't I believe that deaths rates were 10 times understated in China? Two main reasons:

• it implies a much higher case number and critically, a higher R0 (transmission rate)
• and/or it would imply a far higher death rate

No evidence for that being the case, especially as Wuhan locked down early AND had access to very significant medical resources compared to affected western cities (because China wasn't battling a fire on several fronts, it could send medical staff from unaffected areas, and it has domestic manufacturers of PPE etc). We had better hope that the virus is not as transmissible and as deadly as would be implied by a 25k death toll in Wuhan, because both we and the Americans have reacted later, less effectively and with fewer resources than the Chinese.

This is good on this topic, from a US public heath expert:

twitter.com/jeremykonyndyk/status/1245406094232563712?s=21

CV cases in Italy are not falling despite being in lockdown for 3 weeks.

New cases in Italy are falling very rapidly! Down from 8k new cases per day at the peak to about 4k, despite more testing (so likely this understates the fall in new cases). New cases will fall off very rapidly over the next two weeks.

OTOH because it takes 3 weeks for people to die, deaths are not yet falling although they will start to drop soon.

I too am concerned that the under reporting in China is being deemed intentional. I don’t see how any reporting from anywhere can be anything but incomplete. Saying it’s intentional is starting a narrative with a potentially very unpleasant ending - and in itself looks intentional.
I always have to laugh when I read about the angel Moroni. Especially when an earthquake causes him (I notice angels use the masculine pronoun) to drop his trumpet.

Thank you Mistigri your posts re China were what I was going to post.

I see reports of unrest in Italy now and worry that things are going to turn in the next couple of weeks. I've already seen stories in UK of 2 familicdes and we are only in week 2 .

From the UK embassy in Cambodia FB page

The State of Emergency Law is expected to pass tomorrow, but there is no decision on whether/when it will be implemented.

Firstly, there is a large political element to this: blame deflection. Under reporting in China is being used as an excuse for western governments not reacting in time. And there is also a chunk of pure racism.

Exactly this, Misti - and of course as you say, it's not even logical, because if the Chinese numbers are indeed underreported, it's even worse that Western governments delayed acting. But it's a perfect squirrel/dog-whistle for the [same old target audience].

Of course there is blame deflection

and of course all countries atm are overlooking some deaths at home, including countries where people who should be in hospital cannot be

However, some countries may also be lying, so extra deaths not counted

China was covering up back in December and intimidated that brave doctor into recanting his reports of deaths in Wuhan
Valuable time was lost then

There was another doctor in China recently who has also been intimidated into silence after posting about current cases being kept quiet

With that track record, modellers should be very careful about validating their models wrt China's data
It is a basic rule for all modelling that suspect data should be rejected for tuning.

I know people want to be able to blame BJ, Trump & co for any disasters, but we shouldn't be blind to the possibility of false data affecting some decsions

and yes I know that failure to test, to order PPE etc are seperate and egregious cockups, which everyone wants to roast them for

Good post Misti

The finger pointing at China does involve a strong degree of blame deflection and self-justification - and does nothing to address risk and preparation, which is what China had given us the opportunity to do.

And I had just, 5 minutes before reading your post, commented to dh that there seems to be an awful lot of people of very little brain (to misquote A A Milne) who don't seem to understand that given the incubation period of this virus, it's going to take 2 weeks of lockdown before we hopefully see the rise in new daily cases reduce (although that's also a function of the number of tests ) and it will be even longer before we see the death rate drop Extremely sad but a function of the way the virus develops

I saw somewhere a thread about how the West didn't learn the right lessons from China.

It was about how there was a need to properly quarantine people with the disease rather than this blanket 7 days or 14 days thing. And that involved mass testing. So people didn't start mixing again until the were definitely clear.

They talked about how lockdown alone wasn't enough because it only reduced the R value to something like 1.4 and that meant there was still enough community transmission through workers and their families to increase spread.

It was only when stricter controls were put in where people were actively quarantined (including some by force) that they got the R value below 1 meaning it stopped spreading.

Now I'm not sure western countries can do this. Which begs a few questions of our strategy if this theory about the R value and lockdown not being enough.

It would leave us in a position where it would just spread until everyone working had been exposed. Which begs questions about those working from home and those in more intense social isolation and what happens in a few weeks time. There aren't enough people being exposed to produce herd immunity though we are stopping the hospitals being flooded.

Once again it comes back to the importance of testing and it being a key part of an exit strategy. We might not be able to mass quarantine people but the only way we exit sooner than when we have a vaccine is through mass testing. The governments foot dragging on this and lack of answer only serves to highlight our lack of exit strategy and the risk to vulnerable people being prolonged and higher than it should be.

And our lack of testing isn't something we can blame on china. That's a failure of UK government logistics and planning.

This govt and also Trump fully deserve the blame for all the cockups and all the deliberate decisions they made,

but don't let that blind us to how China has behaved,
certainly throughout December and maybe now again

and don't believe what the Chinese regime says, or statistics that cannot be fully verified independently

When they are intimidating doctors into silence, we should be very suspicious

A London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) has estimated that the UK RO is below 1
(I hope their sampling is adequately representative)

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-spread/preliminary-study-finds-uk-lockdown-is-slowing-spread-of-covid-19-idUSKBN21J56W

and the Netherlands have estimated their own R0 at below 1
(grey areas on the NL curve represent upper & lower statistical bounds of possible values)

which would support the idea that Western measures can work, if the public will put up with them for long enough

www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/social-distancing-culture/609019/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

This is sad and maddening all at the same time.

Throughout the conservative media, calls to reopen the economy—even if it means sacrificing the sick and elderly—are gaining traction.

“I would rather die than kill the country,” Glenn Beck declared on his radio show.

“Those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves,” Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said on Fox News.

Dennis Prager, a conservative commentator, even compared outbreak-mitigation efforts to Nazi appeasement: “That attitude, that the only value is saving a life … it leads to cowardice. It has to. No one can die? Then it’s not a war.”

If I were a sincere single issue pro life voter I might have second thoughts about voting for the GOP in November.