Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Richard Hakluyt]

God we're such a nation of busybodies/snitches.

Police are apparently inundated with calls from people who suspect their neighbour is going for a second run or for a non-essential trip and want them arrested

Police are now asking people to exercise caution in reporting on each other. There's so many people out there who want a soft police state - like NIMBYism/long-running disputes over planning applications for an extension with the coercive power of the state behind it.

Although my favourite example is a man who called the police because his wife doesn't think her job is essential, and he does and she's working from home. So he wanted them to force her to leave the house and go to work

That seems general human nature. I remember reading in the Court of the Red Tsar, when Stalin and co. instituted a quota of internal enemies to be arrested for each region, the regions' issue wasn't to meet the quota, but to deal with the massive amount of reports of people made of their neighbours etc. A lot of us humans are just nasty savage apes once you scrape off the veneer of civilisation we paint on ourselves for safety.

Jonathan Swift had something to say about this, from chapter VI of Gulliver's voyage to Brobdingnag :

"His majesty, in another audience, was at the pains to recapitulate the sum of all I had spoken; compared the questions he made with the answers I had given; then taking me into his hands, and stroking me gently, delivered himself in these words, which I shall never forget, nor the manner he spoke them in: "My little friend Grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country; you have clearly proved, that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied, by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them. I observe among you some lines of an institution, which, in its original, might have been tolerable, but these half erased, and the rest wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions. It does not appear, from all you have said, how any one perfection is required toward the procurement of any one station among you; much less, that men are ennobled on account of their virtue; that priests are advanced for their piety or learning; soldiers, for their conduct or valour; judges, for their integrity; senators, for the love of their country; or counsellors for their wisdom. As for yourself," continued the king, "who have spent the greatest part of your life in travelling, I am well disposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped many vices of your country. But by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.""

[alfred russel]

Here's an example of the excess mortality in a smaller town near Bergamo which has one of the highest death rates:

8 people died in a single smaller town--6 from non covid causes-- and you think that is an example of something?

If that was something other than noise the number of non covid deaths in all of north italy would be something like 12 times normal.

[Fate]

Here's an example of the excess mortality in a smaller town near Bergamo which has one of the highest death rates:

8 people died in a single smaller town--6 from non covid causes-- and you think that is an example of something?

If that was something other than noise the number of non covid deaths in all of north italy would be something like 12 times normal.

Nembro has a population of 11,000 people.

No. It's not single deaths, it's mortality rates.

From the paper:

Total deaths Jan 1 2020 - March 24 2020: 158
Official COVID-19 deaths Jan 1 2020 - March 24 2020: 31
Average death same time period previous years: 35

[Zanza]

Excess mortality is very easy to count, as our civilisation has not yet broken down to such a degree. It will be analyzed properly and reported, especially if there are really factors of eight or so like in the graph quoted, as that would be very statistically relevant deviations. We will know that in a couple of weeks then. 

[DGuller]

Here's an example of the excess mortality in a smaller town near Bergamo which has one of the highest death rates:



Blue is baseline mortality. Green is a death in a patient with a positive COVID-19 test. Red is the number of total deaths or "all cause mortality." They're not reporting red in these daily death totals. They're reporting green.

I think we'd need to know how this chart was created before making any judgments.  If it's a small town near Bergamo, then my guess is that it doesn't have enough people in it to judge mortality with infinite statistical precision.  We'd have to know what kind of smoothing/interpolation was done for all these curves, and how many deaths in absolute numbers are we talking about here.

[DGuller]

Here's an example of the excess mortality in a smaller town near Bergamo which has one of the highest death rates:

8 people died in a single smaller town--6 from non covid causes-- and you think that is an example of something?

If that was something other than noise the number of non covid deaths in all of north italy would be something like 12 times normal.

Nembro has a population of 11,000 people.

No. It's not single deaths, it's mortality rates.

From the paper:

Total deaths Jan 1 2020 - March 24 2020: 158
Official COVID-19 deaths Jan 1 2020 - March 24 2020: 31
Average death same time period previous years: 35

Okay, never mind.  That's plenty of statistical signal there.

[Sheilbh]

London not yet at capacity and NHS capacity still increasing, recovery areas and operating theatres being converted and used within the UK.

[Fate]

Here's an example of the excess mortality in a smaller town near Bergamo which has one of the highest death rates:

8 people died in a single smaller town--6 from non covid causes-- and you think that is an example of something?

If that was something other than noise the number of non covid deaths in all of north italy would be something like 12 times normal.

Nembro has a population of 11,000 people.

No. It's not single deaths, it's mortality rates.

From the paper:

Total deaths Jan 1 2020 - March 24 2020: 158
Official COVID-19 deaths Jan 1 2020 - March 24 2020: 31
Average death same time period previous years: 35

Okay, never mind.  That's plenty of statistical signal there.

Source:
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=it&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.corriere.it%2Fpolitica%2F20_marzo_25%2Fnumero-vero-morti-covid-19-almeno-4-volte-quello-ufficiale-eebbe3ae-6eb8-11ea-925b-a0c3cdbe1130.shtml&sandbox=1

They ran the analysis on several other cities/towns in the Bergamo area and saw similar results.

The truth of it will be sorted out in the following months. Maybe it's all an aberration of how taxed that medical system is near Bergamo, but my money is on we're undercounting the number of direct and indirect COVID-19 deaths. Even if there's a bunch of asymptomatics and minimally ill people out there who never get tested which lowers the overall mortality rate of COVID-19, on the opposite side we see early evidence that dead bodies are piling up in numbers greater than those who tested positive.

[Sheilbh]

Pictures of inside NHS Nightingale which is kind of extraordinary and really gives an idea of how bad this will get, and this is starting at 500 ICU beds but can go up to 4,000:



This is also going to be the model for other emergency hospitals, so far in Manchester and Birmingham. They're also apparently doing dry runs of the ambulances getting into the centre.

As with the emergency hospitals in Spain and Italy, it is re-assuring it's not just China that is sort of capable of this type of project.

[Legbiter]

London not yet at capacity and NHS capacity still increasing, recovery areas and operating theatres being converted and used within the UK.

Every extra day you get to prep counts. If London hasn't blown up come Monday, that's very good.

[Iormlund]

The UK should be mostly fine, I think. It was a couple weeks behind Spain, and started with measures a bit earlier (relative to the curve). The US, on the other hand ... with Trump at them helm it's anyone's guess how that'll end.

[Legbiter]

The UK should be mostly fine, I think. It was a couple weeks behind Spain, and started with measures a bit earlier (relative to the curve). The US, on the other hand ... with Trump at them helm it's anyone's guess how that'll end.

It's looking like New York is their Wuhan. 

Except that was one place, they're getting big outbreaks in some other coastal states as well. I think New York has locked down but fleeing residents may have seeded the pandemic elsewhere. Adjacent states may have to institute internal border controls.

[crazy canuck]

We're probably all underreporting deaths for one reason or another. I don't think we'll get good estimations until we make population-wide studies to get final rate of infection and compare deaths this year to previous years.

Why would a COVID related death not be reported in countries where health care is free and hospital beds are available?  I can understand why there would be under reporting in countries where one or both of those things are not true.

Many people die alone at home or in a nursing home and don't get a test. Look at excess mortality over this same period versus the previous and subsequent year and you'll get a better sense of the truth death total. We can't realy do it accurately in the midst of the outbreak.

As I said, I can understand that happening where hospitals are over run and health care is not free.  But everyone who dies in a nursing home has been tested here.  Most of our COVID deaths are old age care homes.  The only people here who are not getting tested here are people with mild symptoms and since health care here is free anyone who thinks they have something more serious gets medical care. 

The other benefit of our system is it is centralized so all resources can be allocated appropriately.  So for example, system wide all elective procedures were cancelled freeing up beds.  Right now our ICU beds are at about 60%.

[crazy canuck]

The UK should be mostly fine, I think. It was a couple weeks behind Spain, and started with measures a bit earlier (relative to the curve). The US, on the other hand ... with Trump at them helm it's anyone's guess how that'll end.

Not sure if you saw the comparative graphs but out by our health authority, the US is certainly screwed but the UK isn't looking too good either.

[Sheilbh]

So I feel like some of the police forces are starting to enjoy their new powers

Derbyshire Police have dyed a reservoir black to dissuade people from going to it and Cumbria police are posting police cars on the roads to beaches. For context, beaches in Cumbria look like this:


You can swim, you could try to sunbathe but they're really mainly used for brisk, distant walks in the wind. Again it's not actually against the rules/law they're meant to be enforcing, which is an issue, but even if it is I still don't really see that they're a major enforcement risk.

Also the Devon Police have issued a statement that people are only meant to leave the house for "desperately needed food and medication". Again the law isn't that you need to reach desperation to get your food/medicine

Give them an inch