outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

5G creating modern malaise and chaos has been a going tinfoil hat concern for a few years now.

Even intellectual giants like Naomi “death recorded” Wolf are susceptible I’m told

Ahhh, to experience the calm, peaceful splendor of [checks notes] 1970's Belfast. pic.twitter.com/8xfXFHAbIo

— Staymas Insidely (@shockproofbeats) April 5, 2020

This is interesting:

https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2020/04/04/1586015208000/Imperial-s-Neil-Ferguson---We-don-t-have-a-clear-exit-strategy-/

Trying to get to grips with the UK government’s real strategy is problematic, despite the fact that a great deal of virtual ink has been spilt in trying to “explain” it. Indeed it hasn’t seemed totally clear to us whether they are deliberately not giving us the full picture, or whether the government does not actually know what the strategy is beyond this initial curve-flattening stage.

Which probably goes for most western governments.

...implies the government was aware of the potential death toll – or the one being projected by the scientists on their advisory committee, anyway – but had not considered a drastic lockdown strategy until it became clear that the likely number of deaths from any other strategy would not be seen as politically acceptable. It seems, therefore, that the paper was published at that time partly to help justify a change in the messaging. A “U-turn” doesn’t seem like quite the right term, therefore, for what happened.

And when we suggested to Ferguson that some in government might be pursuing some kind of watered-down version of herd immunity, or at least might be considering it a back-up option (in case a vaccine is not found in 18 months), he didn’t totally dismiss the idea.

Instead, Ferguson noted that there was actually no definite exit strategy in place at this point, though testing and contact-tracing might help.

It doesn’t seem clear to us, though, that we can rule out the idea that at least some in government are still pursuing the idea of herd immunity in the background, even if it is just a fall-back plan.

In Paris it is now forbidden to go out for exercise between 10:00 and 19:00, because of joggers fucking things up. I haven't witnessed this myself (jogging is done by the well-off, so not for people in my quartier), but apparently it was serious enough to go for the ban.

Masks are likely to be obligatory soon as well; apparently a washable version will be provided to city residents soon.

If you die at home from the coronavirus, there’s a good chance you won’t be included in the official death toll, because of a discrepancy in New York City’s reporting process. The problem means the city’s official death count is likely far lower than the real toll taken by the virus, according to public health officials.

It also means that victims without access to testing are not being counted, and even epidemiologists are left without a full understanding of the pandemic. As of Monday afternoon, 2,738 New York City residents have died from ‘confirmed’ cases of COVID-19, according to the city Department of Health. That’s an average of 245 a day since the previous Monday.

But another 200 city residents are now dying at home each day, compared to 20 to 25 such deaths before the pandemic, said Aja Worthy-Davis, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office. And an untold number of them are unconfirmed.

https://gothamist.com/news/surge-number-new-yorkers-dying-home-officials-suspect-undercount-covid-19-related-deaths

great so the real number of deaths is almost twice what's being reported daily?

That’s true everywhere, I think.

That seems to be going on everywhere - we are only reporting deaths in hospital, not in care homes or at home, other countries have a whacking great disparity in death figures vs burials/cremations - everyone is juking the stats

Clap for Boris though.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/coronavirus-ireland-s-infection-peak-may-have-passed-toll-could-hit-400-by-august-report-forecasts-1.4223043

The study predicts 66,300 deaths in the UK, the highest in Europe. The UK’s use of bed resources is predicted to peak on April 17th and its deaths on April 20th.

It says the peak of the pandemic has passed in many European countries, including Spain, Italy and France, where 19,209, 20,300 and 15,058 deaths are predicted, respectively.

we’re number one baby! boris u legend!

"Even intellectual giants like Naomi “death recorded” Wolf are susceptible I’m told"

Naomi Wolf appears to have gone insane some time ago.

A new study from Harvard found that greater exposure to air pollution is directly correlated with higher death rates from coronavirus.

https://gothamist.com/news/coronavirus-updates-air-pollution-covid-19-death-rate

Well, that's scary news for me personally, because up until a year and a half ago, I lived in the most polluted town in the US and heated my house with a wood stove.

We just got off our wood stove about a year and a half ago and our neighborhood still has plenty of burners living in it.

when the doctor in the reddit video says lie flat on your front with a pillow "in front of you" where exactly is the pillow meant to be? under your forehead, under your face, under your chest?

i took it to mean like just that you can keep breathing, but think of massage tables when you lay down and it has a place for your face.

yeah i take that to mean as a way of cushioning your face so that you're not just mashing your nose and lips down into the bed

A retired NHS nurse in my fb feed posted this, maybe it applies?

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/91887928_10157951932565460_6721695844841553920_n.jpg?_nc_cat=1&_nc_sid=8024bb&_nc_ohc=pZJQUGP9WFMAX-HedxV&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.xx&oh=bee758def81b6d0b8622c93c5c473178&oe=5EB3142E

Caution: the same person posted the flimflam about gargling with warm water like two weeks ago so I promise nothing. It sounds like maybe the "pillow in front of you" bit might refer to this, though?

I always sleep on my stomach and I just have my head turned enough on the pillow so I can breathe.

I have my pillow mostly under my forehead for breathing purposes

so that you're not just mashing your nose and lips down into the bed

Or anyone else's, just to be clear

damn, I'm all out of towles

friendly reminder in times of uncertainty and misinformation: anecdotes are not data. (good) data is carefully measured and collected information based on a range of subject-dependent factors, including, but not limited to, controlled variables, meta-analysis, and randomization

— Steak-umm (@steak_umm) April 7, 2020

the follow up is the winner imo

we're a frozen meat brand posting ads inevitably made to misdirect people and generate sales, so this is peak irony, but hey we live in a society so please make informed decisions to the best of your ability and don't let anecdotes dictate your worldview ok

steak-umm bless

— Steak-umm (@steak_umm) April 7, 2020

i had no idea they went full irony ad as of last year, the twitter account is on brand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxLemhqG3L8

I imagine there are quotes like this all over the place, but here's Fauci a year ago:

"Now what I’ve essentially done is paint the picture of a pandemic influenza. Now it doesn’t have to be influenza. It could be something like SARS. SARS was really quite scary. Thankfully, it kind of burned itself out by good public health measures. But the thing that worries most of us in the field of public health is a respiratory illness that can spread even before someone is so sick that you want to keep them in bed. And that’s really the difference."

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dr-fauci-has-been-dreading-a-pandemic-like-covid-19-for-years/

that video originated on Reddit iirc. There were a couple of self-described physicians arguing about whether it was good advice or not but amazingly the argument devolved into petty name-calling with no real evaluation of the advice given.

― kinder, Monday, April 6, 2020 5:33 PM (yesterday)

this has not been studied usefully in patients who are not critically ill as far as I know, but "proning" (we are calling it "tummy time" because humor is needed) is a technique that has demonstrated effectiveness in ventilated patients with ARDS (the severe pneumonia COVID leads to) that is refractory to our usual methods of improving oxygenation. it is probably zero-risk but if it is beneficial the effects are probably very small. I do wish everyone had an incentive spirometer in their house, though

btw re: the 5G thing, after a night shift last weekend I screamed at a guy in dunkin donuts who was mocking everyone in line for physically distancing, who was saying it was all radiation and a government plot, and got a free wake-up wrap for my efforts. just doing my part

man I'm gonna scream at an assload of people at Dunkin if it gets me free shit

https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/kerala-couple-elopes-gets-booked-violating-lockdown-rules-122117?

It’s outrageous that while states and cities around the country are struggling to procure masks and other PPEs the U.S. Department of Defense is giving the Israeli military 1 million masks ordered from China and shipped directly to Israel. pic.twitter.com/XvdvhcQmnN

— Jamil Dakwar (@jdakwar) April 8, 2020

This work will give a sense of undercounting:

Here's an analysis from The Economist of the increase in all causes mortality for regions of Italy and Spain. (h/t @kyle_brightnj)

Would love to see the equivalent for the US.https://t.co/e041jaL3zT pic.twitter.com/TkMuHnLTdH

— Binyamin Appelbaum (@BCAppelbaum) April 8, 2020

https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/032/738/Screen_Shot_2020-02-06_at_10.46.47_AM.jpg

‘you worked for a country that was fixing mortality rates’

Some preliminary scientific conclusions from the Dutch today:

- There are serious doubts about people having had the virus being automatically immune
- Patients that only had mild symptoms, also show a very low number of antibodies, being susceptible to catching it again (and being a transmitter of it again). The more your infection flares up first time 'round, the more you're immune to it the next time. Alas it works the other way around, too.

that’s... unreassuring

does that mean that vaccines might not be a realistic option?

Obv I'm not an expert, but I'd say a vaccine is still a realistic, and the best option. But that can take a while. They're conducting further research into the 'mild symptoms = only mild defense for next time, and no immunity' right now.

I'm really glad there are roughly 30 vaccines in development. Most of them will either have unacceptable side effects, or won't provoke the innate immune system enough. Scylla & Charybdis.

^ innate adaptive

Dammit:

South China Morning Post: Coronavirus: low antibody levels raise questions about reinfection risk

That's bad news, but if you can't trust China to self report cases, or accurately count deaths, or offer their research up for peer review, and their tests and testing itself has been erratic (giving false positives and negatives, which is where that rumor of reinfection came from), and it's a more or less autocratic regime that prizes and weaponizes secrecy and controls the population with misinformation or lack of information, and even all the countries that do or are *none* of those things are making mistakes, and bad predictions, or are otherwise in the dark, let's just say I'll wait for conformation.

Regardless, most interesting thing in there was actually this, I thought: "All of the patients had recently recovered from mild symptoms of the disease and most of those with low antibody levels were young." So if any of this limited study (175 patients) pans out, then I guess it stands to reason that those with mild or no symptoms would also be the ones with low antibody levels, which I suppose might explain why they have mild or no symptoms. Or related, maybe a low antibody count is all it takes for young people to fight it off, but older or other people need more. Who knows.

Terrific piece of lockdown writing:

I wrote a little thing just based on some thoughts coming out of the lockdown and how we've been talking about households. Give it a read and I'd love to hear from other people on this https://t.co/mPVutlwITG

— Wail Qasim (@WailQ) April 7, 2020

w/r/t the quirkiness of reported fatalities dipping on the weekend (culled from a much longer thread):

Oh, one final thing before I log off:

Courtesy of a brilliant tip-off from @Crick247, here’s a very interesting bit of weekly "seasonality" in reported UK daily deaths:

Every Sunday and Monday, reported deaths are lower than Saturday. Every Tuesday, they rise sharply 🧐

Why? pic.twitter.com/ZQglhKHcsc

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) April 8, 2020

My theory:
• We know these numbers are allocated to a day based on when they can be reported, not when that person died
• We also know they are deaths that occurred before the day of reporting
• NHS England only reports a death once family members have been informed pic.twitter.com/KjIeLKwiQL

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) April 8, 2020

• Hunch: NHS either make fewer attempts or find it harder to get through to relatives over the weekend (or some other bit of processing slows at wknds)
• So despite deaths occurring on Sat & Sun, fewer get processed over the weekend, depressing the reported numbers on Sun & Mon pic.twitter.com/rSByEZ8uUM

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) April 8, 2020

• And then on Mon, that processing/informing bottleneck is cleared, resulting in a glut of deaths in Tuesday’s report
• This happened like clockwork today pic.twitter.com/ylTMh6hh5K

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) April 8, 2020

Yeah, there's no point trying to perceive a trend in day-by-day totals. Quite glad to see the FT switch to average-over-seven-days as the basis for their accumulative graphs.

There's so much noise in daily stats anyway. The ONS (at a significant delay behind the NHS figures) releases all this data for free anyway, so that's easy to download and comb through. I note that, in 2020, UK weekly deaths (usually 11k-14k for Jan-Mar, with about 15-20% due to respiratory illness) have been flitting either side of the five-year average by several hundred anyway, so there's no way (yet) to pinpoint (as others claim to have done with some Italy and NYC stats) a great leap in deaths which is not adequately explained by the official Covid-19 toll. But the ONS stats are only up to w/e Mar 27.

wasn't there a guardian article a week or so ago which mentioned that some backdated data is assimilated into official figures on a Tuesday?

I'm probably thinking of this:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/covid-19-deaths-outside-hospitals-to-be-included-in-uk-tally-for-first-time

"Every Tuesday the statistics authority will provide a backdated weekly count of all suspected coronavirus deaths of people who have died in their homes, care homes or hospices, which will be published in a combined form with the figures drawn from the daily death toll announced by the NHS in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The figures will be backdated to the previous week, starting with the week ending 20 March. It will include the ages of the people who died and give a regional breakdown."
so aiui this wouldn't automatically mean a spike on Tuesdays.

12 deaths at Elizabeth nursing home

This place is two blocks from where I live. My father-in-law stayed there for a little while a few years ago, before he was hospitalized and died.

A New Jersey nursing home is being closed to new admissions after at least a dozen deaths there were linked to the pandemic.

Eight staff members and another 16 residents at the Elizabeth Nursing and Rehabilitation Center have tested positive for the virus.

Five others are waiting for test results.

"Health officials have confirmed that at least 12 out of the 22 deaths in a nursing home were tied to the COVID-19 virus and at least eight staff members have tested positive, said Mayor J. Christian Bollwage. "This is truly heartbreaking for the families and my thoughts and prayers go out to them during this difficult time."

More details from another report:

Elizabeth Mayor Chris Bollwage told NBC New York that 22 individuals at the Elizabeth Nursing and Rehabilitation Center have died dating back to March 21. Ten of those residents had confirmed cases of COVID-19, while the other 12 were never tested or were awaiting results when they died.

The deceased individuals represent more than 20 percent of patients at the Grove Street center, which has 102 beds in total, the mayor said. There are still 58 residents at the facility — 12 of whom have tested positive for coronavirus, according to Bollwage. Eight members of the staff have also contracted the virus, including the director of nursing and a physician who have both been hospitalized, and four others are awaiting test results.

I honestly cannot believe people are still getting on to cruise ships. wtf?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/04/08/coronavirus-latest-news/#link-5D5IK2DBH5BIZFQ2DHHD3SKCV4

Cannot fathom (no pun intended) what would entice a rational human to get onto the S.S. Tube of Death now, or any time in the last month.