U.N. says world losing coronavirus fight; cases top 500,000

UPI ^ | March 27, 2020 | By Darryl Coote

[fuzzylogic]

I forgot to mention...AND Trump rallies!!! ...had to be stopped! :)

[lepton]

The Wuhan virus is just another version of a bad flu season.

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By a lot. With apparently somewhat different demographics. And that also sends an awful lot of people to the ICUs.

Assessing this as the flu is only mildly less off than those considering it as the end of the world, and is so obviously wrong that people who had been hearing it that way are more easily subverted by the media panic-mongers when their bubble is pierced.

[goodnesswins]

I’d love to send those facts to a certain relative....but that might mean she’d have to come down off her ledge

[Jane Long]

Yep.

I pray this backfires even MORE, than all of the other Stop Trump! stunts they’ve tried.

[Uncle Miltie]

“We must work together now to set the stage for a recovery that builds a more sustainable, inclusive and equitable economy,” he said.

There is no problem which cannot be fixed with more communism.

[lepton]

Every year, the world loses the “flu battle,” meaning a normal 300,000 - 600,000 people die FROM THE FLU. The FLU has vaccines and treatments and we lose that.
Why aren’t we more uptight about the flu?

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The most obvious answer is that it is more pervasive and ubiquitous, relatively constant, goes away each spring, and at least in the first world is much more associated with people already at death’s door.

Frankly, we should be at least somewhat more concerned about the flu: Wash your hands regularly when you change environments or are contacting people, always keep enough food on hand to be able to stay at home for a week or so, cover your mouth and nose with something when you sneeze that is not your hand, stay at home if you are sick and work in close proximity with other people, and Wash your darn hands!

[lepton]

but frankly the MSM didn’t get overly-hysterical about Coronavirus until it attacked Manhattan.

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Yep. It’s home to a lot of the media establishment, and now in their ‘home’ with a bullhorn.

[Captain7seas]

“a more sustainable, inclusive and equitable economy”

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Here is the transalation”

More sustainable= Accelerate “Sustainable Development. The UN’s Plain For The 21st Century”. = Globalization, One World Government under the UN run according to UN Agenda 21. (Pelosi introduced the A21 legislation)

inclusive= Social Justice

equitable economy= transfer of wealth from America to communist countries. NAFTA, other stacked deck trade deals. also thru US enviro regulations that shut down American natural resource production thus increase imports as we transfer wealth to pay for it.

[kabar]

By a lot. With apparently somewhat different demographics. An that also sends an awful lot of people to the ICUs.

By a lot? How do you know that? The H1NI virus infected 60 million people and killed 12,000 in 2009 according to the CDC. And here is the kicker, wee have a vaccine for the generic flu.

CDC estimates that influenza has resulted in between 9 million – 45 million illnesses, between 140,000 – 810,000 hospitalizations and between 12,000 – 61,000 deaths annually since 2010.

Table 1: Estimated Influenza Disease Burden, by Season — United States, 2010-11 through 2018-19 Influenza Seasons

For the week ending March 14, 2020, the CDC reports for the 2019-20 flu season that 275,000 people have tested positive thru clinical and public health laboratories with 1.2 million tests being performed. The overall cumulative hospitalization rate was 65.1 per 100,000 population, which is higher than all recent seasons at this time of year except for the 2017-18 season. Rates in children 0-4 years old and adults 18-49 years old are now the highest CDC has on record for these age groups, surpassing the rate reported during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.

[Roman_War_Criminal]

Hard to believe that it wasn’t planned.

[lepton]

By a lot? How do you know that? The H1NI virus infected 60 million people and killed 12,000 in 2009 according to the CDC.

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The flu season starts with large numbers of infected, and a given outbreak begins and becomes prominent in China in the previous spring. That is how the pharmaceutical companies select and create vaccines for the upcoming fall/winter - and why they so often miss their forecast. It’s not like they randomly create a vaccine for a flu which does not yet exist.

So apples-apples, you’d have to begin with numbers for about 9 months of COVID-19 spread before you get to the other factors. You’d also have to take into account that countries have actually attempted to funnel, identify, trace contacts back to previous infected and forward to exposed, and quarantine those with the Wuhan Coronavirus. Nothing like that happens with the flu, as it initially hits outside China already widespread.

We can’t go too crazy about this virus, and most of the precautions are simple variants of what people already should be doing in regards the flu. It’s not remotely like the Black Death...but treating it like it has no more potential than an ordinary or even bad typical flu is naïve as well.

[lepton]

On March 6th the S. Korea, widely lauded for their comprehensive testing and excellent treatment. death/cases rate was 0.6%. It’s continuing to creep up as people have time to die. 54% are still sick.

Date cases dead rec death/cases
3/22 8897 104 2909 1.12%
3/23 8961 111 3166 1.24%
3/24 9037 120 3507 1.33%
3/25 9137 126 3730 1.38%
3/26 9241 131 4144 1.42%

They’ve definitely turned the corner on recoveries, and though the sick continue to trickle in they are still small numbers. The dead/resolved rate has converged with it to just over 3%, so the bounds have strongly narrowed.

Projecting from this end, the current trajectories of each dead/cases and dead/resolved is a final number around 2.0-2.3% if no miracle cure beyond the anti-virals they’ve reportedly been using, and no significant new cases.

[kabar]

It’s not like they randomly create a vaccine for a flu which does not yet exist.

The flu vaccine is a mixed brew of flu types and mutations of those types. Nationally, influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 viruses are now the most commonly reported influenza viruses this season. Previously, influenza B/Victoria viruses predominated nationally.

CDC’s efforts with forecasting began in 2013 with the “Predict the Influenza Season Challenge”, a competition that encouraged outside academic and private industry researchers to forecast the timing, peak, and intensity of flu season. Each influenza season since then, flu experts within CDC’s Influenza Division have worked with CDC’s Epidemic Prediction Initiative (EPI) and external researchers to advance flu forecasting. CDC provides forecasting teams data, relevant public health forecasting targets, and forecast accuracy metrics evaluated against actual flu activity while each team submits their forecasts based on a variety of methods and data sources each week. During the 2019–20 season, CDC expects forecasting teams to provide more than 30 national-level forecasts each week.

While significant progress has been made in the years following the initial competition, forecasting flu remains challenging. Flu viruses are constantly changing, and every flu season tends to be different from the one before it. CDC and participating teams continue to collaborate to identify the best data, methods, and practices for forecasting in order to support the advancement of the science of flu forecasting, improving its ability to inform future public health action.

So apples-apples, you’d have to begin with numbers for about 9 months of COVID-19 spread before you get to the other factors. You’d also have to take into account that countries have actually attempted to funnel, identify, trace contacts back to previous infected and forward to exposed, and quarantine those with the Wuhan Coronavirus. Nothing like that happens with the flu, as it initially hits outside China already widespread.

Actually, CDC has developed a very sophisticated national reporting platform that captures data continuously and allows the CDC issue weekly flu updates on its website. Dr. Birx mentioned that the existing platform will help monitor the Wuhan virus.

Weekly U.S. Influenza Surveillance Report

We can’t go too crazy about this virus, and most of the precautions are simple variants of what people already should be doing in regards the flu. It’s not remotely like the Black Death...but treating it like it has no more potential than an ordinary or even bad typical flu is naïve as well.

You are missing the point. We have shut down almost half of our economy to the point that the cure could be worse the disease. Understandably, since it is a novel Coronavirus, we had no idea as to how dangerous it was and the initial numbers out of China were frightening. Now that we have more data and those data are increasing daily, we can make a more informed judgment and place the virus in context compared to a bad flu season. We don't have a vaccine yet nor a proven therapeutic or prophylactic.

Would we have responded the same way initially if we had the data we have today? How do we get off of the back of this tiger when the MSM and the Dems are using the virus as weapon against Trump? They would rather destroy the economy than have Trump reelected. They have already spied on him, investigated him, and impeached him. Now, they will move heaven and earth to prevent any return to normalcy by Easter. TDS is growing in intensity as we approach November.

Any rational person can now see that the virus is not the threat once viewed initially. If we tracked the generic flu with the same level of scrutiny, the nation would be in a greater state of panic. The primary threat is to our healthcare delivery system, particularly in urban areas with the elderly and those with impaired immunity systems being the most vulnerable, similar to the generic flu.

It is apparent to me what we need is a more targeted approach than total lock-downs and cessation of most economic activity statewide. The data show so far that virus is not a much greater threat to the public health than a bad flu year. The biggest difference seems to be infection rates in high density urban areas creating hot spots that could overwhelm the local healthcare system. We do know that 86% of the people tested with symptoms prove to be negative. In the case of NYC we see 30% to 40% testing positive.

It is not naive to compare the virus to a bad flu year in terms of a risk assessment and how to proceed from here. If we are truly at war with the virus, then we must accept a certain level of casualties in order to survive. The latest data show 93,329 total cases, 89,521 active cases, 2,432 people in critical condition, and 1,384 deaths. We are a nation of 330 million people. How much long lasting damage to our economy are we willing to accept? What level of casualties can we tolerate? The annual generic flu is a logical metric. It is not politically correct to state the obvious.

[lepton]

I’ve followed the flu vaccine isolation process for decades, including the disruption to it that Hillary-care induced as one of only a couple of surviving fragments (Another was paying medical schools not to train doctors based upon their misguided projections, which has resulted in a great misalignment of doctor specializations and need), so I am familiar with that. Thanks for posting in anyways as there are many who are not, and frankly I’ve always found it interesting.

By the way, flu viruses don’t mutate very often. The strains change mainly because they exchange genetic material mostly with each other within hosts, but also occasionally with other organisms as well. Their ability to exchange with each other is believed to be an effect from their segmented form.

We have shut down almost half of our economy to the point that the cure could be worse the disease.

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I’ve never come anywhere close to advocating that. I’ve advised that in general it is an over-reaction, and extremely so in a number of specific cases.

One longstanding example of the principle you are using is studies on the effects of requiring babies to have their own seat on airplanes for safety purposes, are likely to increase the danger to the babies because the added cost making it more likely the mother would drive instead of fly would cost more lives of babies during that driving than from the risk while flying.

So yeah, I understand that cures can be worse than the original issue.

It is not naive to compare the virus to a bad flu year in terms of a risk assessment and how to proceed from here.

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As a general statement, I agree. As to the specific way that many on these threads are conducting the comparison, and the shallowness of the conclusions reached? Yeah, naïve.

Comparing early direct numbers of an exponentially/geometrically/algebraically increasing outbreak to the annual totals of another outbreak is just silly.

The way of looking at it above isn’t the only way to see that the methodology of comparing relatively fixed dangers to it is unrevealing. Here’s another way:

88,000 die each year of alcohol-related incidents ~ we must get rid of alcohol...

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The decision tree would be different if it were 8,000, then 16,000, then 32,000, then 64,000, then 10,000 in the first month of the next year.

[kabar]

Comparing early direct numbers of an exponentially/geometrically/algebraically increasing outbreak to the annual totals of another outbreak is just silly.

The way of looking at it above isn’t the only way to see that the methodology of comparing relatively fixed dangers to it is unrevealing. Here’s another way:

88,000 die each year of alcohol-related incidents ~ we must get rid of alcohol...

The decision tree would be different if it were 8,000, then 16,000, then 32,000, then 64,000, then 10,000 in the first month of the next year.

I am not suggesting that we compare specific numbers and develop some decision tree based on number thresholds. It is more of a conceptional approach as to how we make public policy.

I want the career technocrats like Dr. Fauci to provide their expert technical advice, but I don't want them to drive public policy. He sees solutions thru the narrow prism of his field of expertise. He wants to stop the spread of the disease and save lives. The economic damage is not his concern. I would note however that he reacted differently to the H1N1 virus that infected 60 million and caused 12,000 deaths. Obama may have done the right thing, intentionally or not, by delaying the response to that pandemic. Imagine if he replicated the current approach in 2009 when the economy was in the dumpster.

I have been very disturbed by the process of how public policy decisions are made. The MSM is playing an advocacy role in partnership with the Dems and Deep State. They are using emotion, distortion, and omission to stampede the public to support bad policy. Ben Rhodes had it down pat as he pushed through decisions like the Iran Deal. Trump was forced to react the way he did because of the political consequences.

We must now fight sanitized wars with little or no collateral damage. Trump has been asked a number of times about what is the acceptable level of deaths due to the virus. The politically correct answer is none as Cuomo is wont to say stridently. So how can Trump open up the economy if the metric is no life will be lost if he opens up the economy. Pointing out that we seem to tolerate the loss of tens of thousands of lives to the flu every year is considered to be naive or worse, insensitive.

Not only has Trump become a prisoner of this process, but so have the governors who feel compelled to declare statewide shutdowns regardless of the data. The more draconian the measures, the better since it is win-win. If the virus infections are low, they can point to the measures taken. If things go South in terms of the virus, they can say it would have been far worse if they hadn't taken such severe actions.

I am seeing this happen here in SC. The governor has been under lot of pressure politically to declare a statewide shutdown. Some cities have unilaterally declared shutdowns, but the state AG has said that they don't have such authority.

When all of the data are analyzed months and years from now, I am convinced that the conclusion will be that we overreacted by cosmic levels adding huge amounts to our national debt and taking counterproductive actions. TDS has played a major role in this crisis.

[Concentrate]

I didn’t sign up for this. I can’t wait to die. What’s so great about living anyway?

Oh Lord please take me as soon as possible.Don’t ask me to get help. There is no help. Learned that over the years.