General > General Technical Chat
Covid 19 virus
Mr. Scram:
--- Quote from: coppice on March 19, 2020, 03:06:44 pm ---I guess you haven't been to South Korea.
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I'm trying to find the numbers I refer to but I'm now seeing different numbers. I may be mistaken there. The age groups are definitely distributed differently in both countries. Italy has almost twice as many people over 65.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_age_structure
SiliconWizard:
--- Quote from: coppice on March 19, 2020, 03:05:41 pm ---
--- Quote from: Sredni on March 19, 2020, 02:39:58 pm ---The low mortality rate in SK is linked to the high level of testing but not because of a statistical artifact, it's because by testing early they can isolate the infected before they can get in contact with the more fragile portion of the population.
How do I know it's not an artifact (provided the strain is the same as in Europe)? Because the number of deaths in certain parts of Italy show that there are ten times more deaths than in previous years. This data is public. Today there were army trucks in Bergamo to take the corpses away. This is not something that you see every flu season. As a matter of fact, nobody still alive today has ever seen that.
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Countries in East Asia are getting used to waves of infection, and they've learned what works and what doesn't. They've had SARS, and bird flu, and swine flu, and MERS and they are getting used to epidemic management. Finding the infected quickly, and isolating them is a big win (i.e. test as soon as someone realises they might have an issue, SK style).
--- End quote ---
Yup.
Unfortunately, we have taken a completely different approach in most of Europe (although apparently Germany has managed to do a lot more testing than the others.)
It was even defended for a while that generalized testing was useless. Guess what - we just didn't have enough test kits anyway and no capacity in the short term to have more, so the rationale was convenient. Sad stuff.
vodka:
--- Quote from: MasterTech on March 19, 2020, 08:09:26 am ---Coming from a govt agency, it is estimated that 6300 deaths can be attributed to flu in the 2018-2019 period in Spain. Covid toll seems above 600 now.
The difference is that the press said nothing last year, and the previous, and ....
--- End quote ---
The previson of deaths to a year is about 300.000 . More o less the number of deaths of the last Civil War(Counting the KIA's , civil deaths and the represion by boths factions). Furthermore, about 15-20% shrink of gross domestic product, like a country in conflict.
Source: Roberto Centeno
http://www.alertadigital.com/2020/03/19/el-economista-roberto-centeno-calcula-que-el-coronavirus-terminara-provocando-en-espana-300-000-muertos-y-30-millones-de-infectados/.
Program 17/03/2020 "La voz de Cesar Vidal- En la economia que se fue"
https://youtu.be/JpJZKPzG9DQ
Zero999:
--- Quote from: Stray Electron on March 19, 2020, 02:10:17 pm ---
--- Quote from: Zero999 on March 19, 2020, 12:15:06 pm ---Going by historical reports, this isn't as bad as Spanish flu, which was far more deadly. I imagine if this happened 30 or so years ago, there would be loads of old people saying they've seen worse and it's bonkers. One of the reasons the Spanish flu had a greater impact might have been the population was in generally worse health, as it came after the war, so we can't compare it to that.
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That's not true, you can compare that but you need to allow for the local conditions in each area and account for them separately. The US and Canada for example had no fighting on their own soil so the civilian populations were largely unaffected by the war so it's easy to see the statistics there for healthy people vs unhealthy people (civilians) that were trapped in a war zone (such as in Belgium). There were also a number of neutral countries that had healthy populations. One of the big factors in the death rates was the density of people in some areas due to the war. In the US some of the hardest hit areas were the army training camps in Kansas, yet they had unquestionably the best fed and healthiest men in the entire country. The densely packed front lines and military bases in Europe were also hit hard, as were all of the large cities world wide. Again you can look at the rates for rural Texas and for the large densely packed army bases that were in Kansas and you can clearly see the differences.
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Yes, I think you have a point there. The Spanish flu also seemed had a proportionally higher mortality rate in young healthy adults, than covid and other viruses, because the strong immune response also damaged healthy cells.
james_s:
--- Quote from: Sredni on March 19, 2020, 02:39:58 pm ---But most importantly, learn some math (even basic math) and stop playing this down.
--- End quote ---
I understand math quite well, that's not the issue here. If the economy crashes because everyone is panicking and my income falls to $0 and I can't find work again, I am screwed. At that point I can't afford to go to the doctor if I have a medical problem and neither will many other people. Emergency rooms cannot refuse treatment but they will be flooded with people and even though they can't refuse treatment, they can still send you a huge bill that will go to collections. If enough dominoes start crashing down clinics will start closing, research labs will shut down, manufactures producing all kinds of goods will close, imports of critical supplies and materials will stop, people will not be able to get food, medicine, shelter, electricity, heat or other essentials and people will die. If you're not familiar with the Great Depression of the 1930s you should look it up because the effects were catastrophic and lasted many years, it took a massive world war to pull the US out of that slump. It seems to me that you are advocating panic to the extent that we just shut everything down indefinitely regardless of the impacts and completely ignoring the fact that doing that could easily lead to huge numbers of deaths. Like I said already, if you don't prioritize keep flying the plane (keep the economy going) then it will crash and all the passengers will die, making your heroic efforts to solve the problem at hand irrelevant.
An interesting article I came across discussing the current state of things:
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/
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