Covid Pandemic

[SouthSardiswx]

I just can't agree with most of what you are saying. Especially the flu thing...the flu can be a brutal disease too, look at 1918, 50 to 100 million died.

Hospital numbers will almost certainly rise a couple of weeks after cases do. They are skyrocketing in Ontario and younger and younger people are being seen in the ICU. There are so so many stories out there about the stress that health care workers are under. The vast majority of society has decided it is worth it to preserve our health care system and continue to make sacrifices so we can all be safe until the vaccines set in.

Mr. Kells what's your thoughts on the variants outdoing the vaccines? do you think eventually the vaccines will bend the variant curve over time?

[Typeing3]

I just can't agree with most of what you are saying. Especially the flu thing...the flu can be a brutal disease too, look at 1918, 50 to 100 million died.

Hospital numbers will almost certainly rise a couple of weeks after cases do. They are skyrocketing in Ontario and younger and younger people are being seen in the ICU. There are so so many stories out there about the stress that health care workers are under. The vast majority of society has decided it is worth it to preserve our health care system and continue to make sacrifices so we can all be safe until the vaccines set in.

Warning - long post below.

Its fairly obvious covid is more deadly than the common flu, even based on the conservative CDC estimates.

However, comparisons with 1918 just do not make sense. How are conditions in the present day even remotely similar to what they were like a century ago? We had millions of soldiers coming out of world war one, having spent months, if not years in the trenches. Add in a lack of basic sanitation and/or hygiene, which is one of (if not the biggest) factor in limiting the spread of flus or viruses.


Regarding the hospital numbers in Ontario...many hospitals in the are actually filling up due to a wave of non covid patients. Many could not go to the hospital due to lockdown related polices, or were too scared to visit during the last year so their conditions have gotten worse. Here's a link to a CBC article detailing this... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/o ... -1.5955592

Several hospitals in the Ottawa area are at or over 100 per cent capacity, but not because of COVID-19 patients.

Rather, officials say it's because many people who don't have the virus are delaying going to hospital, and when they finally do seek treatment, they're very sick.

While as of Thursday there were just five COVID-19 patients at QCH, the hospital has recently been between 105 and 112 per cent capacity.

Policies over the last year have also led to some doctors expecting a wave of cancer patients once the lockdowns have been lifted. Hundreds of thousands across the country have missed their hospital screenings, many of whom already suffer from something that ranks among the top leading causes of death worldwide year after year.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5844708

Which brings me to my next point. These delayed screenings - along with a myriad of other side effects could ironically lead to more life years lost than gained due to stringent lockdowns. This is a UK specific example, but if similar research was conducted in Canada I suspect the findings may be similar.
https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news- ... Life-years

The paper, published in the European Journal of Clinical Oncology, states that around three million people in the UK missed cancer diagnostics due to the lockdown. “As little as a four-week delay was associated with an increased mortality in seven cancer types,” it states. “Recent research suggests that a delay in patient presentation and diagnosis for cancer would lead to 25,812 life-years lost if the delay is one-month long and 173,540 life-years lost if the delay is six-months long."

Using these figures, restrictions need to have prevented at least 21,693 deaths from Covid-19 (assuming an average of eight life-years saved per person) to have justified the policy decision in terms of a maximisation of life-years saved.

“The reality is that the number of life-years saved per person will have been far fewer than that,” state the authors. “According to ONS statistics, the majority of deaths from Covid-19 have occurred in older people and people with pre-existing health conditions, and it is expected that deaths in the 85+ age group would have occurred later in the year, saving life months not years.”

Moreover, “cancer deaths represent only one, albeit important, indirect effect of lockdown measures. In considering the impact of any policy, we need to capture all its possible ripple effects and not just the initial splash when the pebble of intervention hits the water.”

Moving away from Canada specific examples... The incoming wave of malaria throughout Africa is expected to be the worst in decades, as treatments were cancelled due to lockdowns, resulting in way more deaths than directly caused by covid. There have also been more than 200 million children throughout the continent who have been thrown out of school for a year due to lockdowns. Yet the constant feed we receive from the media tells us if we can save just one life, it's worth throwing over 200 million children out of school right? But god forbid if we think the futures of these 200 million children are worth more than letting a 90 year old live in complete isolation for 12 months (driving them insane and possibly to death as they can't even see their friends or family), then we are branded as selfish and horrible people. https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4711

Excess malaria deaths caused by pandemic driven shortfalls in prevention and treatment efforts will probably dwarf direct deaths from covid-19 in sub-Saharan Africa, the World Health Organization has warned.

Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, said at a meeting presenting the new WHO report, “The global health world, the media, and politics are all transfixed by covid-19 and yet we pay little attention to a disease that is still killing over 400 000 people every year, mainly children. This is a disease we know how to get rid of—so it is a choice that we don’t.”

More than 50 million children lost free meals because of school closures, which in many cases have persisted for months and continue today. At least 250 million have been pushed out of school, and there is almost no online learning, a deficit that is likely to impact the region’s earning power for decades to come.

That last bit mentions the hundreds of millions more who are facing a hunger crisis throughout the continent due to these policies. It's not just an africa-specific example as we've witnessed similar effects in south asia due to these policies. And it's not the elderly at risk in these regions. Recent data indicates that over 200,000 additional children in south asia alone have been killed due to starvation brought on by lockdowns:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56425115

Many countries, including those in South Asia, responded to the pandemic with stringent lockdowns. While hospitals, pharmacies and grocers remained open, almost everything else shut down.

The report - Direct and Indirect Effects of Covid-19 Pandemic and Response in South Asia - examines the effect of these government strategies on healthcare, social services, including schools, and the economy.

It estimates that there have been 228,000 additional deaths of children under five in these six countries due to crucial services, ranging from nutrition benefits to immunisation, being halted.

It says the number of children being treated for severe malnutrition fell by more than 80% in Bangladesh and Nepal, and immunisation among children dropped by 35% and 65% in India and Pakistan respectively.

The report also says that child mortality rose the highest in India in 2020 - up by 15.4% - followed by Bangladesh at 13%. Sri Lanka saw the sharpest increase in maternal deaths - 21.5% followed by Pakistan's 21.3%.

Regarding the vaccine... yes it is good news. But does it really need to be distributed to at least 80% of the population to guarantee herd immunity? What about the conservative estimate that 20-30% of Americans have already developed antibodies to covid through natural immunity?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/herd-immun ... 1616624554

Anthony Fauci has been saying that the country needs to vaccinate 70% to 85% of the population to reach herd immunity from Covid-19. But he inexplicably ignores natural immunity. If you account for previous infections, herd immunity is likely close at hand.

Data from the California Department of Public Health, released earlier this month, show that while only 8.7% of the state’s population has ever tested positive for Covid-19, at least 38.5% of the population has antibodies against the novel coronavirus. Those numbers are from Jan. 30 to Feb. 20. Adjusting for cases between now and then, and accounting for the amount of time it takes for the body to make antibodies, we can estimate that as many as half of Californians have natural immunity today.

The same report found that 45% of people in Los Angeles had Covid-19 antibodies. Again, the number can only be higher today. Between “half and two-thirds of our population has antibodies in it now,” due to Covid exposure or vaccination, Mayor Eric Garcetti said Sunday on “Face the Nation.” That would explain why cases in Los Angeles are down 95% in the past 11 weeks and the positivity rate among those tested is now 1.7%

Many medical experts and academic journal articles have attempted to highlight some these facts over the past year (not to mention the rise of suicides, wealth inequality, opioid crisis, societal state of fear, etc), but have received little media coverage, are silenced, censored or villified as it does not suit the narrative of the influential/powerful and vocal groups. It's just not about science anymore, folks.

[SouthSardiswx]

Wow fantastic read T3, l hope John reads this. I needed 2 cups of coffee to read through it. So basically there's alot that ppl are not getting the facts or understanding about Covid are the numbers skewed in some countries then.?

[John]

The cases are about to go through the roof just watch and the variants will fuel it. I hope the vaccines will bend the curve but at the rate we are administrating them soon we won't be able to keep up with cases.

The cases are going to through the roof Sardis, but the critical illnes and deaths are thankfully not

[John]

I just can't agree with most of what you are saying. Especially the flu thing...the flu can be a brutal disease too, look at 1918, 50 to 100 million died.

Hospital numbers will almost certainly rise a couple of weeks after cases do. They are skyrocketing in Ontario and younger and younger people are being seen in the ICU. There are so so many stories out there about the stress that health care workers are under. The vast majority of society has decided it is worth it to preserve our health care system and continue to make sacrifices so we can all be safe until the vaccines set in.

The flu is brutal your right so is covid19 but they aren’t that different that we need all these rules

[John]

Warning - long post below.

Its fairly obvious covid is more deadly than the common flu, even based on the conservative CDC estimates.

However, comparisons with 1918 just do not make sense. How are conditions in the present day even remotely similar to what they were like a century ago? We had millions of soldiers coming out of world war one, having spent months, if not years in the trenches. Add in a lack of basic sanitation and/or hygiene, which is one of (if not the biggest) factor in limiting the spread of flus or viruses.


Regarding the hospital numbers in Ontario...many hospitals in the are actually filling up due to a wave of non covid patients. Many could not go to the hospital due to lockdown related polices, or were too scared to visit during the last year so their conditions have gotten worse. Here's a link to a CBC article detailing this... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/o ... -1.5955592



Policies over the last year have also led to some doctors expecting a wave of cancer patients once the lockdowns have been lifted. Hundreds of thousands across the country have missed their hospital screenings, many of whom already suffer from something that ranks among the top leading causes of death worldwide year after year.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5844708

Which brings me to my next point. These delayed screenings - along with a myriad of other side effects could ironically lead to more life years lost than gained due to stringent lockdowns. This is a UK specific example, but if similar research was conducted in Canada I suspect the findings may be similar.
https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news- ... Life-years



Moving away from Canada specific examples... The incoming wave of malaria throughout Africa is expected to be the worst in decades, as treatments were cancelled due to lockdowns, resulting in way more deaths than directly caused by covid. There have also been more than 200 million children throughout the continent who have been thrown out of school for a year due to lockdowns. Yet the constant feed we receive from the media tells us if we can save just one life, it's worth throwing over 200 million children out of school right? But god forbid if we think the futures of these 200 million children are worth more than letting a 90 year old live in complete isolation for 12 months (driving them insane and possibly to death as they can't even see their friends or family), then we are branded as selfish and horrible people. https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4711


That last bit mentions the hundreds of millions more who are facing a hunger crisis throughout the continent due to these policies. It's not just an africa-specific example as we've witnessed similar effects in south asia due to these policies. And it's not the elderly at risk in these regions. Recent data indicates that over 200,000 additional children in south asia alone have been killed due to starvation brought on by lockdowns:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56425115



Regarding the vaccine... yes it is good news. But does it really need to be distributed to at least 80% of the population to guarantee herd immunity? What about the conservative estimate that 20-30% of Americans have already developed antibodies to covid through natural immunity?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/herd-immun ... 1616624554



Many medical experts and academic journal articles have attempted to highlight some these facts over the past year (not to mention the rise of suicides, wealth inequality, opioid crisis, societal state of fear, etc), but have received little media coverage, are silenced, censored or villified as it does not suit the narrative of the influential/powerful and vocal groups. It's just not about science anymore, folks.

Well said!

[PortKells]

Do I support lockdowns? Not really. I wish that the government had taken a different approach. Mass masking from the beginning. Ask people to mask up everywhere they go, including school, including in social settings, maybe even at home if you have older residents living with you. Masks suck but there is no real downside to them outside of being an annoyance. Especially when there are better masks, three layered that can be made out of comfortable materials and the government could have used emergency powers to mass manufacture them and actually educate the populace, rather than deny that they work so people wouldn't go out and hoard N95's (spoiler alert, it didn't work).

Lockdowns have very harmful side effects on top of shutting down the economy. T3 pointed out the health risks. But they health risks of letting this thing run rampant have been demonstrated. You can't have your regular screening if hospitals have been overwhelmed. You can't have a functioning society if the entire healthcare system is occupied trying to save lives from covid and choosing who lives or dies. Just because lockdowns suck, doesn't mean the alternative doesn't suck possibly worse.

We have so far not even been locked down in BC...other places have had far stricter lockdowns. We have services, we have school, we now have small social gatherings. And right now we are seeing a huge increase in cases in which hospitals and ICU beds will fill up, as they have every other time in places cases have skyrocketed like this.

[Typeing3]

Lockdowns have very harmful side effects on top of shutting down the economy. T3 pointed out the health risks. But they health risks of letting this thing run rampant have been demonstrated. You can't have your regular screening if hospitals have been overwhelmed. You can't have a functioning society if the entire healthcare system is occupied trying to save lives from covid and choosing who lives or dies. Just because lockdowns suck, doesn't mean the alternative doesn't suck possibly worse.

Would our hospitals have been overrun if we had less restrictions or no lockdown? The jury is still out on that but its highly doubtful we would have descended into the doomsday scenarios that have been constantly highlighted by the media. What we do know is that hospitals are reaching overcapacity in places like Ontario and New Zealand now due to non-covid related issues brought directly on by lockdowns.

The full effects may not be seen as of yet, but many doctors are extremely worried about the elevated cancer mortality rate in the coming years that may be inevitable now. As my previous post highlighted, things like hunger/malnutrition deaths along with malaria deaths are spiking to levels not seen in generations due to lockdowns , and are dwarfing total covid mortality. And contrary to covid, these typically have extremely elevated mortality rates among children!



Here are another couple sources arguing against lockdowns. The first, below, is an opinion piece written by a medial professional first citing evidence. While the last bit is fairly anecdotal, it should not be taken lightly. Who knows how many other similar cases have been out there in the past year?
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-m ... r-lockdown

If lockdowns were a prescription drug for Covid-19 treatment, the FDA would never have approved it. The seminal Imperial College London paper and other mathematical models like it were used to justify their use, but clinicians would never prescribe a drug or propose a surgery based on such modelling. The now well-publicized failure of these models to accurately predict Covid-19 outcomes proves the rule.

Luckily, we no longer have to talk about mathematical models. We now have seven months of real-world data to look at. Some pundits compare Sweden to Norway to argue for lockdown. Others compare Sweden to the UK, or Florida to New York to argue against. Either sort is vulnerable to accusations of cherry-picking the data. In medical science, we rely on epidemiologists to take all the available data from all the countries and perform statistical analyses to correct for as many different variables as possible.

This has now been done for lockdowns. In August, the Lancet published an analysis of data from 50 countries. The researchers found that full lockdowns were 'not associated' with decreased mortality from Covid-19. These are hard outcome data; reality cannot be waved away with theories or projections.

So much for the purported benefits. What about the risks? We cannot answer this question fully because a worldwide lockdown experiment has never been run before. However, evidence for the harms of lockdown is now piling up. In the US, homicides are up 50 per cent compared to last summer. In France, domestic violence calls are up 30 per cent. In Canada, almost three times more people are contemplating suicide compared to last year; and in British Columbia, overdose deaths have tripled from pre-pandemic levels. When you deprive children of their education, adults of their livelihood, and elderly people of their social connections, desperation and despair quickly set in. While a thoughtful person might have predicted this, the mathematical models did not.

All of these numbers fit with what I see in my clinical practice. I have personally admitted dozens of elderly people to hospital with illness resulting from social isolation and neglect. Some were literally starving to death. One patient, in her eighties, lived in a retirement community but relied on family members to feed her meals. When they were socially distanced (banned) from the premises, she couldn’t feed herself and her health quickly deteriorated. Another patient, a 92-year-old woman, simply gave up on life and started refusing her meals once her family stopped coming to visit. Both these scenes were catastrophically inhumane and will stick with me for a long time. Neither is captured in the government’s Covid-19 statistics.

The second is a journal article published in the international journal of environmental research and public health, and illustrates the role that mass hysteria has played in our collective (government, society, the media and some of the medical/academic community) psyche over the past year. Its a fairly long read, but I've quoted the conclusion below.
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/4/1376/html

Mass hysteria can have enormous public health costs in terms of psychological stress, anxiety, and even physical symptoms. To these costs must be added indirect adverse health effects from alcoholism, suicides, or damage from deferred treatment and delayed recognition of illness. Policy failures in mass hysteria can lead to economic decline and poverty, which in turn negatively impacts public health and life expectancy.
Studies of mass hysteria have mostly focused on outbreaks in localized settings of schools or businesses.

However, in the digital age of global mass and social media, the possibility of global mass hysteria exists, a phenomenon that has not yet been studied. Our study of the political economy of mass hysteria draws on the well-established psycho-logical phenomenon of mass hysteria and applies it to a new and innovative context of global mass hysteria for which no literature exists yet. More specifically, we analyzed how the political system can influence the likelihood and spread of mass hysteria in a digitized and globalized world based on economic principles. We discussed how the state and its size increase the likelihood of mass hysteria by comparing an idealized minimal state with an idealized welfare state, addressing a previously completely unexplored research question. Our findings are highly relevant and important because the policy failures induced by mass hysteria are potentially catastrophic for public health.

We found that the size and power of the state contributes positively to the likelihood and extensions of mass hysteria. The more centralized and the more power a state has, the higher the probability and extension of mass hysteria. In a minimal state, there exist self-correcting mechanisms that limit collective hysteria. The enforcement of private property rights limits the harm inflicted by those that succumb to the hysteria. The state (thanks to a fuzzy public sector and its soft power), by contrast, amplifies and exacerbates mass panics, potentially causing important havoc. What are temporarily, locally limited, isolated outbreaks of mass hysteria, the state may convert into a global mass hysteria for an extended period of time. Recent development in information technology and, particularly, the use of social media, as well as a decline of religion, have made societies more prone to the development of mass hysteria.

Unfortunately, once a mass hysteria takes hold of the government, the amount of damage the hysteria can inflict to life and liberty surges as the state’s respect for private property and basic human rights is limited. The violation of basic human rights in the form of curfews, lockdowns, and coercive closure of business has been amply illustrated during the COVID-19 crisis. Naturally, the COVID-19 example is indicative rather than representative and its lessons cannot be generalized. During the COVID-19 crisis, several authors have argued that from a public health point of view, these invasive interventions such as lockdowns have been unnecessary and, indeed, detrimental to overall public health. In fact, prior scientific research on disease mitigation measures during a possible influenza pandemic had warned against such invasive interventions and recommended a more normal social functioning.

Moreover, in reaction to past pandemics such as the Asian flu of 1957–1958, there were no lockdowns , and research before 2020 had opposed lockdowns. From this perspective, the lockdowns have been a policy error. We have shown that these policy errors may well have been produced by a collective hysteria. To which extent there has been a mass hysteria during the COVID-19 crisis is open for future research. In order to prevent the repetition of policy errors similar to those during the COVID-19 crisis, one should be aware of the political economy of mass hysteria developed in this article and the role of the state in fostering mass hysteria. Public health is likely to be affected negatively by state interventions during a mass hysteria due to policy errors.

[Typeing3]

Wow fantastic read T3, l hope John reads this. I needed 2 cups of coffee to read through it. So basically there's alot that ppl are not getting the facts or understanding about Covid are the numbers skewed in some countries then.?

Thanks.

Yes there's a ton of misinformation out there, and social media obviously doesn't help in that regard (on both sides of the debate).

[Forrest Gump]

Masks suck but there is no real downside to them outside of being an annoyance.

https://nypost.com/2020/08/05/mask-mout ... ing-masks/

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavir ... -1.5187822

[SouthSardiswx]

Thanks.

Yes there's a ton of misinformation out there, and social media obviously doesn't help in that regard (on both sides of the debate).

l agree about the media really likes to overhype things,.

[SouthSardiswx]

https://nypost.com/2020/08/05/mask-mout ... ing-masks/

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavir ... -1.5187822

Ah nice to see you've come out of spring hibernation Sir Gimps . I was ready to send Slyty out there to find you but he seems to be mia since the great measuring device scandal. Hope he's o.k. he lives just down the road from me. I don't think he's posted since mid Jan. Afew members have packed it in but it's nice to see afew have posted lately.

[PortKells]

https://nypost.com/2020/08/05/mask-mout ... ing-masks/

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavir ... -1.5187822

Oh they definitely suck don't get me wrong but I would consider that more of an annoyance. Plus it said people were neglecting their oral health due to not going out or because nobody can smell their breath. My main issue is mask itch, especially with having some facial hair.

[John]

More restrictions imposed

[SouthSardiswx]

More restrictions imposed

Lock it all up again you saw this coming last week. Vaccines aren't going to get us back to normal at this rate. Unfortunately lots of businesses are going to collapse now.