Northern Europe during Pandemic -- Summers 2020 & 2021 & onwards

[UFO]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I posted in another thread about the striking change in the death rates all across Europe. Even in France, with a huge outbreak according to cases per 100k, almost no one is dying. This is really good new - but why? Why were people dying in the spring and not now?

Pulling it out of nowhere.... Maybe because those who were going to die from it have died, leaving in main those who are going to simply brush it off.


Or to be really off the wall... Maybe figures have been totally manipulated from day 1 and are still being manipulated. Plenty of anecdotal evidence kicking around that this maybe the case.


But hey, with such Massive debt as a result in the west we surely have bigger things to worry about!

[TeddyDiver]

Originally Posted by UFO

Pulling it out of nowhere.... Maybe because those who were going to die from it have died, leaving in main those who are going to simply brush it off.


Or to be really off the wall... Maybe figures have been totally manipulated from day 1 and are still being manipulated. Plenty of anecdotal evidence kicking around that this maybe the case.


But hey, with such Massive debt as a result in the west we surely have bigger things to worry about!

Many reasons, It's early stage (again) and this time it's spread merely among younger generation and also the treatment for severely ill is better now. But just wait for a while and you get the body count to pile up too as the long term complications..

[GordMay]

The probability that someone dies from a disease doesn’t just depend on the disease itself, but also on the treatment they receive (the standard of care has evolved over the course of the outbreak), and on the patient’s own ability to recover from it (people with underlying health conditions, & the elderly are most at risk from COVID-19), and other factors related to the pandemic, such as disruptions to regular health care. It can be challenging to differentiate between people who died of COVID-19 and those who were infected but died from unrelated causes.
However, to me, the thought experiment is, ‘what does 2020 look like if this thing had never, ever happened?'

“Mortality Risk of COVID-19"
A very interesting and informative discussion about the mortality risk of COVID-19, and the statistics cited, when the risk of death from COVID-19 is discussed.
➥ https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid

[barnakiel]

+1!


Very thorough summary in the document. Thanks Gord!

Originally Posted by GordMay

(...)



“Mortality Risk of COVID-19"
A very interesting and informative discussion about the mortality risk of COVID-19, and the statistics cited, when the risk of death from COVID-19 is discussed.
➥ https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid

barnakiel

[Dockhead]

The outbreak in Denmark is starting to be alarming. 7 day rolling average daily cases are up to 317, a 33% increase since just four days ago. That's 5.47 per 100k, now well ahead of the UK.

[barnakiel]

Madrid partial lock down starting Friday.


barnakiel

[dannc]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I posted in another thread about the striking change in the death rates all across Europe. Even in France, with a huge outbreak according to cases per 100k, almost no one is dying. This is really good new - but why? Why were people dying in the spring and not now?

Younger people are now getting the virus.

They have been locked up and are now going out to go to school and/or tired of being locked up so they are going out to socialize.

I see reports of the in my local media as well as in reports from Ireland, Northern Ireland and the Netherlands.

Old people, who have more underlying health conditions and thus are more vulnerable to the virus, have already been hit hard and many have died. Hopefully, they are being better protected now compared to March when some states were shipping people with the virus into nursing homes. That is supposed to have stopped but thousand of elderly people died because of the policies set by the governors in a few US states.

There is a local news website that has been posting information about the virus impact at the county level. This information includes the number of staff and residents infected and who have died in local nursing home. Interestingly, some of the nursing homes in my county have disappeared from the list. I have not heard that those homes have been shutdown so I don't know why they are not being listed. It is important because my county is up to 53 deaths vs 35 the last time I looked. Of the 35 I think about 30 of the deaths were in two nursing home. With the latest information, we don't know if the number of deaths are in nursing homes or not, ie, in younger people or still in the older population.

What seems to have been pushed aside or forgotten, was that the lock down was to prevent the hospitals from being over run with patients. The only way out of this mess is to have the population to get immune to the virus the natural way or via vaccines. The news media pushes the number of people who have the virus, or had the virus, as a disaster when it is what will have to happen. The increasing number of people diagnosed with the virus is almost certainly because of more testing be available. Which is a good thing.

The big question all along is how many people who have had the virus? Nobody really knows, but if the number is at the low end of some predictions/guestimates, the death rate is also much lower than is discussed.

We have been going sailing when work, weather, and family allows. Went a few weeks ago and planning on going again very soon.

Later,
Dan

[stevensuf]

The problem with herd immunity is it looks like it will be very short lived, a few months immunity at best.

[GordMay]

A herd immunity policy, without vaccines*, is a whole lot of very sick people, and mass murder.
(*There are two paths to herd immunity for COVID-19 — vaccines and infection)
Herd immunity is an epidemiological concept that describes the state where a population is sufficiently immune to a disease, that the infection will not spread within that group. In other words, enough people can't get the disease, either through vaccination or natural immunity, that the people who are vulnerable are protected.
COVID-19 has an estimated R0 of roughly 3, and a herd immunity threshold at around 70 percent of the entire population.
If 70 percent of your population is infected with a disease, it is by definition not prevention. How can it be? Most of the people in your country are sick!
Estimates put COVID-19 infection fatality rate at around 0.5-1 percent. If 70 percent of an entire population gets sick, that means that between 0.35-0.7 percent of everyone in a country could die, which is a catastrophic outcome.
As stevensuf notes: It isn't even clear yet, if infection with the COVID-19 virus, makes a person immune to future infection.

“Herd immunity and COVID-19 (coronavirus): What you need to know”
➥ https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-...s/art-20486808

“What is Herd Immunity?”
➥ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/herd-immunity/

[Pete7]

Interesting to see what is happening on the water. The European NW has just had a week of warm gentle breeze after a plume of hot air came up from the Sahara. So is everyone out on the water travelling around the countries of Europe? Well the Danes seem to be travelling, but the English and French and sticking close to their own shores. we saw very few French and Dutch yachts this year and I suspect the French will be saying the same.

Screen shots of AIS today:

Pete

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by GordMay

A herd immunity policy, without vaccines*, is a whole lot of very sick people, and mass murder.. . .

I don't think any country has deliberately allowed the epidemic to increase, for the purpose of reaching herd immunity. I think pretty much every serious voice agrees that we should keep the rate of infection down as much as reasonably practical while we wait for a vaccine, no?

But what is this talk about "mass murder"? In Europe, there is now no excess mortality from the virus anywhere, even in those countries like France and Spain where the virus is ripping. Practically no one is dying -- for example in France, although the daily rate of new cases is now double its peak of last spring. 8,684 new cases per day and almost 300,000 active cases, but only 36 daily deaths, which is statistical noise in a country of 76 million people, compared to nearly 1,500 per day occasionally during the spring.

So if you look at the graphs, you see a big peak of cases and big peak of deaths in the spring; now we are seeing big peaks of cases again, some of them (like France) much bigger than the ones from the spring, and no even bump in deaths.

This is what Europe as a whole looks like -- the bars are cases, the line is deaths:



It's striking.

So "Mass Murder"? (and in bold with extra large font, to boot ). Really? I'm not sure -- looks like we might have overreacted.

Mika Salminen, the head of the public health authorities in Finland, is now saying that COVID is about equal in danger to life to the flu for people under sixty, and about double for people over 60. https://www.hbl.fi/artikel/thls-mika...-milda-symtom/. He says that the danger was significantly overestimated in the spring. https://www.is.fi/kotimaa/art-2000006635940.html

[h20man]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I don't think any country has deliberately allowed the epidemic to increase, for the purpose of reaching herd immunity. I think pretty much every serious voice agrees that we should keep the rate of infection down as much as reasonably practical while we wait for a vaccine, no?

But what is this talk about "mass murder"? In Europe, there is now no excess mortality from the virus anywhere, even in those countries like France and Spain where the virus is ripping. Practically no one is dying -- for example in France, although the daily rate of new cases is now double its peak of last spring. 8,684 new cases per day and almost 300,000 active cases, but only 36 daily deaths, which is statistical noise in a country of 76 million people, compared to nearly 1,500 per day occasionally during the spring.

So if you look at the graphs, you see a big peak of cases and big peak of deaths in the spring; now we are seeing big peaks of cases again, some of them (like France) much bigger than the ones from the spring, and no even bump in deaths.

This is what Europe as a whole looks like -- the bars are cases, the line is deaths:

Attachment 223552

It's striking.

So "Mass Murder"? (and in bold with extra large font, to boot ). Really? I'm not sure -- looks like we might have overreacted.

Mika Salminen, the head of the public health authorities in Finland, is now saying that COVID is about equal in danger to life to the flu for people under sixty, and about double for people over 60. https://www.hbl.fi/artikel/thls-mika...-milda-symtom/. He says that the danger was significantly overestimated in the spring. https://www.is.fi/kotimaa/art-2000006635940.html

There is also the issue of how covid-19 deaths are defined.



In the UK if someone dies within 28 days of a positive covid-19 test.. it is considered a covid-19 death. If someone dies of a stroke (brought on by covid-19 clotting complications) AFTER 28 days... then ... it is a death by stroke.



The numbers that have meaning are deaths 'above predicted'. The easy deaths are the first ones. The low hanging fruit. The aged and infirm. They will be within the 28 days of a positive test. The 'longer tail' of deaths from covid-19 are still unknown.



There have been medical articles (pre published) about seemingly healthy people having strokes (age group from 20 -40) and... as doctors are operating on the strokes.... more form. These people had minor or no symptoms of covid.. but do have anti-bodies... so... it appears the covid did not hurt their lungs... but caused the strokes.




It is actually amazing how quickly we are getting data on this virus and its complications. I suspect that it is nastier then it appears at first glance.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by h20man

There is also the issue of how covid-19 deaths are defined.

In the UK if someone dies within 28 days of a positive covid-19 test.. it is considered a covid-19 death. If someone dies of a stroke (brought on by covid-19 clotting complications) AFTER 28 days... then ... it is a death by stroke.

The numbers that have meaning are deaths 'above predicted'. The easy deaths are the first ones. The low hanging fruit. The aged and infirm. They will be within the 28 days of a positive test. The 'longer tail' of deaths from covid-19 are still unknown.

There have been medical articles (pre published) about seemingly healthy people having strokes (age group from 20 -40) and... as doctors are operating on the strokes.... more form. These people had minor or no symptoms of covid.. but do have anti-bodies... so... it appears the covid did not hurt their lungs... but caused the strokes.

It is actually amazing how quickly we are getting data on this virus and its complications. I suspect that it is nastier then it appears at first glance.

I think that you are right that the "deaths above predicted" is right, and we have to look at this over a certain amount of time before we can understand anything. If there are seriously morbid long term consequences of the virus, we will see that in those numbers.

It is interesting that in Sweden, where there were a lot of reported COVID deaths in April, more than half in care homes, death rates in care homes in Sweden are now far below normal, and even the overall death rate in the country has been running below normal since mid-summer, currently -14%. It is possible that for 2020 as a whole there will be no excess deaths in Sweden.

[Pete7]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

It is possible that for 2020 as a whole there will be no excess deaths in Sweden.

Is that down to increased hygiene awareness and active countermeasures in the population as a whole plus isolation of the most vulnerable from other serious illnesses perhaps?

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Pete7

Is that down to increased hygiene awareness and active countermeasures in the population as a whole plus isolation of the most vulnerable from other serious illnesses perhaps?

Who knows.


One part of the reason may be that few deaths counted as a COVID death are people who would not have died anyway this year. So 6000 deaths in April but then -1000 deaths in June and - 2000 in July and soon it starts to even out.


Another part may be fewer deaths from better hygiene and more social distancing.


On the other hand, the statistics can be muddied by deaths which would not otherwise have occurred but which were not caused by the virus -- so deaths caused by the measures -- suicides, alcohol, lack of medical treatment (15,000 such deaths in the UK already this year). Not much discussed, but we can expect quite a lot of death from the measures in hard lockdown countries. In many countries there has been a huge increase of alcohol consumption during lockdown, especially, increase of problem drinking:


https://www.theguardian.com/society/...iction-experts


This can lead to a very significant amount of death, and can make the statistical picture confusing.



It will be even worse in the U.S. where there is more unemployment, and where losing work often means losing access to health care.



The result may be that we see over the longer term a much better picture of excess mortality in the non-lockdown countries of Northern Europe.