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[elbows]

Oh and regarding the WHO, their relevance in respect of the word pandemic is already diminished to some degree because we are now past the point where state broadcasters will use the word pandemic in their website headline story.

Coronavirus: World must prepare for pandemic, says WHO

But the UN health body says the coronavirus outbreak does not yet meet the criteria for a pandemic.

www.bbc.co.uk

Sometimes the concept of a 'tipping point' will be used in such articles. If I am at all trigger happy with my use of the word pandemic, its because of the inevitable lag that I keep going on about. ie the stage at which we notice that the tipping point has been reached, is delayed compared to when the tipping point was actually reached. Much of what was revealed last week is also a story of what happened 2,3,4 weeks ago.

 

[elbows]

Was it Dr Margaret Harris, who showed up representing WHO in this video from 4:00? If so, I wouldn’t give any weight to her opinion as she seems to know nothing about anything. Half her answers in below interview were “we don’t know” and if they had simply interviewed a cucumber with “ we don’t know” printed on it, there would have been just as much useful info disseminated as a result.

Some of that wont be down to her own failings, but rather the cautious and stifled considerations of the WHO. Diplomacy etc, shit I have gone on about so much already during the last month that I should avoid too much repetition now.

But I'll give one example. From that BBC piece I just linked to, she is quoted as saying this:

"If countries took no measures at all we would have seen way, way, way more cases," she said. "That's what we mean by containment."

Thats all part of the expected change of message at this stage. Having originally positioned containment as being done with the possibility of stopping this becoming a pandemic as the goal, it is now necessary to change the stated purpose of containment. The change from stopping it, to slowing it instead.

This is reasonable stuff, except when its done by being slippery with language, eg saying 'this is what we meant all along when we mentioned containment, honest'. What should actually happen is that we use language and concepts properly and clearly, eg it could have been framed as 'we were in a containment phase and if that stage clearly fails then we move to a mitigation phase'. Some of the tools governments may use are the same in both phases, but the purpose is different, and public expectations need to be different about what can be achieved. But no, admitting to failure is not something that comes easy to bureaucracy, organisations and governments. And heaven forbid the public are introduced from the start to all the possible scenarios and not given an overly reassuring sense of how likely success was in the first place. So with those two alternative options off the table, we are instread left with signs that they are trying to move the goalposts surreptitiously.

 

[sihhi]

WHO press conference WHO expert Bruce Aylward COVID "has to be considered capable of causing enormous health, economic and societal impacts in any setting."

I personally feel every place of work as per US CDC guidelines needs to be asked:

1. What is your plan?
2. How will ensuring a socially-distanced and disinfected environment?
3. Are you promoting work from home?
4. Are you providing sick pay so that the slightly ill do not attend work?
5. Are you cancelling non-essential travel, trips and mass meet ups?

Cases snowball very quick.

At least 3 Korean MPs now being tested after close contact with a civil servant.
Parliament won't meet

South Korea coronavirus cases surge, two more die

South Korea reported 231 new cases of a coronavirus, taking total infections to 833, health authorities said on Monday, a day after raising its infectious disease alert to the highest level.

www.reuters.com

And Hong Kong has issued a Do Not Travel alert for South Korea.

 

[Pickman's model]

you have to wonder what they'd do if something genuinely really fucking serious like the spanish flu broke out

 

[Part-timah]

you have to wonder what they'd do if something genuinely really fucking serious like the spanish flu broke out

The mortality rate as it stands is inline with Spanish Flu. This will probably reduce but we do not know for sure or by how much.

It could argued this has the realistic potential to kill more people than in 1918.

 

[Pickman's model]

The mortality rate as it stands is inline with Spanish Flu. This will probably reduce but we do not know for sure or by how much.

It could argued this has the realistic potential to kill more people than in 1918.

go on then.

 

[elbows]

WHO rep on radio just now saying they don't care about calling it pandemic as it wouldn't change any advice or measures. Also she said pandemic is used specifically in relation to flu, which I thought was unusual...and wrong?

Oh I just found this.

“There is no official category (for a pandemic),” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said.

“For the sake of clarification, WHO does not use the old system of 6 phases — that ranged from phase 1 (no reports of animal influenza causing human infections) to phase 6 (a pandemic) — that some people may be familiar with from H1N1 in 2009,” he said.

Reuters | Breaking International News & Views

Find latest news from every corner of the globe at Reuters.com, your online source for breaking international news coverage.

uk.reuters.com

I guess they didnt like all the bullshit that happened in 2009 then. Some governments leaned on them and the 6 phase scale was even adjusted during the outbreak to serve these purposes, and then they also got a lot of stick when it turned out not to be a bad pandemic.

Oh well, all this will make it a bit easier to use the word pandemic without waiting for arbitrary authorities to declare one.

 

[sihhi]

The mortality rate as it stands is inline with Spanish Flu. This will probably reduce but we do not know for sure or by how much.

It could argued this has the realistic potential to kill more people than in 1918.

CFR 2.3% is Spanish flu levels,

WHO expert adds "This can't work without the collective will of the population contributing to it."

 

[not-bono-ever]

Will of the people

 

[Pickman's model]

CFR 2.3% is Spanish flu levels,

WHO expert adds "This can't work without the collective will of the population contributing to it."

yes. but the spanish flu disproportionately affected people under 65. i'd be interested to see stats on mortality by age for the coronavirus

 

[elbows]

Will of the people

Or Will Self. There is a rumour he has found a very long word that can kill the virus.

 

[elbows]

yes. but the spanish flu disproportionately affected people under 65. i'd be interested to see stats on mortality by age for the coronavirus

I will dig some up shortly. The problem is that the large sets of data are only from China at this stage, and inevitably deaths lag behind, so when I look at studies of the 'first so many thousand cases', they are premature because not all of those cases have reached their conclusion yet. So the numbers likely dont tell the story properly yet.

 

[elbows]

The numbers from Italy are going in a predictably horrible direction.

A fifth elderly patient has died after contracting the coronavirus in Italy, officials said on Monday, while the number of people testing positive for the virus is now over 200.

https://www.thelocal.it/20200224/latest-deaths-coronavirus-italy

This will be the tip of the iceberg too

 

[Part-timah]

go on then.

Will do later. Go to attend a Coronavirus meeting first.

 

[elbows]

yes. but the spanish flu disproportionately affected people under 65. i'd be interested to see stats on mortality by age for the coronavirus

ncov/COVID-19.pdf at master · cmrivers/ncov

Contribute to cmrivers/ncov development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[Pickman's model]

View attachment 199665

ncov/COVID-19.pdf at master · cmrivers/ncov

Contribute to cmrivers/ncov development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

so the % popping their clogs increases with age

 

[elbows]

so the % popping their clogs increases with age

Yes, although as per my earlier caveat, some caution is required with such figures at this stage. For example, if younger people took longer to die, they would be underrepresented by the numbers at that moment in time. I am not suggesting that is actually the case, but just one example of why there is a need for caution when interpreting these early numbers.

 

[Marty1]

Drive thru coronavirus testing being trialled by NHS.

'Drive-thru' coronavirus testing to start in Britain on Monday

Suspected cases asked to drive to NHS health centres where nurses in Hazmat gear will swab them through the window

www.telegraph.co.uk

A Big Mac meal and a Coronavirus swab test please.

 

[elbows]

 

[elbows]

 

[Marty1]

WHO now saying that Coronavirus fits into the category of so called disease X that could wipe out 80 million.

Source: The S*n

 

[elbows]

I just watched a bit of live WHO press conference. I tuned in just in time to hear the director general getting into the word pandamic. It went something along the lines of blah blah not pandemic time yet, pandemic potential yes, not a binary world, potential pandemic yes, series of epidemics in different countries is how we think of it right now.

Someone asked about the earlier comments by Bruce Aylward in regards other countries using the same containment measures as China. They didnt want to answer this question at all, and suggested we wait for Bruce to do a press conference tomorrow.

 

[Poot]

View attachment 199665

ncov/COVID-19.pdf at master · cmrivers/ncov

Contribute to cmrivers/ncov development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Anyone know why it's killing so many more men than women?

 

[Plumdaff]

Anyone know why it's killing so many more men than women?

Something to do with rates of smoking?

 

[elbows]

Dont get me wrong, there was reasonable WHO stuff mixed in with other stuff I dont like. Its fair for them to have pointed out that we can make a lot more assumptions about influenza pandemics because we have clear experience of them. And this isnt influenza, so there is less certainty.

They are also using all sorts of numbers out of China to point to a mixed picture - the alarming news from countries like South Korea, Iran and Italy, vs the hopeful picture painted by the Chinese numbers of recent weeks. Well maybe, it would be foolish to rule out that stuff, it might demonstrate that extreme containment measures across a country can make a huge difference. But at the very least such a possibility is premature to conclude, and will have to be tested against what happens as China relaxes restrictions, and what happens in other countries.

I have to remain somewhat skeptical because a lot of this fluff around the issue of whether this is a pandemic was entirely predictable, as is the sugarcoating. But that isnt just down to the nature of the WHO, its also about the nature of journalism and other human responses to the word pandemic.

 

[elbows]

Something to do with rates of smoking?

Thats one of the things thats been speculated about. Although there was one early indicator of the opposite - there was a study of a much smaller set of early patients that had fewer smokers in it than we would expect to see, but I wouldnt draw conclusions from that at this stage. I dont have any info about smokers from the much larger sets of cases that were used in subsequent studies, such as the one I used earlier for the mortality in different age ranges.

 

[wayward bob]

<checks to see if those flights to italy i need to book got any cheaper>

 

[sihhi]

A Level biology had that women's immune systems are generally stronger than men leaving them more susceptible to autoimmune diseases.

Deagu health services already close to breaking point apparently, presumably because so many need oxygen and ICU.

Coronavirus: leading Korean health official is member of church at epicentre

The official in charge of fighting the virus in western Daegu admitted belonging to the controversial sect only after testing positive for the virus. Fifty coworkers have been quarantined.

www.scmp.com

At present, South Korea bars only travellers from Wuhan and Hubei Province from entering the country.
Dr Lee Hoanjong, a professor at Seoul National University Children’s Hospital, said this meant carriers who might have contracted the virus in China, Singapore or elsewhere in Asia might have passed through quarantine gates unchecked.
“It is like claiming that the gate keeping is being done well without knowing that your back door is still left open”, he said.
“Our efforts should now be shifted to maintaining new cases at a manageable level. Medical staff and health infrastructure in Daegu are now being stretched to a breaking point. If we have another Daegu in this country, I can’t imagine what would happen.”

 

[elbows]

Here are some actual WHO tweets covering stuff said in the press conference that I had crudely described.

 

[elbows]

Sorry about all the tweets but I thought it was important to be clear about their position.