BEIJING (AP) — China acknowledged Friday that the coronavirus death toll in the one-time epicenter city of Wuhan was nearly 50% higher than reported, underscoring just how seriously the official numbers of infections and deaths around the world may be understating the dimensions of the disaster.
It will be a long time, if ever, before accurate numbers with regard to infection rates and fatalities will be available and reliable. That’s just the nature of the beast. Different reporting protocols, different testing strategies, different public health protocols, different health care systems and probably other factors will contribute to this.
All nations had countless deaths. Rich, poor, democratic, totalitarian, developed, undeveloped, or decadent made no difference. Only those that put their trust in science were somewhat spared.
Here’s an item from the Guardian that I found helpful in keeping the numbers straight.
And cited by the article (it’s for the UK, but the concepts are applicable anywhere)
https://medium.com/wintoncentre/how-much-normal-risk-does-covid-represent-4539118e1196
This suggests that COVID-19 very roughly contributes a year’s worth of risk. There is a simple reality check on this figure. Every year around 600,000 people die in the UK. The Imperial College team estimates that if the virus went completely unchallenged, around 80% of people would be infected and there would be around 510,000 deaths.
So, roughly speaking, we might say that getting COVID-19 is like packing a year’s worth of risk into a week or two. Which is why it’s important to spread out the infections to avoid the NHS being overwhelmed.
That photo was taken Feb. 1. Guess what Trump was doing about the pandemic on February 1-29?
NOTHING.
Well, he was probably altering his golf scores.
That skill comes in handy when lowering the coronavirus scores, too.
The Guardian article is great because it is short and sweet – summarizes the issues nicely. In the best of worlds, these are the kinds of issues that are inherent in science and data collection. It is hard to predict what we are going to need to know and analyze until we see it in the rear view mirror.
In our VERY challenged US science denier Trump World, this pandemic will be fraught with poor data, destroyed data, lies at every turn, and horribly missed opportunities to act in the public interests, both in health and long-term economics. It is criminal what this Administration and many of its (formerly most trustworthy) agencies and “spokespeople” are saying and doing. Criminal and negligent.
Guess what Trump was doing about the pandemic …
He was doing “…a lotta things that no one knows about. You don’t write about that. You just write bad stuff. You’re a loser. You know that?”
Not that any of us should believe the numbers of deaths are accurate in any country, but where does TPM come up with 4600 deaths in a day? Those simply aren’t the numbers that occurred in a 24 hour period - they may be REPORTED in that 24 hour period. I don’t get it. I don’t want to minimize the number, but I’m not sure this is accurate. Come on Josh!
but if you listen to the MF-ing dumbass MAGAts they’ll insist it’s been over-counted.
There seem to be a lot of MAGAs wandering around armed with a bunch of “statistics” …
Kind of like an 8year old with a grocery bag full of plutonium - totally clueless but terribly dangerous… capable of massive disaster… but don’t worry … daddy said it was all ok
If we had a competent, capable administration that was even remotely dedicated to the care of the entire population - we would be so incredibly better off .
… and this used to be not strictly a political party kind of thing - this is ethics and leadership and responsibility and how the “public good” is or is not prioritized.
Now the conservatives have become dominated by a savage mix of wildly selfish ghouls and colossally ignorant bigoted Luddites - and between them they vigorously oppose even things that make basic common sense - -
“wash your hands” - these asses see as a political statement
A reasonably insightful administration would have thrown massive resources behind a “Manhattan Project” / “Marshall Plan” effort to develop a vaccine and develop remedies. The classic American approach would have been "We did not create this pandemic - but We will lead the way to solving it "
with Trump in charge it has degenerated into a half-assed blame game - with Trump thrashing about trying to find a scheme that enables him to personally gain from this crisis.
The Santa Clara testing provided useful results as to actual infection numbers. It did little to advance the immunity discussion. And this is a big issue, because rather than emphasizing vaccines and acquired immunity, we may have to emphasize strong immune systems and innate immunity.
But it’s not yet clear how long immunity to SARS-CoV-2 will last, or whether it will be the same for everyone. Studies of the coronaviruses behind SARS and MERS showed that antibodies remained in the blood for a couple years, though their power to neutralize pathogens deteriorated over time.
Data from China on SARS-CoV-2 has already shown a wide range of antibody responses. In a group of 175 patients, 70% produced a high concentration (known as a titer) of antibodies. The rest managed to fight off the infection with a minimal titer, suggesting they beat the virus with their T cell response or other parts of the immune system. Which is fine—but those people may not have long-lasting immunity.
the writers blew it. the U.S. total for 04/17/20 was 2.5k. nothing to sneeze at. below is a useful site:
so many unanswered questions. they will remain unanswered until we have massive testing increases.
Which is why we aren’t likely to get anything that sensible.