There’s still so much we don’t know.
As health care systems in New York City and around the country start to buckle under the stress of COVID-19 patients, it’s not clear what the true death toll of the pandemic will be.
Hard to know something when it’s in the best interest of the powers that be to keep it covered up. Hence, no testing.
No, next question…
Will We Ever Know COVID-19’s Real Death Toll?
No.
In reality you will like a get a pretty good measure from measuring the excess mortality that you observe starting ~Mar 1 to whenever the fucking virus is considered dealt with…
That is assuming that they can count all the dead people…
Never tell the truth Trump will not allow the real toll.
Puerto Rico. Who could have known that was a harbinger of all emergency response handling yet to come from the current maladministration? Who could have known? Everyone who understands the management and execution of policy. The current maladministration is all about “Heckuvajob!” The current maladministration is all about veneer, and none about actual performance or competence.
So, how many people in Puerto Rico died as a consequence of the hurricanes, inadequate emergency response and the inability to see a doctor? Do we really know?
Unless a doctor writes COVID-19 on the cause of death, this maladministration won’t count it. If a patient dies in their home because of their isolation from medical treatment for a chronic condition, this maladministration won’t count it. Why not? Because it’s not in their vested interest. An increased count places a smudge on the veneer.
Or a smudge on their faux gold brass plating.
As much stupid shit Trump does that we know about I’m guessing there’s literally a shit load more we don’t
We are definitely now Puerto Rico. What a complete and utter failure our healthcare? system is. Corporate healthcare is a death sentence with payments.
I know I don’t know what he’s talking about. Anyone think he does or that he realizes this won’t help if they aren’t doing any business?
The death toll is zero, according to these two experts: https://www.salon.com/2020/03/31/fox-nations-diamond-and-silk-falsely-claim-number-of-covid-19-cases-is-inflated-to-hurt-trump/
They didn’t explain why every other nation on earth apart from Turkmenistan is in the grip of the same hoax.
The Pentagon alone invokes the Act in several hundred thousand transactions per year, every year.
For those history buffs out there, I was surprised to learn that the 1957-58 “Asian Flu” and the 1968 “Hong Kong Flu” were both estimated to have killed ~100,000 Americans, (for 68’ the estimates range widely from 33 to 100 thousand). Both pandemics are estimated to have killed 1 million world wide and were classified as Level 2 (1918 was Level 5, the worst)…
Yet, this one is very different, I don’t recall a similar reaction back then, Obviously, this is not the flu but aside from that I don’t recall my parents being concerned in '68 and only heard occasional reference in the ensuing years.
Is it just solely due to the much higher mortality for COVID-19?
Was it a sidenote to the turbulence of 1968?
Any numbers out of Puerto Rico are LIES. They are fake Americans who speak Spanish and don’t appreciate important post-hurricane supplies such as paper towels.
The mayor of San Juan is not only a woman, she is an ingrate, never-trumper too.
Spanish-speaking crisis actors.
And do you know PUERTOOO REEcans live on an island? Surrounded by lots of water? Betcha didn’t know . . .
Those two are gunning for Rush’s audience once he shrugs off his mortal coil…
Will We Ever Know COVID-19’s Real Death Toll?
No! All the countries that have had cases and deaths, at the end of the outbreak will need to go back through their data which includes all testing, slides, blood work etc and try and separate if the person died directly from the virus itself or they were in poor physical health and the virus “may” have accelerated their deaths. They also have to try and determine if the people that died were going to die anyway because the death rate from pneumonia in say China and Italy are extremely high every year because of the pollution in those countries. Lancet study in 2015 stated 400,000 people die prematurely from pneumonia every year in China. According to the WHO 13,823 people died from pneumonia in Italy in 2017-not updated yet. Currently Italy is re-evaluating the causes of deaths and "only12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus,” Plus, different countries are also reporting cases and deaths in different ways: in Italy, Covid-19 is listed as the cause of death even if a patient was already ill and died from a combination of illnesses.
It’s going to be a mess trying to figure the exact numbers out.
We won’t, but we do know this–
after 200 years of being mostly confined to limestone bluff, a pack of wild Kashmiri goats — seizing an opportunity presented by Britain’s national lockdown in response to the coronavirus — has taken its rightful place as rulers of Llandudno, a seaside town in northwest Wales.
With the town now deserted as residents shelter inside, packs of goats have descended on the picturesque resort town, blocking traffic, grazing on people’s hedges, lazing about on the church’s green, and strutting by shuttered shops like Ewe Felty Thing, a local boutique that sells all things wool.
Yours is a very good question. Ask yourself if any of those pandemics, if treated with a national-level quarantine and today’s modern health care, would have produced as many deaths as estimates for the current pandemic.
To really get to an answer regarding the mortality and morbidity due to a virus, you need to understand the differences in the viruses. There are a host of corona viruses and a host of influenza viruses. These are RNA viruses and as such have a higher incidence of mutation from host cell to host cell. Compare that to a DNA virus like smallpox. DNA viruses mutate much more slowly than RNA viruses because DNA has a double-helix structure that makes mutation more difficult, while RNA is a comparatively flimsy single strand.
When you get infected with a flu virus, it is usually a mutated version of a flu virus that might have infected you before or that a vaccine has partially protected you against, so you don’t get anywhere near the bad response as if the virus was novel to you. Even a mutated flu virus isn’t likely considered “novel” because there are likely some antibodies in your autoimmune system that can start to attack before you are massively infected throughout your body. Novel doesn’t just mean “new to you during your life experience”. Novel means “new to your species”, and as such you have no significant autoimmune defense due to the process of natural selection throughout your species.
Frankly, I’m surprised and delighted that the death toll hasn’t been much higher. If you look at Italy, you see that the mortality rate is above 10% when the health care system can’t keep up. That’s why we have to isolate and avoid the infection until there is a suitable vaccine.
In a country of 330 million, if one-third (110 million) get infected, and there is a 1% mortality rate, then 1.1 million die. 2% is what most DPH personnel (doctorates in public health) were using to estimate for this virus, so without any governmental action, they were expecting 2.2 million dead. 10% is so horrific it is almost unthinkable.
Thanks, I was already aware of most of what you wrote, so my take is that this one is really different (in the public perception) because of the mortality rate. If it was 0.1% or so then the orange shitgibbon could have likely skated…
As for a vaccine, if I am not mistaken, an effective one was never developed for the orignal SARs corona virus. Why are we sure that one is achievable in this case?