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February 18, 2020
Why Do New Disease Outbreaks Always Seem to Start in China?

Full article here

The Asian Flu in 1956 killed between one and four million people worldwide. SARS in 2002 infected 8,098 and killed 774 in seventeen counties. H7N9 emerged ten years later to strike at least 1,223 people and kill four out of every ten of them. Now, the milder, yet more infectious COVID-19 has sickened more than 70,000 across the globe, resulting in 1,771 deaths.
All of these outbreaks originated in China, but why? Why is China such a hotspot for novel diseases?

China has a very long a scary track record, but [we] ignore the dangers because of their billion dollar market. Not to mention their cheap labor. Now its coming full circle to bite us on the bottom.

 

[CJ_London]

anybody read the book 'Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics'? I don't have it anymore but it quotes a South American country which charged it's health minister with improving the health of the nation. He achieved this by closing the hospitals. The ill people died off and statistically the result was the population were healthier.

Another example was a US church wanted to find out how religious Americans were - so they asked every single member of their congregation.

Let's take the UK. 38K cases in total with 3,600 deaths. That is roughly a 10% mortality rate so far. Yet they still have 34K cases active.

Where do you get your 34k from? Are you suggesting that people who contracted the virus more than 4 weeks ago are still at risk?

According to this site https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-information-for-the-public

In the UK 173k people have been tested of which 38k have tested positive. Ignoring the fact that the tested population are primarily those who are displaying symptoms (which will become a lower percentage in time) that implies that you have a 21% chance of catching the virus and if you have contracted then a 10% chance of dying - so around 2% of the population is at risk of dying from CV19.

But there are at least two factors in play which make the 2% high. The first is as testing is extended to the wider population the 21% will reduce which in turn will reduce the 2%. The second is that the reason for death is not necessarily being recorded correctly - you have a heart attack or cancer and you have CV19 - your death will be recorded as CV19, not a heart attack or cancer - i.e. you would have died anyway (but perhaps a month or two earlier than expected). To put this in perspective, 450 people die of cancer in the UK every day (source Cancer Research UK) and slightly more of heart attacks, (source British Heart Foundation), To temper this a bit, some deaths occurring outside of hospitals might relate to CV but have not been counted because they have not been tested.

 

[Jon]

The ill people died off and statistically the result was the population were healthier.

How is that lying with statistics if the population became healthier?

Another example was a US church wanted to find out how religious Americans were - so they asked every single member of their congregation.

That's a basic sampling error. You check the source.

Where do you get your 34k from?

I got the figure from here: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

Are you suggesting that people who contracted the virus more than 4 weeks ago are still at risk?

Are you suggesting that WHO is wrong?

"Recently, WHO reported that the time between symptom onset and death ranged from about 2 weeks to 8 weeks."

Real estimates of mortality following COVID-19 infection

As of March 1, 2020, 79 968 patients in China and 7169 outside of China had tested positive for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).1 Among Chinese patients, 2873 deaths had occurred, equivalent to a mortality rate of 3·6% (95% CI 3·5–3·7), while 104 deaths from COVID-19 had been reported...

www.thelancet.com

Add on time from infection to symptoms and you are in the 3 to 10 weeks range

But my point is, as is clear, that the current 10% observable death rate will be higher than the current figures show, once the new deaths catch up. They always lag the current figure.

Ignoring the fact that the tested population are primarily those who are displaying symptoms

You cannot ignore that fact. It is a critical difference. This would be a case of misleading with the use of statistics. You cannot say that the results from a sick group of people can be generalised to the general population.

that implies that you have a 21% chance of catching the virus

It doesn't imply that at all. Rather, it says that if you have classic symptoms of covid-19, you get a test. In the UK, they don't test the general population. Out of those, 21% were shown to have the virus. You are conflating a group of people who are showing enough symptoms that they qualify for a test, with the general population. The thing is, you cannot lie with statistics. It is a myth. Statistics are just a numerical representation of reality. You can attempt to mislead (intentionally or otherwise), and the example you gave is one of them. But I have pointed out the error, so anyone who does not have a statistical background can see why your example does not hold weight.

if you have contracted then a 10% chance of dying

I already covered this point in my previous post. The 10% chance of dying is only for those who have received the test. But most people who are infected are not tested and so that figure drops from 10% to 1%, according to the experts opinion. The error bars will be large though due to the lack of enough data at present.

around 2% of the population is at risk of dying from CV19.

That doesn't hold weight because the previous two assumptions were faulty.

The first is as testing is extended to the wider population the 21% will reduce

i.e. you would have died anyway (but perhaps a month or two earlier than expected)

We all die anyway. It doesn't alter the cause of death. If someone with a terminal illness gets run over, the cause of death is car accident, not the terminal illness.

some deaths occurring outside of hospitals might relate to CV but have not been counted because they have not been tested.

I agree with this. I think the death rate from covid-19 was greatly underestimated in Italy because of the number of untested people who died at home.

If I am wrong in any of the above, please let me know. I am more interested in the truth than being right, as I have said many times here, even if no one believes me!

 

[CJ_London]

How is that lying with statistics if the population became healthier?

it's not, but the intention was the health minister would take action to make unhealthy people healthier, not kill them off. It is a case of presenting stats in the wrong way.

That's a basic sampling error. You check the source.

I agree - but the conclusion drawn was that 95% of Americans were religious - and that was based on those responses received - another misrepresentation

Are you suggesting that WHO is wrong?

- No I'm suggesting a misrepresentation - you said 'Yet they still have 34K cases active.'To put it in perspective you could have also said that of that number, only 163 are considered serious or critical - and I do appreciate that some of the mild patients could move from 'mild' to 'serious'

But my point is, as is clear, that the current 10% observable death rate will be higher than the current figures show, once the new deaths catch up. They always lag the current figure.

I don't disagree - but the figures as presented do not make it possible to make a judgement

You cannot say that the results from a sick group of people can be generalised to the general population.

agree

so anyone who does not have a statistical background

there are a lot of them about

 

[Jon]

it's not, but the intention was the health minister would take action to make unhealthy people healthier, not kill them off. It is a case of presenting stats in the wrong way.

That is a pretty grim action to take. If they say the population is healthier because we killed all the sick ones, then that isn't lying. I think the distinction is that it is not statistics that lie, but people lying by omission or deliberate distortion. The problem is that for the everyday person, it is hard to see where the errors are.

I agree - but the conclusion drawn was that 95% of Americans were religious - and that was based on those responses received - another misrepresentation

Who drew that conclusion? That is the question to ask. Because I would not draw that conclusion. I could do a survey here and find that 100% of people here use Microsoft Access. That is not me lying, or the statistics lying. It is a fair representation. But if I then say that 100% of the general population use Microsoft Access, then clearly that is not the case. You see the difference? I cannot conclude that, unless I am deluded or trying to deceive. The statistics are not lying, your own conclusion is misguided.

No I'm suggesting a misrepresentation - you said 'Yet they still have 34K cases active

I did not say or imply all 34K cases would die. What did I misrepresent exactly?

'To put it in perspective you could have also said that of that number, only 163 are considered serious or critical - and I do appreciate that some of the mild patients could move from 'mild' to 'serious'

Using the 163 figure is not putting it in perspective, since that would only represent a much smaller number of cases than will actually die. The deaths lag the number infected figures by up to 8 weeks, if you go by the WHO data, as an approximation. For example, we had 4,450 new infections today alone. So, going by the current 10% figure of deaths to those tested, that would be 445 new deaths added to the list based on just today! That is a far cry from the 163 in total.

I don't disagree - but the figures as presented do not make it possible to make a judgement

I agree it is hard to be accurate, but they can and do make judgements and estimates based on previous knowledge. As more data comes in, that judgement iterates towards more accuracy. I am hoping Pat is right about a 0.1% mortality rate, because that would be very good news indeed. Lets keep our fingers crossed on that one.

there are a lot of them about

To be frank, nearly everyone. It is only because I did statistics at A levels and also some during my business studies degree that I have any deep understanding. For some people, even basic maths is really difficult, while they might be great in other areas like art or English. I don't want to criticise those who are not good in these areas. Just that my pedantic assessment of lying with statistics is about peoples misinterpretation and faulty conclusions, rather than the science of statistics itself being bogus. When I was studying statistics, I found it really difficult. Same for probabilities. But eventually it carved out a place in my mind for an understanding of the basics.

As an aside, to go along with how easy it can be to misinterpret statistics, I am noticing that on the government charts, they are making the exponential trend look quite flat, giving the illusion of slower growth in the coronavirus spread. All they did was shorted the Y-axis. Sneaky!

Edit: Perhaps my interpretation that you cannot lie with statistics is too literal. If by lying you mean misleading people (who do not know what questions to ask), then I agree, probably most people can be mislead by the fog of the numbers.

 

[Pat Hartman]

My question is where on the continuum of mortality rate do you consider a lockdown to be reasonable?

I don't mean to make light of any deaths. However, last years ordinary flu season resulted in 80,000!!! deaths in just the US and millions of infected. I have no idea what the world wide numbers are Did you even hear a peep about this loss of life? This year's flu season was much milder or the flu shot was more effective and we're losing around 30,000 people. Did you hear even a peep about this loss?

When we raise the speed limit on our highways from 55 to 65, we KNOW FOR a FACT that the change will result in more deaths. Should we set highway speed at 30 MPH because it is safer for everyone?

We know for a fact that the models, starting with the one in the UK that predicted black death like numbers have been consistently wrong. Even back filling them with actual numbers, their projections are way off base so why are we still relying on them?

The last numbers I saw were 257,773 infected and 6586 deaths which gives us ~ 2.5%. That was higher than the last set which gave a rate of ~ 1.8 %. We are still not seeing the results from at least a half million completed tests, probably more by now.

 

[Jon]

I understand your point Pat. So my question is, where on the continuum are you? Do you believe that there should be a lockdown if it was a 99% death rate? If you do, you are saying that you do believe there should be a lockdown given a certain risk of death. What would that point be for you?

When we raise the speed limit on our highways from 55 to 65, we KNOW FOR a FACT that the change will result in more deaths. Should we set highway speed at 30 MPH because it is safer for everyone?

Would you change the 30mph to a 100mph? If not, you presumably believe that a decision to impose some limit is a sensible thing, by assessing risk vs speed.

We know for a fact that the models, starting with the one in the UK that predicted black death like numbers have been consistently wrong. Even back filling them with actual numbers, their projections are way off base so why are we still relying on them?

Do you know the numbers or can you link me a model? Unless you can point me to something a bit more specific, it is hard for me to answer.

The last numbers I saw were 257,773 infected and 6586 deaths which gives us ~ 2.5%. That was higher than the last set which gave a rate of ~ 1.8 %. We are still not seeing the results from at least a half million completed tests, probably more by now.

The 2.5% death rate will rise substantially, because when you think about it, at the beginning of an epidemic, the death rate is zero, even if you had lots of people infected. The death rate lags, as I have argued in my above posts. Take 100 people infected today. It will take up to 10 weeks for all the deaths to come in from those 100 people. One month in, you might only have say 5% dead. But the others are still in the process of dying. Based on your data of 257K, I estimate at the very least 25K are going to die, even if there were zero infections from this point on.

The half million tests...are they testing everybody in US, or only those with symptoms? If testing everybody, then my 25K dead figure would be too high. But because there is already a 2.5% death rate, I suspect more people with symptoms are being tested than the average of the general population. I arrive at that conclusion because the estimated death rate in the general population is likely to be about 1%.

I understand that they expect 200K dead in the US as a "good result".

 

[ColinEssex]

The WHO warned back in 2005 about the need for far greater protection from pandemics.

I read this wrong.
I didn't remember The WHO saying that, but I do remember Roger Daltry saying 'I hope I die before I get old'

Sorry Jon, couldn't resist it.
Col

 

[Jon]

After I read my post earlier today, I was thinking to myself, should I have "The" in front of it or not!

 

[Pat Hartman]

That's not a fair question, Jon. I don't want anyone to die and you know that. I believe in personal responsibility. Even if my government hadn't taken away my freedom to move about, I would still hunker down because I am old enough to be high risk for this virus, plus I have asthma which makes my jeopardy worse. I would also expect everyone with symptoms to also isolate themselves AND their household members since they are probably also infected or at least carriers. That leaves the rest of the people to wash their hands compulsively and keep them away from their face.

The Germans have no speed limit on the autobahn. I don't know what their highway death rate is. Probably less than ours. Our highways are not built for high speeds. If they were, the turns would be banked instead of flat. The ingress and egress points would be much longer allowing cars to accelerate and decelerate more safely. So, yes, I think our roads need rational speed limits. I visited Australia some years ago and drove all over the southwestern part between Melbourne and Brisbane and was seriously impressed by their secondary roads which were capable of safely supporting pretty high speeds for roads that were not limited access.

I don't remember the model but it was developed by a university.

Statistics is all about the sample. If you sample a church full of Catholics, you would think the world is Catholic. If you only sample people whose symptoms were severe enough to send them to the hospital, you are going make the death rate look much higher than it is. Unless the sample set is explained exactly and is actually valid, you can never trust any statistic you didn't calculate yourself.

As the sample of people infected but not ill is growing (I'm not sure why we're not seeing these numbers), the denominator will rise and therefore the mortality rate will drop. It doesn't mean the number of deaths will drop, just the mortality rate. The number of deaths will keep rising until it stops, takes the turn and drops. Right now we have 6586 deaths but we have 257,773 who are symptomatic. That number should probably be closer to a half million which cuts the mortality rate in half. Remember, we are/were only testing people ill enough to present at a hospital (and not even all of those). Very few of the general public were tested. It's like counting only the people with Stage 4 cancer to determine the death rate. Forget the milder cases or those who survive.

If we could believe statistics, Hilary would be in charge of coping with this virus. Would she have moved herself to Mount Weather to ride out the storm? We know she wouldn't mobilize the military to rescue the people trapped at the embassy in Benghazi. If she had, we'd be calling her Madam President today. People would have gotten past the corruption of the Clinton Foundation but they weren't getting past her compete failure under pressure to make the right decision when her embassy staff was in danger. Would she mobilize the military to build field hospitals for NY or send hospital ships to both coasts.

In the end, Sweden, which is relying on self isolation of those in jeopardy and relying on everyone else to develop herd immunity, will be the yardstick against which we measure the results of completely ruining an economy, putting millions out of work, bankrupting thousands of businesses, and spending trillions of dollars that our great grandchildren will still be paying for.

If their mortality rate is 2% and ours is 1.8% was it worth it? I'm going to go with no. Call me uncaring, call me any name you want to. Americans used to be self reliant and take personal responsibility for their actions. That isn't the way of the rest of the world but that WAS the American way. My grandchildren will be living in a very different world.

We should revive this thread next year and look at it with hindsight once we know the result.

There is one good thing that should come out of this idiocy. People should be MUCH more aware of their behavior during flu season which comes every single year and that will save thousands of lives every year.

The media is so wrapped up in if it bleeds, it leads that they have no interest in actually educating the public on the reality of what is going on. They are completely focused on how bad it will get. Trump is on one channel on TV telling the public what the government has been doing for NY to get them more ventilators and other necessary safety gear as well as giving them a medical ship and building at least one field hospital in every borough and more than one in some. And Cuomo is on another channel saying it isn't enough so he's going to take stuff from upstate hospitals because they don't need it now. Then he chastised a reporter when she referred to it as "seizing". His position is that just because he is sending the National Guard to get the gear, it isn't "seizing" because he'll give it back when he doesn't need it any more or failing that, pay for it. Too bad for them if they need the material in the mean time. Three years ago Cuomo was advised to buy several thousand ventilators for ~ $600,000 but he decided, he knew better and blew millions on a failed solar panel project.

They vilified Trump when he shut down flights from the Wuhan area. They vilified him and took him to court to stop his order to shut down flights from certain areas of Europe. They accused him of trying to kill people with fish tank cleaner when he talked about the drugs that were showing promise on treating the symptoms and now Congress is starting YET ANOTHER F****** INVESTIGATION into his handling of this crisis. When will it stop???????????

 

[Pat Hartman]

Also, are the hospitals testing everyone who presents with flu symptoms or are they just assuming it is COVID-19? It is still flu season so it is quite likely that some of the deaths are seasonal flu rather than COVID-19. Maybe that is why the seasonal flu numbers are lower than normal this year. The flu people are being counted in the wrong bucket. The people who publish the statistics do NOT explain their methodology and the feckless media doesn't ask.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Why Do New Disease Outbreaks Always Seem to Start in China?

Maybe because they like to eat bats and pangolins?

That's not actually meant facetiously even though it might have come across that way. I recall that many of the flu-like viruses can cross over from other mammals to strike humans. What is that old quote from the Iron Chef TV series (the Japanese one, not the USA rip-off)? "Tell me what you eat: I will tell you what you are." From Jean Anthelme Brilliat-Savarin. This is most commonly misquoted as "You are what you eat." Along those lines, if you eat infected bats, you'll be infected and bat-shit crazy on top of it.

By the way, for those who accuse me of word trickery, I correctly used a word in this post, a word that has a somewhat rare property. Can you identify the word and the property? The only hint? Something to do with order. Adam is always talking about having fun. So I thought I would too.

 

[ColinEssex]

After I read my post earlier today, I was thinking to myself, should I have "The" in front of it or not!

I think it should be "the W.H.O." I may be wrong.

Col

 

[isladogs]

@The_Doc_Man
The word is facetiously.
There is one other unrelated word in the English language with exactly the same 'property' (which I'm deliberately refraining from mentioning here)
Do you (or anyone else) know what that other word is?

 

[The_Doc_Man]

One well-earned LIKE for Colin. I'll leave the other puzzling word for someone else.

Back to a prior topic, of how we got corona virus...

How the Novel Coronavirus Likely Originated in Bats, and Why That’s Actually Pretty Common

This isn’t the first time this has happened.

www.yahoo.com

The article is far from perfect but it gives some good answers.

 

[isladogs]

BTW I said 'refraining' as a clue to the other unrelated word.

 

[jdraw]

I think there are several with that property --but we could be talking a different property and a different era.
Here are a few

• abstemious
• abstemiously
• abstenious
• abstentious
• transtendinous
• larcenious
• placentious

 

[isladogs]

This was a quiz question I used for many years whilst teaching
"There are two words in the English language with each vowel used once and in the correct order. What are the words?"

Abstemious and the related words abstemiously and abstentious were indeed what I was referring to.
I'm going to discount the third and last words in the list as not being real words in actual use.

I have to admit that transtendinous is new to me.
I'll be trying to work that into a post in the near future

 

[Micron]

Ya lost me. Don't see what being flippant, kidding, joking, not to be taken seriously, humorous, not literal, frivolous, etc.
has to do with order.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

OK, Micron. I used the word "facetiously" which has the vowels A, E, I, O, U, and Y in alphabetic order. And the other word was "abstemiously" which has the same property. I was making a joke on "facetiously" - to speak less than seriously.