Due to China's reaction, There may be good reason to be worried. Extremely high mortality or Zombie apocalypse

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:
And yes, mortality rates are necessarily approximations while this thing is still expanding, but have been pretty consistent across subsequent generations of cases. Putting deaths in relation to full recoveries during the expansion is a lot more fallacious, as it will typically take longer to establish that you're recovered than that you're dead.

Well then the other estimation method is looking at on average how long from diagnosis to death. Then looking back at how many had been diagnosed that many days ago and using that number as the denominator.

But dividing by total cases is deliberately designed to mis-under-estimate the mortality.

Iran Confirms First 2 Cases Of COVID-19; 'Diamond Princess' Confirms 79 More Cases As Quarantine Ends

https://www.zerohedge.com/geop...nfirms-79-more-cases

Last night in New York, we reported that Japanese health authorities were preparing to release the first batch of 500 passengers and crew who had reportedly tested negative for the virus (though that doesn't completely rule out the possibility that a few of them might still develop symptoms caused by COVID-19).

On Wednesday morning in the US (so Wednesday night in Japan), health officials revealed that 79 more people onboard had tested positive for the virus, taking the total number of infected aboard the ship to 621, the AP reports.

As we've noted several times, the notion that thousands of people are about to be released while hundreds of cases of the virus are still being confirmed seems like insanity. While most of the patients will face two more weeks of quarantine when they return home, how are they planning on getting there? There's been no word of an official government transport. By allowing them to travel home, Japan is breaking the quarantine.

^^^^
Don’t worry, somebody will be along shortly to tell us all how we’re over-reacting over a virus that doesn’t spread like it seems to in China. Breaking quarantine is a HUGE mistake given what we already know. That is:

- you can remain asymptotic and still shed virus
- the virus is highly contagious
- virus can survive on fomites for as long as 2 weeks
- the minimum R0 is 2.5-3.5; mortality is at least 10x higher than seasonal flu. Maybe higher.
- because China is hiding facts, we really don’t know how the truth on origin...not that it matters.

I believe that western medical care is vastly more advanced for isolating and dealing with this until it advances past our resources ability to effectively control an outbreak. The problem is complacency and we won’t know we’ve exceeded the threshold until we are passing it. Allowing supposedly healthy travelers to move into the population without rock solid bills of health is extremely foolish.

China Expels 3 WSJ Reporters Over "Racist" Opinion Piece

CNBC's Eunice Yoon, who has also been a reliable source of information out of Beijing since the outbreak began, has published a statement from Beijing about the expulsions: "Chinese people do not welcome media that publish racially discriminatory and malicious slander on China. In light of this, China has decided to revoke the press cards of the three Wall Street Journal correspondents in Beijing starting today."

* * *

Beijing's propaganda campaign to paper over the depredations of its heavy handed quarantines and other outbreak-suppression efforts was launched into hyperspeed earlier this month as the international community - including the WHO - started questioning everything - from whether Beijing deliberately hid information about the outbreak in the early days (looks like it did), to whether the virus was originally developed in a bioweapons lab in Wuhan before being unleashed on the public (...), to whether Beijng was actually capable of resolving this issue without some kind of intervention.

These doubts likely played some role in Beijing's decision to refuse to allow foreign experts into the country - though it gladly accepted shipments of facemasks and medicine - as the most important thing is that the Communist Party project an image of strength upon the global stage.

Which is probably why this editorial annoyed them so much.

From time to time, China expels foreign journalists. In recent years, reporters from Bloomberg, WSJ and the New York Times have been booted from the country. But early Wednesday morning, the Wall Street Journal reported that three of its reporters - Deputy Beijing Bureau Chief Josh Chin and reporter Chao Deng, as well as reporter Philip Wen have been ordered to leave China in five days, according to Jonathan Cheng, WSJ's Beijing bureau chief and a formidable foreign correspondent in his own right.

Amid the chaos of the breakout's early days, WSJ's Beijing bureau was responsible for some seriously ambitious pieces, and Deng's reporting in particular distinguished him as one of the first western reporters to convey serious doubts about the accuracy of China's tests.

Although expulsions of reporters are relatively common, WSJ's editors noted that this is the first time Beijing has expelled multiple reporters from the same foreign news organization in the post-Mao era.

In a strange twist, Beijing didn't mention any of these pieces in its communications with WSJ. According to the paper, an Opinion Section piece titled "China Is The Real Sick Man of Asia." was cited as the reason all three reporters were given five days to leave the country.

The piece was written by Walter Russel Mead for WSJ's "Global View" column. None of the reporters targeted by Beijing had a hand in writing the piece, according to WSJ.

However, Beijing said it wanted to punish the news organization because it felt the column was "racist". This isn't the first time we've heard this excuse from Beijing: the Chinese media have been beating the racism drum for a while to try and discredit criticisms of Beijing's virus response.

As WSJ reminds us:

The phrase “sick man of Asia” was used by both outsiders and Chinese intellectuals to refer to a weakened China’s exploitation by European powers and Japan in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a period now described in Chinese history textbooks as the “century of humiliation.”

It seems Beijing has taken a page out of the American SJW's playbook: Once somebody's accused of racism, logical inquiry ends. We wonder if the Chinese people feel the same way?

https://www.zerohedge.com/geop...racist-opinion-piece

quote:

Originally posted by Fenris:
But dividing by total cases is deliberately designed to mis-under-estimate the mortality.

No, though there is a bit of a conflation of terms here. While mortality is widely used (I do, too), the proper term in epidemology is case fatality rate.

quote:

Case fatality rate, also called case fatality ratio, in epidemiology, the proportion of people who die from a specified disease among all individuals diagnosed with the disease over a certain period of time. Case fatality rate typically is used as a measure of disease severity and is often used for prognosis (predicting disease course or outcome), where comparatively high rates are indicative of relatively poor outcomes. It also can be used to evaluate the effect of new treatments, with measures decreasing as treatments improve. Case fatality rates are not constant; they can vary between populations and over time, depending on the interplay between the causative agent of disease, the host, and the environment as well as available treatments and quality of patient care.

Case fatality rate is calculated by dividing the number of deaths from a specified disease over a defined period of time by the number of individuals diagnosed with the disease during that time; the resulting ratio is then multiplied by 100 to yield a percentage. This calculation differs from that used for mortality rate, another measure of death for a given population. Although number of deaths serves as the numerator for both measures, mortality rate is calculated by dividing the number of deaths by the population at risk during a certain time frame. As a true rate, it estimates the risk of dying of a certain disease. Hence, the two measures provide different information.

As an example, consider two populations. One population consists of 1,000 people; 300 of these people have the specified disease, 100 of whom die from the disease. In this case, the mortality rate for the disease is 100 ÷ 1,000 = 0.1, or 10 percent. The case fatality rate is 100 ÷ 300 = 0.33, or 33 percent. The second population also has 1,000 people; 50 people have the disease and 40 die from it. Here the mortality rate is 40 ÷ 1,000 = 0.04, or 4 percent; the case fatality rate, however, is 40 ÷ 50 = 0.8, or 80 percent. The incidence of death from the disease is higher in the first population, but the severity of disease is greater in the second.

A major difficulty in estimating case fatality rate is ensuring the accuracy of the numerator and the denominator. For example, as duration of the disease of interest lengthens, a person becomes increasingly likely to die of causes that are not associated with the specified disease. If death from another cause is inadvertently counted in the numerator, the case fatality rate will be overestimated. If the death was caused by the disease in question but was not included in the numerator, the case fatality rate will be underestimated. These difficulties explain why case fatality rates tend to be used for acute infectious diseases or diseases with short duration rather than for chronic diseases or diseases of relatively long duration.

https://www.britannica.com/science/case-fatality-rate

I am very confused about the apparent lack of concern by the "officials" in the issue of the two infected Japanese tourists who flew commercial from Japan to Hawaii, toured and flew around the islands then flew back to Japan where the husband is in critical condition and his wife has become ill immediately upon their return.

The potential contamination of large numbers of tourists and island residents could be overwhelming.

Forgot to add this little tidbit. I train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu with a guy who is a adopting a Chinese girl with Downs syndrome. I ran into his wife on Saturday and she told me they still plan on going to China at the end of this month to get her. Her reasoning is the girl is in southern China so it would be fine.

Suppose a disease KILLS 100% of everyone who catches it, but it takes 28 days to do it. And the number of cases doubles every 7 days. Then by your "mis-estimation", the rate would be 6.25%, even though it KILLS EVERYONE.

So the 6.25% rate is so misleading that it is indistinguishable from a lie.

Bottom line, don't include those still sick in the denominator.

Otherwise you could lower the mortality rate by deliberately infecting millions of people. Wow! Look at that. Mortality rate drops.

I understand why the CCP feels the need to underestimate the lethality of this virus. But I'm hard pressed to see how it benefits anyone else.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Fenris,

China is asking for financial assistance in dealing with Wuhan. Perhaps we should offer to buy some of their fake islands.

The 21st will mark 14 days since I got back from Taiwan. Both of my children had a minor fever of 99. One has an ear infection, the other we aren't sure yet but she was coughing last night. One of her classmates checked out early today with the flu, so who knows.

Don't pay attention to what the Chinese government is saying.Pay attention to what the Chinese government is doing.

South Korea has a total of 82 confirmed cases. This may be a crowded Asian country but it is far from backwards and primitive. Also, two deaths in Iran are confirmed from Covid-19. My question is if there are 2 deaths, how many are infected? If current rates to fatalities applies, quite a few unless they acquired it elsewhere.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/w...200219231442918.html

Japan has now reported the first two deaths from the quarantined Diamond Princess due to COVID-19. The Japanese man and woman were both in their 80s, and had been hospitalized off the ship. They both had pre-existing chronic health problems.

Fox News

The was an incident in Indianapolis today on the CBS 11 pm news. I find no mention of it on their website

quote:

Originally posted by oldbill123:
The was an incident in Indianapolis today on the CBS 11 pm news. I find no mention of it on their website

Could you be a bit more specific?

There are over 16,000 people listed as recovered. The strange thing is there aren't any interviews from them except for one heavily edited interview from someone who is Chinese. I find this to be odd.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Killer,

Anyone know why the US case count suddenly went from 29 back down to 15? It must have been because the 14 that were added a few days ago have been subtracted for some reason, but I didn’t see mention of that anywhere.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
Anyone know why the US case count suddenly went from 29 back down to 15? It must have been because the 14 that were added a few days ago have been subtracted for some reason, but I didn’t see mention of that anywhere.

Because they did not contract it in the United States, they were subtracted from the US total and added to 'Other'.

Okay, thanks.