Coronavirus

[Cigarbutt]

On average, #COVID19 was associated with 14 years of life lost (YLL) for males, and 11 years for females in Australia.

This is larger than most of the major causes of death, including heart disease. CV19 is associated with substantial premature mortality.

https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/australias-health-2020-data-insights/contents/summary

If interested, the following takes the life insurer's point of view and has a specific section "years of life lost" near the conclusion that covers the relevant methodology (references 21, 22 and 23).

https://www.swissre.com/reinsurance/life-and-health/l-h-risk-trends/unravelling-the-cost-of-lives-lost-covid-19.html

 

Submitted in the spirit of a balanced perspective:

-The years of life lost will vary from country to country and even from region to region because an older profile of deaths (higher proportion of deaths in chronic care homes) will mean a lower number of years lost.

-Even if the methodology is quite solid (by controlling for various factors retrospectively), the methodology does not take into account the adverse selection problem. People at higher risk of becoming sick, getting hospitalized and eventually dying have an intrinsic set of risk factors that cannot be well delineated retrospectively, at least at this point. This suggests that the numbers mentioned likely overestimate the years lost.

-Also, this needs to be considered from a quality of life point of view. Using a bottom-up perspective, a large number of people who died had very poor quality of life to start with.

[Liberty]

Well, this inspires confidence in federal leadership during this historical crisis...

 

[Jurgis]

Well, this inspires confidence in federal leadership during this historical crisis...

 

 

I've heard he managed to recognize the elephant in the room.  ::)

[Jurgis]

https://apnews.com/ae59f9850a8aea24ee4152f5dbdac4a0#:~:text=The%20Pepcid%20project%20underscores%20what%20critics%20describe%20as,projects%20that%20aren%E2%80%99t%20based%20on%20more%20rigorous%20science. - At least you won't have a heartburn. Maybe.

[Liberty]

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-21/masks-help-avoid-major-illness-coronavirus

 

Cloth face masks still provide a major protective benefit: They filter out a majority of viral particles.

 

As it turns out, that’s pretty important. Breathing in a small amount of virus may lead to no disease or a more mild infection. But inhaling a huge volume of virus particles can result in serious disease or death.

 

That’s the argument Dr. Monica Gandhi, UC San Francisco professor of medicine and medical director of the HIV Clinic at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, is making about why — if you do become infected with the virus — masking can still protect you from more severe disease.

 

“There is this theory that facial masking reduces the [amount of virus you get exposed to] and disease severity,” said Gandhi, who is also director for the Center for AIDS Research at UC San Francisco.

[Cigarbutt]

https://apnews.com/ae59f9850a8aea24ee4152f5dbdac4a0#:~:text=The%20Pepcid%20project%20underscores%20what%20critics%20describe%20as,projects%20that%20aren%E2%80%99t%20based%20on%20more%20rigorous%20science. - At least you won't have a heartburn. Maybe.

Actually, what has been going on in "research" (even more acutely in CV-related work) lately has become a source of heartburns, headaches, SMH movement disorder etc

The story behind Pepcid and related is interesting and the recent antiviral twist is indeed food for thought:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/new-york-clinical-trial-quietly-tests-heartburn-remedy-against-coronavirus

 

Some say it's the politicizing (oups forbidden word) of science but it's also the democratization of science as a good idea taken too far (the founding fathers had thought of that somehow). IMHO, the return (real) on investments in pharma has been disappointing for a while and financial engineering as well as marketing have taken too much importance but the democratization of science and research should come with a kit explaining how to auto-assess the person's own set of very real limitations before taking action on "ideas".

 

Anyways, instead of fighting the Fed or fighting trends, in a spirit of: "if you can't beat them, join them", i think i'll try to get some plastic surgeons involved and act as the financial promoter. After a retrospective chart review showing that face wrinkles show a clear ominous odds risk ratio for a bad outcome after contracting CV, i will make a study that will try to show that face lifts followed by a molybdenum-based skin cream will be protective against the virus. And the Nobel Prize will be within reach..

 

 

[LC]

And the Nobel Prize will be within reach.

 

You have my vote. Now, I am not on the Nobel committee, so my vote doesn't count.

 

Alas! you say, hopes have been dashed. But not so soon! You see, all those on the committee do, in fact, vote. And as we have already established that I too vote, it can be shown that I am therefore on the committee.

 

So, congratulations.

[DooDiligence]

And the Nobel Prize will be within reach.

 

You have my vote. Now, I am not on the Nobel committee, so my vote doesn't count.

 

Alas! you say, hopes have been dashed. But not so soon! You see, all those on the committee do, in fact, vote. And as we have already established that I too vote, it can be shown that I am therefore on the committee.

 

So, congratulations.

 

I think therefor I am,

and I do so like green eggs & ham.

[Guest cherzeca]

I have a good friend who is a world renown surgeon, who also has an underlying health condition that leaves him especially at risk to covid.  he is planning to reopen his office soon in NYC, closed since march, and his protocol is simple...produce a recent covid negative test before your appointment is confirmed and you walk into the office...and of course there will be forehead scan and finger 02 test.  but I am really overjoyed at this small return to normalcy.  some people are made to contribute to society, their contributions are greater than yours and mine, and we are all the better for it

[patience_and_focus]

https://apnews.com/ae59f9850a8aea24ee4152f5dbdac4a0#:~:text=The%20Pepcid%20project%20underscores%20what%20critics%20describe%20as,projects%20that%20aren%E2%80%99t%20based%20on%20more%20rigorous%20science. - At least you won't have a heartburn. Maybe.

 

On the other hand a cheap generic drug has actually been shown to be effective in double blind randomized clinical trials for saving lives of the very sick Covid-19 patients (hint: its not HCQ)

 

https://fivethirtyeight.com/videos/how-a-60-year-old-drug-became-our-best-hope-for-saving-people-with-covid-19/

[Liberty]

[Liberty]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/24/new-zealand-beat-covid-19-by-trusting-leaders-and-following-advice-study

[Spekulatius]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/24/new-zealand-beat-covid-19-by-trusting-leaders-and-following-advice-study

NZ did very well. One overarching theme is that islands ( NZ, Australia ( technically a continent but still surrounded by water), Iceland, Japan , South Korea ( norther border is impenetrable) can do better because they have easier ways to control access.

 

The exception are the turds from the UK of course.

[Liberty]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/24/new-zealand-beat-covid-19-by-trusting-leaders-and-following-advice-study

NZ did very well. One overarching theme is that islands ( NZ, Australia ( technically a continent but still surrounded by water), Iceland, Japan , South Korea ( norther border is impenetrable) can do better because they have easier ways to control access.

 

The exception are the turds from the UK of course.

 

I don't think most of the countries that are having trouble are having trouble because infected people are coming over the borders...

[Gregmal]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/24/new-zealand-beat-covid-19-by-trusting-leaders-and-following-advice-study

NZ did very well. One overarching theme is that islands ( NZ, Australia ( technically a continent but still surrounded by water), Iceland, Japan , South Korea ( norther border is impenetrable) can do better because they have easier ways to control access.

 

The exception are the turds from the UK of course.

 

I don't think most of the countries that are having trouble are having trouble because infected people are coming over the borders...

 

I cant think of any other way a virus that started in China goes global...can you?

[Liberty]

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/07/frequent-fast-and-cheap-is-better-than-sensitive.html

 

A number of firms have developed cheap, paper-strip tests for coronavirus that report results at-home in about 15 minutes but they have yet to be approved for use by the FDA because the FDA appears to be demanding that all tests reach accuracy levels similar to the PCR test. This is another deadly FDA mistake. [...]

 

The PCR tests can discover virus at significantly lower concentration levels than the cheap tests but that extra sensitivity doesn’t matter much in practice. Why not? First, at the lowest levels that the PCR test can detect, the person tested probably isn’t infectious. The cheap is better at telling you whether you are infectious than whether you are infected but that’s what we want to know open schools and workplaces. Second, the virus grows so quickly that the time period in which the PCR tests outperforms the cheap test is as little as a day or two. Third, the PCR tests are taking days or even a week or more to report which means the results are significantly outdated and less actionable by the time they are reported.

 

The fundamental issue is this: if a test is cheap and fast we shouldn’t compare it head to head against the PCR test. Instead, we should compare test regimes. A strip test could cost $5 which means you can do one per day for the same price as a PCR test (say $35). Thus, the right comparison is seven cheap tests with one PCR test.

[Liberty]

I don't think most of the countries that are having trouble are having trouble because infected people are coming over the borders...

 

I cant think of any other way a virus that started in China goes global...can you?

 

Way to totally miss the context.

 

The countries that are doing badly are doing badly because they didn't do the steps to control the virus, and those that do well do so because they did. There's variance and some places were less lucky or had worse demographics/density/etc than others, but generally, the virus was within the borders of all these islands and if they hadn't done the steps, they'd be doing just as bad as anyone else.

 

In the early phases the virus spread by travel, but once it's everywhere and travel has been mostly shut down for months, what matters is the local response, not blocking new infections from outside. Or in other words, it's been many months now that the source of new infections is local, not international.

[Spekulatius]

I don't think most of the countries that are having trouble are having trouble because infected people are coming over the borders...

 

I cant think of any other way a virus that started in China goes global...can you?

 

Way to totally miss the context.

 

The countries that are doing badly are doing badly because they didn't do the steps to control the virus, and those that do well do so because they did. There's variance and some places were less lucky or had worse demographics/density/etc than others, but generally, the virus was within the borders of all these islands and if they hadn't done the steps, they'd be doing just as bad as anyone else.

 

In the early phases the virus spread by travel, but once it's everywhere and travel has been mostly shut down for months, what matters is the local response, not blocking new infections from outside. Or in other words, it's been many months now that the source of new infections is local, not international.

 

I agree on this , local response matters more later. Being isolated ( relatively speaking) gives a country a better fighting chance to isolate early outbreaks and prevent subsequent reinfections.

 

All this doesn’t really matter if your local response let the virus run rampant - the UK is a great example of this.

[Liberty]

I agree on this , local response matters more later. Being isolated ( relatively speaking) gives a country a better fighting chance to isolate early outbreaks and prevent subsequent reinfections.

 

All this doesn’t really matter if your local response let the virus run rampant - the UK is a great example of this.

 

A lot of the countries that did best were actually much closer to 'ground zero' and had way more travel from China before travel got shut down than the countries that did less well, islands or not.

[orthopa]

Australia is back to pre shut down levels of infection.

[Dalal.Holdings]

2016: 'We're going to win so much, you're going to be so sick and tired of winning'.

 

[Cigarbutt]

Australia is back to pre shut down levels of infection.

From your previous posts concerning this topic, i assume you mean the "shut down" in Australia hasn't worked or just delayed the progression of the disease at the population level. Is that it?

For reference, here are some data points:

 

1-

Average daily new Covid-19 deaths per million          last 28 days          last 7 days

USA                                                                            2.1                      2.6

Australia                                                                    0.0                      0.1

 

2-

The daily positive rate, given as a rolling 7-day average

USA:            8.7%

Australia:    0.5%

 

i guess it depends through which lens you're looking at this. Recently, i came across a parallel being made between wildfire risk management and pandemics. There were allusions to primary, secondary and tertiary prevention strategies.

[orthopa]

Australia is back to pre shut down levels of infection.

From your previous posts concerning this topic, i assume you mean the "shut down" in Australia hasn't worked or just delayed the progression of the disease at the population level. Is that it?

For reference, here are some data points:

 

1-

Average daily new Covid-19 deaths per million          last 28 days          last 7 days

USA                                                                            2.1                      2.6

Australia                                                                    0.0                      0.1

 

2-

The daily positive rate, given as a rolling 7-day average

USA:            8.7%

Australia:    0.5%

 

i guess it depends through which lens you're looking at this. Recently, i came across a parallel being made between wildfire risk management and pandemics. There were allusions to primary, secondary and tertiary prevention strategies.

 

Not so much a statement, just an observation.

[orthopa]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/study-identifies-six-different-types-of-covid-19/ar-BB179KSE?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout

[KCLarkin]

How not to science:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/ioannidis-trump-white-house-coronavirus-lockdowns

 

I gave Ioannidis the benefit of the doubt on this forum. But it is pretty clear he is doing junk science.

 

He had a political opinion (lockdowns are bad and IFR lower than experts estimates). Fair enough. But then he pushed shoddy research to justify these opinions. Classic confirmation bias.

 

What a disgrace to Stanford.