The Corona Virus

[NichG]

People ask for sources not because they're interested, but because they think - or hope - I get my info from some outrageous source. Like some wildly biased propaganda site. But I don't, my info is the danish state, or the press (which gets it's info from the danish state).

Or because you say something that we have good reason to suspect to be false because of our own sources and research, and we're giving you the benefit of the doubt that maybe we're wrong (but it will take more than just you saying so, and so we're establishing a standard of evidence to be convinced) or that you might be using a source that's incorrect or might have misinterpreted what a source said or drawn a conclusion that doesn't follow or other such things.

For example, a few pages ago you said "Last week we have had zero dead, and one new case. " This was factually incorrect. There was a reason why it was incorrect, and the way we resolved it was by looking into sources. And in the end, when you looked directly at the Danish state numbers rather than the media article you had seen, you agreed that there were in fact more than one new case in that week.

The alternative of asking for a source is to just outright accuse you of being wrong or worse. Asking for sources is asking for the discussion to be about facts and not you personally. When you say things like "My track record is spotless. My information is correct. I'm drawing no mistaken conclusions from it." that makes the discussion about you instead, which is what you're saying you don't want to happen here.

That's why we look into sources, because it lets us discuss facts rather than reputations or whether we like eachothers' stances. The alternative mode of discourse is worse.

[Liquor Box]

Very true, but New Zealand's total infections is also pretty tiny.

It's a small country. Its infections per million people is higher than South Korea's

[veti]

It's a small country. Its infections per million people is higher than South Korea's

South Korea was the original poster child for the success of the "test, trace, isolate" strategy that basically everyone claims to want to emulate. They got it right from the start, as they did with SARS. To do better than them is a very high bar of expectation.

New Zealand got through its lockdown, and yes there are economic effects from that - but they're nothing like as bad as the economic effects unfolding right now in other countries that didn't take such strong measures. I'm currently jobless, and likely to remain so for some time - and I still say that's a price 100% worth paying, to be rid of the virus.

[Forum Explorer]

It's a small country. Its infections per million people is higher than South Korea's

South Korea? That's the example you are going to go with?

I mean, yes, you are correct. They have more infections per million people than South Korea. But South Korea also handled COVID-19 really well. To put that comparison into context, South Korea is at 149th out of 213 countries. New Zealand is at 141st out of 213. That's A) not a big difference, and more importantly B) really freaking good compared to the rest of the world.

Mind you, I don't like cases per million person. Small nations get artificially high results by that statistic because it only takes a few cases for them to get a really high result. Or at least, I don't like taking that statistic without context.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

New Zealand is at 141st out of 213. That's A) not a big difference, and more importantly B) really freaking good compared to the rest of the world.

It should also be noted that their infection per million (309) is under the US deaths per million (418). (source)

But yes, I too am confused how "they are not the absolute best in the world" is supposed to be some kind of counter to "they are doing very well"

Small nations get artificially high results by that statistic because it only takes a few cases for them to get a really high result. Or at least, I don't like taking that statistic without context.

It's still the best way to compare countries with wildly different sizes but otherwise similar economic development. Sure, it's funny that Vatican city has 15k cases per million... and 12 cases. But as long as you stick to countries with more than a million inhabitants, it is perfectly valid way to look at the data.

Grey Wolf

[Liquor Box]

But yes, I too am confused how "they are not the absolute best in the world" is supposed to be some kind of counter to "they are doing very well"

I'd be happy to enlighten you then. You see the original contention was not "they were doing very well". The original contention was:

I have a hard time crediting New Zealand with suffering an outbreak at all considering how few people caught COVID-19 there.

Given that we now know what the goalposts were, I can answer this question:

South Korea? That's the example you are going to go with?

Yes indeed, it is the answer I'm going with. Because you can't be the "poster child" (as veti called them) for handling an outbreak, unless you have an outbreak.

But if we don't like the South Korea example, i think this post also addresses the point of whether NZ suffered an outbreak at all:

I mean, yes, you are correct. They have more infections per million people than South Korea. But South Korea also handled COVID-19 really well. To put that comparison into context, South Korea is at 149th out of 213 countries. New Zealand is at 141st out of 213. That's A) not a big difference, and more importantly B) really freaking good compared to the rest of the world.

141st out 213 is almost exactly at the 66th percentile. That is better than average but hardly "really freaking good". Really freaking good is probably 200th. Nor does it indicate no outbreak at all, unless half the countries in the world had not outbreak at all.

Mind you, I don't like cases per million person. Small nations get artificially high results by that statistic because it only takes a few cases for them to get a really high result. Or at least, I don't like taking that statistic without context.

You think total deaths/infections (the metric you used) is a better metric for comparing small countries with big countries than deaths/infections per million (the metric your are now disavowing)?

New Zealand got through its lockdown, and yes there are economic effects from that - but they're nothing like as bad as the economic effects unfolding right now in other countries that didn't take such strong measures. I'm currently jobless, and likely to remain so for some time - and I still say that's a price 100% worth paying, to be rid of the virus.

Really? How do you figure the economic effects on NZ were less severe than the effects on countries that did not lock down so strictly? How does NZ compare economically to (say) Norway?

That's not the problem though. The problem is that if the virus gets reintroduced (and you'll be aware of all the quarantine issues) then NZ will be worse off than if it had not locked down. You will have paid the price of becoming unemployed, and the virus will be here again.

I also point out that you are not necessarily the barometer for NZ. You may have a good enough safety net to survive a year or so without work. For some people that situation may be much worse.

[Chen]

Cases per million is not a great metric in general because it depends entirely on the amount of testing. Deaths per million is a bit better since its less likely that people dying of some sort of respiratory issue is going to avoid notice for counting (that said people who die from something else while having COVID can be missed).

A better indicator than both is probably percentage of positive tests compared to total tests. This can give a better indicator on how widespread the issue is. Now it can still be skewed based on testing strategy or if testing is no very uniform across the country but still seems to avoid some of the other misleading indicators from other metrics.

[Ibrinar]

Percentage is an good additional indicator for interpreting the results but it is still dependent on amount of testing because more testing compared to cases almost automatically means you will also test more less likely cases.

Edit: But yeah cases is decent as trend indicator but not great for direct comparisions. Even in limited areas like NYC there can be much variance see this graph about death to cases correlation https://cms.prod.nypr.digital/images.../fill-634x475/ (from the article I posted last page https://gothamist.com/news/coronavir...demic-new-york) . Well NYC is rather big so limited might be the wrong word. Edit: https://covidinteractivesny.s3.us-ea...onfirmed-cases interactive version the high outlier is apparently because the population of the place gets under counted

[Xyril]

I don't ask for sources, and I rarely give them, because I do not care.

I try to be polite, and I never make personal attacks. That's all I ask of others.

This is not really true.

People ask for sources not because they're interested, but because they think - or hope - I get my info from some outrageous source.

When you attribute the worst possible motives to the people you're debating, that's making a personal attack. To give you the benefit of the doubt, I suppose if you very strictly restrict your definition of "personal attack" to statements that take the form of "You are a liar" or "You are a deplorably simple" or "You argue disingenuously," then maybe you could claim that you don't make personal attacks with a straight face.

When you repeatedly state that others don't disagree with you because they're intelligent critical thinkers who see similar flaws in your reasoning and are just idiot victims of some weird group dynamics based on some tenuous interpretation of psychology, that's also getting into personal attack territory. After all, if I directly stated to you, "Kaptin Keen, you're not some woke skeptic uniquely able to see past the lies that have fooled the rest of us 'sheeple.' You're just another dupe who has fallen victim to the same conspiracy-theory psychological pitfalls that gave us the flat-earthers and the moon-landing deniers," you would probably consider that a personal attack, right?

So why doesn't it count as the same when you do it to others?

I'm by no means some paragon of virtue, but at least I don't have a double standard (which isn't putting the bar very high, I admit).

You're demonstrating your double standard right now. You expect others to make counterarguments using logic and facts, and yet you once again proudly proclaim that you don't care about facts and sources. You expect others not to express opinions about you, your credibility, and your assertions, and yet you repeatedly frame your arguments in terms of you. Not directly quoted but I believe word for word from you:

"I have never made any mistakes here."

"I have never been wrong except for saying it was 'just a flu.'"

Plus, as I mentioned before, your standard of what is "polite" vs "personal attacks" appears to vary wildly when you apply it to yourself versus when you apply it to others. Whenever somebody tries to explain--quite reasonably and politely, as NichG does on this very page--why it's a good idea to cite sources, or somebody asks you to address apparent discrepancies between two of your posts, or somebody simply points out "Hey dude, it's good that you warn against jumping to conclusions without sufficient evidence, but aren't you worried that some of your arguments are doing just that?", you simply dismiss it as "Everyone posting that they don't like me."

However, when you do similar things, you don't seem to have a problem with it. You repeatedly question the motives of other posters, i.e., claiming that they only want to see your sources to prove you're crazy. Just browse the thread--not the parts that concern you, but the ones with with zero involvement from you. People repeatedly cite sources, and sometimes when they don't, other folks asks for the sources. Now read the discussions that come after. Sometimes, the guy citing realizes his info was wrong, or drew stronger conclusions than justified. Sometimes, the skeptic realizes he didn't need to be skeptical. And often, once you look at the details, the study revealed some useful insight that nobody thought to look for in the first place.

And no one ever asks for clarification.

People often ask for clarification. When people say things like "It's not enough to say Plan B, which has failed horribly, would work better than Plan A, which was largely successful. You have to have some idea of what could be changed in Plan B," THAT is an invitation for you give clarification.

Look, I don't know your language status or your neurotypical/atypical status so maybe my expectations of you are too high, and some of the problem is that you can't "read between the lines," as we say in the U.S., even a little bit. For whatever reason, it does appear--solely from my perspective as a non-professional--that sometimes you have trouble reading the implied meaning behind literal words, even when that implied meaning is obvious to most people. And at other points, you seem to make a deliberate effort to try to discern implications or motives behind someone's literal statement, and manage to draw conclusions that miss the mark by such a great margin that some folks begin to question whether you're arguing in good faith. Perhaps an experiment we could try to avoid talking past each other is to asks folks to try to be more direct and literal in their statements and also--and this is quite important--strictly adhere to those same standards in your own posts.

[veti]

141st out 213 is almost exactly at the 66th percentile. That is better than average but hardly "really freaking good". Really freaking good is probably 200th. Nor does it indicate no outbreak at all, unless half the countries in the world had not outbreak at all.

Note that many of those 213 countries, for one reason or another, have substantial issues with large-scale testing. I find it hard to believe that the stats for Yemen, for instance, are anything like as reliable as those for any European country. That makes "international ranking on a global scale" a very silly way of measuring anything.

Really? How do you figure the economic effects on NZ were less severe than the effects on countries that did not lock down so strictly? How does NZ compare economically to (say) Norway?

Since you ask, Norway's unemployment is in the ballpark of 10%, which is about the same as ours. I'm surprised you didn't ask about Sweden, though: they have shown that if you have no lockdown at all, it's possible - to get exactly the same economic outcome as countries that do.

That's not the problem though. The problem is that if the virus gets reintroduced (and you'll be aware of all the quarantine issues) then NZ will be worse off than if it had not locked down. You will have paid the price of becoming unemployed, and the virus will be here again.

I also point out that you are not necessarily the barometer for NZ. You may have a good enough safety net to survive a year or so without work. For some people that situation may be much worse.

Once again: the choice wasn't between "lockdown" vs "business as usual". The moment the pandemic arrived, there was going to be a major economic crisis. The choice was, whether we wanted our MEC to be combined with a historic public health crisis, or whether we'd rather handle those two things separately.

Of course I'm not a barometer, any more than you are. I'm just someone with a perspective and an opinion. You want to see a barometer, we've got an election coming up in a couple of months, so the whole country gets to give its opinion on the handling of the pandemic.

[Xyril]

Our ability to prevent those deaths - and by that I mean you and me - is 0. We can't. It requires carefully planned and executed national and supranational coordination. That's the nature of any pandemic. And the discussion of what those entities could, would, and have done in view of those numbers is explicitly forbidden by the forum rules, so bringing it up is a recipe for red texting.

Grey Wolf

{scrubbed}
However, without going into too much personal detail, my power to influence institutions that can impact those secondary effects is small, but distinctly non-negligible. And without assuming too much personal detail about your own life, I would argue that it's quite possible that you in fact have the power to have a non-zero, positive impact on some of these things if you really wanted to. By which I mean that these are things that most people have the power to devote their time, energy, and passion in such a way that they can help--all without doing anything so drastic as abandoning their career to work for a non-profit or {scrubbed}, or giving away enough of their wealth to adversely impact their own quality of life.

Obviously, the good they could do would likely be small and local, but that small, local impact might nonetheless but measured in terms of lives saved.

[farothel]

Cases per million is not a great metric in general because it depends entirely on the amount of testing. Deaths per million is a bit better since its less likely that people dying of some sort of respiratory issue is going to avoid notice for counting (that said people who die from something else while having COVID can be missed).

A better indicator than both is probably percentage of positive tests compared to total tests. This can give a better indicator on how widespread the issue is. Now it can still be skewed based on testing strategy or if testing is no very uniform across the country but still seems to avoid some of the other misleading indicators from other metrics.

A good way to estimate how many died from the Corona virus while you're not testing everyone (as no nation can test its entire population at the moment) is using the excess mortality. Here you compare the current amount of deaths (which most countries normally know as deaths have to be reported) with the average that you should have in this period. Of course, there's always some fluctuations and not all excess deaths will be due to the corona virus, but at this point most will be. It's also used in larger flu epidemics to estimate flu mortality.

For instance in Belgium you see that our excess mortality and reported corona deaths are almost the same, which means we can be sure to have counted almost all of them.

If a country reports for instance 1000 corona deaths and has an excess mortality of 5000, I see that as a clear under reporting of Corona deaths. They will not have 5000 corona deaths, but it will be a lot higher than 1000.

[Ibrinar]

Though it takes some time before excess death number are useful. It usually takes quite a few weeks for normal deaths count statistics to approach their final number. So excess death isn't great for observing the current trend. Edit: neat animation of that from a few months ago https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeaut...nia_deaths_is/ it is for pneumonia death but the cdc total death count behaves similarly.

[Liquor Box]

Note that many of those 213 countries, for one reason or another, have substantial issues with large-scale testing. I find it hard to believe that the stats for Yemen, for instance, are anything like as reliable as those for any European country. That makes "international ranking on a global scale" a very silly way of measuring anything.

Sure, different countries may have different degrees of accuracy. But if the discussion is about how NZ compares to other countries (and it was not me who started that discussion), then the official figures are still the most accurate data we have - you can't just point out the countries that have higher infection rates then NZ, then handwave the ones who have lower infection rates as probably inaccurate without backing it up.

Since you ask, Norway's unemployment is in the ballpark of 10%, which is about the same as ours. I'm surprised you didn't ask about Sweden, though: they have shown that if you have no lockdown at all, it's possible - to get exactly the same economic outcome as countries that do.

First, can I just clarify that you are now saying the economic impact of locking down vs not locking down is about the same? Because that seems to walk back from your earlier statement that the effects of locking down is "nothing like as bad as the economic effects unfolding right now in other countries that didn't take such strong measures".

Second, if you read the Norway article again you'll see that its unemployment rate is 5.4%. The 10.8% figure is only if you count people employed part time as unemployed.

Third, happy to compare Sweden and Denmark. Your article points states that unemployment rose by 2% in both countries. There's actually rounding involved in that 2% because from January 2020 to May 2020 Denmark's unemployment rose 1.9% (from 3.7% to 5.6%) and Sweden's rose 1.5% (7.5% to 9%). Denmark's unemployment had been very steady (it was 3.7% every month leading up to Jan 2020) and going from 3.7% to 5.6% is nearly a 50% increase. Sweden's unemployment had been up and down over the prior year (the biggest monthly increase in unemployment was actually between December 2019 and January 2020), and it's increase from 7.5% to 9% was only a 20% increase.

https://tradingeconomics.com/denmark/unemployment-rate
https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/unemployment-rate

Once again: the choice wasn't between "lockdown" vs "business as usual". The moment the pandemic arrived, there was going to be a major economic crisis. The choice was, whether we wanted our MEC to be combined with a historic public health crisis, or whether we'd rather handle those two things separately.

I agree that there was always going to be a major economic crisis. But different approaches determined how major that crisis was going to be.

Of course I'm not a barometer, any more than you are. I'm just someone with a perspective and an opinion. You want to see a barometer, we've got an election coming up in a couple of months, so the whole country gets to give its opinion on the handling of the pandemic.

Of course your right, you are entitled to your opinion. So long as we are on the same page that your perspective is not the only one.

[veti]

Sure, different countries may have different degrees of accuracy. But if the discussion is about how NZ compares to other countries (and it was not me who started that discussion), then the official figures are still the most accurate data we have - you can't just point out the countries that have higher infection rates then NZ, then handwave the ones who have lower infection rates as probably inaccurate without backing it up.

I'm not trying to do that, I'm trying to put a stop to this whole line of discussion because figures like "X out of 213" are really, really misleading. There is so much assorted noise in those numbers that there's no way to estimate the error bars on 'X'. Unless you can filter down the countries to "just those with reasonably reliable reporting" (and even the criterion needs a lot of work before it becomes useful), that ranking is meaningless. Nobody has the time or energy to do that, and if they did, they'd immediately be accused (possibly justly) of politically motivated reasoning.

First, can I just clarify that you are now saying the economic impact of locking down vs not locking down is about the same? Because that seems to walk back from your earlier statement that the effects of locking down is "nothing like as bad as the economic effects unfolding right now in other countries that didn't take such strong measures".

No, I don't think so. I'm saying that the economic effects of lockdown are minor compared with the economic effects of the virus, and if having a lockdown can allow you to mitigate the effects of the virus, then the lockdown is totally worth it even in purely economic terms - that is to say, even without considering the lives lost or saved.

For "countries that didn't take such strong measures", consider the US (unemployment over 11% and worsening). Or specific states, like Nevada (25%) or Florida (14.5%), which either didn't lock down or ended way prematurely in the hope of saving their economies - a gambit that has ended up costing big in both money and lives. Or Russia, or Brazil. Sweden's own best projections show their unemployment rate topping 10% too.

Second, if you read the Norway article again you'll see that its unemployment rate is 5.4%. The 10.8% figure is only if you count people employed part time as unemployed.

Yeah, our own figure includes "underutilised" people as well. It's based on the number of people claiming "jobseeker support", which is available to people working part time who are looking for more work. I haven't been able to find figures broken out separately like the Norwegian ones, but the headline numbers certainly seem to be in the same ballpark.

Third, happy to compare Sweden and Denmark. Your article points states that unemployment rose by 2% in both countries. There's actually rounding involved in that 2% because from January 2020 to May 2020 Denmark's unemployment rose 1.9% (from 3.7% to 5.6%) and Sweden's rose 1.5% (7.5% to 9%). Denmark's unemployment had been very steady (it was 3.7% every month leading up to Jan 2020) and going from 3.7% to 5.6% is nearly a 50% increase. Sweden's unemployment had been up and down over the prior year (the biggest monthly increase in unemployment was actually between December 2019 and January 2020), and it's increase from 7.5% to 9% was only a 20% increase.

If you want to talk about "increase relative to previous rate", then again - the USA as a whole has seen an increase of around 300%, with some states faring much worse than that. But those numbers are not really meaningful, because the base number is barely related to the increase.

I agree that there was always going to be a major economic crisis. But different approaches determined how major that crisis was going to be.

Absolutely. We could have been where Victoria is now, going into a second lockdown (and yes, a few more quarantine cockups and we could still get there). Or the UK, which was late to lock down and ended up being pretty much completely closed for the best part of three months. Examples abound of people who thought they were clever enough to keep their economies going while the virus worked its way through. I've yet to hear that any of those people succeeded even in their own terms.

[Liquor Box]

I'm not trying to do that, I'm trying to put a stop to this whole line of discussion because figures like "X out of 213" are really, really misleading. There is so much assorted noise in those numbers that there's no way to estimate the error bars on 'X'. Unless you can filter down the countries to "just those with reasonably reliable reporting" (and even the criterion needs a lot of work before it becomes useful), that ranking is meaningless. Nobody has the time or energy to do that, and if they did, they'd immediately be accused (possibly justly) of politically motivated reasoning.

Right, so you don't think we can say that NZ (or South Korea) has done better than most in eliminating the virus, because we have no good data for such relative comparisons?

Not sure I agree, I tend to think the official figures, although not entirely accurate, are likely to be good enough for discussion purposes. But happy to leave it there.

No, I don't think so. I'm saying that the economic effects of lockdown are minor compared with the economic effects of the virus, and if having a lockdown can allow you to mitigate the effects of the virus, then the lockdown is totally worth it even in purely economic terms - that is to say, even without considering the lives lost or saved.

Yes, that is kind of what you said originally. But when I asked you to support that, you pointed out two examples of countries who'd had strict measures that you said were equal to two who had not (NZ vs Norway and Sweden vs Denmark). That didn't seem to support your proposition that taking less strict measure is actually worse.

For "countries that didn't take such strong measures", consider the US (unemployment over 11% and worsening). Or specific states, like Nevada (25%) or Florida (14.5%), which either didn't lock down or ended way prematurely in the hope of saving their economies - a gambit that has ended up costing big in both money and lives. Or Russia, or Brazil. Sweden's own best projections show their unemployment rate topping 10% too.

Merely stating unemployment rate isn't very helpful without comparing it the country's previous rate. Brazil's unemployment is only 0.9% higher than a year earlier (12.9% vs 12%). As such it has had a much lower increase than Denmark who you used as an example of a country with a strict lockdown.
https://tradingeconomics.com/brazil/unemployment-rate

Russia's is 1.4% higher than pre-covid (Jan 2020), which is still lower than Denmark's
https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/unemployment-rate

As for Sweden, we've already discussed how its unemployment rate increase is lower than that of Denmark (a similar country). You are no citing projections, which I suggest is less reliable than the Covid figures you reject, but if we must use them we'd have to compare them to other country;s projections.

As for USA, it seems to be an outlier (at least out the example's we've looked at. It's worse than countries who imposed stronger restrictions (like NZ and Denmark), but also worse than countries who posed less strict restrictions (like Sweden and Brazil). I suggest there is more going on there than just Covid, and as such it is an outlier. It may be useful to compare states though- you used a couple of examples of states with high unemployment, are you able to compare that to states with more restrictice practices in terms of unemployment (it is increase in unemployment rate, rather than the actual rate which is more informative).

Yeah, our own figure includes "underutilised" people as well. It's based on the number of people claiming "jobseeker support", which is available to people working part time who are looking for more work. I haven't been able to find figures broken out separately like the Norwegian ones, but the headline numbers certainly seem to be in the same ballpark.

Ok, so looking more closely at Norway, it looks like its unemployment was 4.2% in April compares with 3.7% in January, so a pretty modest increase of 0.5%.

Unfortunately NZ seems to report its unemployment quartely instead of monthly so I couldn't find figures from May or June, so it's difficult to compare. However, Norway's increase is much more minor (about a quarter as much) than Denmark's, and they are similar economies.

https://tradingeconomics.com/norway/unemployment-rate

If you want to talk about "increase relative to previous rate", then again - the USA as a whole has seen an increase of around 300%, with some states faring much worse than that. But those numbers are not really meaningful, because the base number is barely related to the increase.

Yes, but as noted, USA is an outlier, and you haven't found any other examples to support your suggestion that countries who had less strict approaches have suffered worse (or even as badly) as those with stricter approaches.

Using your example of Denmark as a country who took a firm approach. So far we have USA who took less strong steps and suffered a greater increase to unemployment. And we have Norway, Sweden, Russia and Brazil as countries who took a less strict approach and have suffered less of an increase to unemployment rate.

Absolutely. We could have been where Victoria is now, going into a second lockdown (and yes, a few more quarantine cockups and we could still get there). Or the UK, which was late to lock down and ended up being pretty much completely closed for the best part of three months. Examples abound of people who thought they were clever enough to keep their economies going while the virus worked its way through. I've yet to hear that any of those people succeeded even in their own terms.

Yes, I agree that Victoria having to lockdown a second time means they are worse off than if they had not locked down the first time. Likewise if NZ has to lockdown a second time, it will be worse off than if it had not locked down the first time. Only time will tell if that happens.

If you are only seeing less restrictive measure pointed at as failures, and not ever lauded as successful, I suggest that reflects more on your selection of what you choose to read, than on what narratives are out there. If you only read material you agree with, you wont see the other side of the story. There are plenty of examples of less strict countries proclaiming success.
Here's an example from Norway, which was much less strcit than NZ:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...homes-no-work/
Here's an example from
Here's an example from Sweden, which is of course well known for its chill approach:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/hea...vid19-immunity
I wont give examples from USA, because those I could find tend to be politicized, but they are there.

There are plenty more from a variety of countries who took less stringent measures than NZ. You may dispute whether those claims of success are right - but I think it was a bit too much of a strong statement to say that they don't exist.

In my opinion, we wont really be able to have a good gauge on which approach was right, which lead to better health outcomes, and which led to better economic outcomes until we are able to reflect back in a few years. As we have both agreed, NZs present success in avoiding a high death toll could easily be undermined if the virus is reintroduced here - but it's quite speculative to guess whether that will happen.

[MCerberus]

With my boss' kid testing positive I'm now in my third contract trace alert. My family has decided to avoid talking about it as much as humanly possible and my circle of friends is already going a bit stir-crazy.

I don't know.

[veti]

Right, so you don't think we can say that NZ (or South Korea) has done better than most in eliminating the virus, because we have no good data for such relative comparisons?

Not sure I agree, I tend to think the official figures, although not entirely accurate, are likely to be good enough for discussion purposes. But happy to leave it there.

We can compare some countries, but not all. I don't think there's any feasible way to draw up a list, that everyone would assent to, of which countries' figures are more or less plausible, but I am sure that a significant number of them are not. But to state a global ranking out of all countries, you have to implicitly trust all their figures. Like I said, there's no way to guess at the error bars.

Yes, that is kind of what you said originally. But when I asked you to support that, you pointed out two examples of countries who'd had strict measures that you said were equal to two who had not (NZ vs Norway and Sweden vs Denmark). That didn't seem to support your proposition that taking less strict measure is actually worse.

Norway did have a lockdown, beginning within a few weeks of its first reported case. I don't know how it compared to ours, but I do know that NZ is now considerably ahead of them.

The thing is, as long as people are scared of the virus, any economic recovery will be muted. If they are also, simultaneously, scared of losing their jobs because of the ongoing crisis, or because their employer might sack them if they had to take sick leave for an extended time, that compounds the issue. The health crisis and the economic crisis are intertwined, you can't solve one without fixing the other first.

So a country, like New Zealand, where you can now attend public concerts and sports and the rest of civil society without fear - is better placed to recover than one - like Norway - where most gatherings of that sort are still banned outright. Or like Florida, where people see their politicians begging them to go out and spend, but then look at the infection and death rates, and very sensibly decide that maybe a quiet evening in is more attractive right now.

At this point, I am so firmly painted in to this position that any more stats I dug up would be cherrypicked at best. (Indeed I may have passed that point a couple of posts ago, for which I apologise.) So instead I'll leave it at the above as an explanation of my belief and statements, but acknowledge that I can't prove the case to anyone else's satisfaction. Time will tell, and I hope I have the honesty then to admit, at least to myself, if I was wrong.

In my opinion, we wont really be able to have a good gauge on which approach was right, which lead to better health outcomes, and which led to better economic outcomes until we are able to reflect back in a few years.

This I do agree with. But it's not super helpful as a guide to present behaviour or recommendations.

[Rockphed]

What reports are those? Because excess deaths number suggests that, if anything, the number of covid-caused deaths are significantly underreported, rather than over-reported. I doubt, for example, anyone run over by a bus will have their autopsy bother to check for the virus. Sounds like conspiracy theory crafting to me.

Grey Wolf

So I just saw one here. I don't think anyone has done an indepth study to see how common misclassifications like this are.

[SaintRidley]

I don't ask for sources, and I rarely give them, because I do not care.

{Scrubbed} If you're going to enter a debate or a discussion armed with information, it's important to be able to verify the sources of that information. {Scrubbed} And you may not care about that, but that's the thing - it doesn't matter what you care about. {Scrubbed}

[Ibrinar]

Three days in the US above 1k deaths again (above 1,1k too) I wonder where it will peak this time. (I would say (using worldometer data) the inflection point for the 7 day average of the daily deaths is about 3 weeks after the inflection of daily cases but death have grown slower. between the 6th and the 23 there was a 72% increase from 517 to 887. The inflection of the 7 day average for cases is less sharp, I will just make it an even three weeks and take Jun 15th+ 17 days is Jul 3th so an 119% increase.) And seems like it is getting started in India now I don't think it will be long before they are above 1k/day but with how many people they have if it doesn't reach 5k per day or more it would be milder than many of the hardest hit countries so there is still a good amount of time for their curve to flatten. Still no sign of stopping yet so my prediction is that for the world wide daily death number we will beat the old high in the next months. Though Brazil has been holding pretty steady so maybe they will start falling soon.

I am curious how much of an influence improvements in treatment have made by now. I was about to say that that is probably hard to say but since it mostly matters to people who do get treated in a hospital there are probably decent statistics already, which I should google later.

[veti]

I understand there have been improvements in treatment, but that only matters if you can get treatment. If the hospitals are full, then - beyond the limited numbers they can treat - I would expect the death rate to be little improved.

Although warmer weather may be making a difference. The test of that will be what happens when the northern hemisphere shifts into autumn.

[Kaptin Keen]

If it lasts that long. Admittedly, fall isn't far off. On the other hand, dozens of vaccines are in human testing. That's not to say that any of them work, or that they can or will be fast-tracked into treatment - but certainly the possibility exists.

[Rockphed]

I understand there have been improvements in treatment, but that only matters if you can get treatment. If the hospitals are full, then - beyond the limited numbers they can treat - I would expect the death rate to be little improved.

Although warmer weather may be making a difference. The test of that will be what happens when the northern hemisphere shifts into autumn.

Here in Maryland we have had an 80% fall from the peak and are currently experiencing a 10% bump from the trough. I haven't looked at hospital use numbers anywhere else, so I can't comment on how hospital use is evolving, but that is probably a better predictor of the death rate than simple case numbers.

[sihnfahl]

If it lasts that long. Admittedly, fall isn't far off. On the other hand, dozens of vaccines are in human testing. That's not to say that any of them work, or that they can or will be fast-tracked into treatment - but certainly the possibility exists.

It'll last that long. There are countries that are barely able to hamper spread and that's not taking into account political pushback on the steps necessary to hamper transmission.

As for the vaccines, I believe the Oxford / AstraZeneca one has gone a little further into Phase III and has shown to elicit a strong response. Whether that response will hinder infection, though....

Here in Maryland we have had an 80% fall from the peak and are currently experiencing a 10% bump from the trough. I haven't looked at hospital use numbers anywhere else, so I can't comment on how hospital use is evolving, but that is probably a better predictor of the death rate than simple case numbers.

MD currently only has 22% overall ICU capacity utilized. But that can be misleading, as unless hospitals are actively transporting COVID patients from one part of the state to another for treatment...

I'm in Florida. Locally, ICU utilization is low. Miami, however, is maxed out and they've been converting beds. In an ideal world, there'd be sufficient medical transport to move COVID patients from Miami to up where I am. But medical transport capacity isn't at that level, there'd be significant political pushback against the action, and in my opinion, the quality of care up here would make even a crowded Miami hospital better than a local ICU that's not at capacity...

[Kaptin Keen]

It'll last that long. There are countries that are barely able to hamper spread and that's not taking into account political pushback on the steps necessary to hamper transmission.

As for the vaccines, I believe the Oxford / AstraZeneca one has gone a little further into Phase III and has shown to elicit a strong response. Whether that response will hinder infection, though....

It may well last that long. But once a working vaccine exists, millions of doses will be produced at record pace, and distributed. So, once it's there, it'll be quick.

Not that that will end infection, that's not what I'm saying. But if it works, it's a major game changer. Get priority medication to those most at risk, and everything becomes so much more manageable. It doesn't just magically go away, but it becomes much less of a crisis.

[Chen]

It may well last that long. But once a working vaccine exists, millions of doses will be produced at record pace, and distributed. So, once it's there, it'll be quick.

Not that that will end infection, that's not what I'm saying. But if it works, it's a major game changer. Get priority medication to those most at risk, and everything becomes so much more manageable. It doesn't just magically go away, but it becomes much less of a crisis.

The earliest estimates I’d seen were early 2021 to have some sort of vaccine available to the public and thats if the most promising candidates work.

[Razade]

It'll last that long. There are countries that are barely able to hamper spread and that's not taking into account political pushback on the steps necessary to hamper transmission.

As for the vaccines, I believe the Oxford / AstraZeneca one has gone a little further into Phase III and has shown to elicit a strong response. Whether that response will hinder infection, though....

Pfizer/BioNTech also have two out of four that they're advancing through what's called Fast Track. These are Candidate BNT162b1 and BNT162b2. It is being overseen in what's being called Project Lightspeed. They're both mRNA vaccines. BNT162b1 encodes an optimized SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain (RBD) antigen, while BNT162b2 encodes an optimized SARS-CoV-2 full-length spike protein antigen.

This information is as recent as July 13th. They go on further to state.

The Project Lightspeed vaccine development program is based on BioNTech’s proprietary mRNA-based technology platforms and supported by Pfizer’s global vaccine development capabilities. The BNT162 vaccine candidates are undergoing clinical studies and are not currently approved for distribution anywhere in the world. Pfizer and BioNTech are committed to developing these novel vaccines with pre-clinical and clinical data at the forefront of all decision-making of both companies. Subject to regulatory approval, the companies are expecting to start a Phase 2b/3 trial as soon as later this month and are anticipating enrolling up to 30,000 subjects. If the ongoing studies are successful, and the vaccine candidate receives regulatory approval, the companies currently expect to manufacture up to 100 million doses by the end of 2020 and potentially more than 1.2 billion doses by the end of 2021.

So 100 million doses isn't even close to enough to cover every case in the U.S let alone the entire world. 1.2 billion is a good number but that's year end 2021. Obviously other people are working on this, I suspect we'll see several vaccines which will help even more but it's still not going to make this disappear.

[Kaptin Keen]

The earliest estimates I’d seen were early 2021 to have some sort of vaccine available to the public and thats if the most promising candidates work.

And I agree with that. But on the other hand you have every government on earth itching to give their populations assurance, get their economies up and running, and keep their populations safe - and that's not an environment conducive to caution. I know my faith in the powers that be is remarkably low - but I fully expect for even the sketchiest of viable vaccines to be instantly pushed into mass production.

The only good thing about the situation is that there is no shortage of human test subjects.

[sihnfahl]

So 100 million doses isn't even close to enough to cover every case in the U.S let alone the entire world.

It's not even enough to hit the minimum 70% mark for herd immunity in the US (roughly 230 million people). And that still comes with the caveat of if the vaccines work as intended.

But on the other hand you have every government on earth itching to give their populations assurance, get their economies up and running, and keep their populations safe - and that's not an environment conducive to caution.

I dunno, a number of countries are playing it cautious. But, OTOH, they're also the countries that took the blasted thing seriously from day one. So they're willing to accept some short-term economic pain for safety.

The ones less conducive to caution? The ones that really don't want to see a lengthy downturn of their economies.