Despite doing everything it could to gain herd immunity Iran starts on second wave
Iran was one of the first countries to succumb to the pandemic, and so it is for the second wave. Back on Feb 25th Iran emerged as a new epicentre — whereupon smart nations like Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Oman, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Jordan, Ankara, Georgia and Tajikistan immediately closed borders and flights from Iran. Rich nations with Expert-Swamps, however, would wait until they actually caught cases before they stopped the flights.
Iranian leaders worked to spread the virus: they were slow to close religious institutions, and quick to claim they’d be immune, right up until the day the leaders started catching the virus themselves. They declared quarantine was stone age, and shipped their masks off to China, but like everywhere, when things got bad, they started quarantine.
The peak came and went and things were headed in the right direction so Iran started releasing restrictions from April 11th. By May 2nd, less than a thousand new cases a day were being recorded. But five days later cases had doubled. Now they are back to where they were when they started releasing restrictions.
Just in time to catch the second wave, Iran reopened Mosques on May 4th in about one third of the country. Expect these numbers to rise. But also expect that these are not too accurate. No point in doing p tests on the slope. We hope for Iranians sake, this peak is lower.
Irans second wave Worldometer
Part of Iran has gone into a new lockdown after virus cases doubled in a week.
May 11th Aljazerra
A county in southwestern Iran has been placed under lockdown to prevent the spread of coronavirus, Tasnim news agency reported, also quoting the provincial governor as saying there had been a sharp rise in new cases across the province.
Gholamreza Shariati, governor of Khuzestan province that borders Iraq and includes the county of Abadan, said people had not been observing social distancing rules.
Iran warns of coronavirus cluster spread as 71 more die
May 14th Aljazerra
Fresh spike in infections reported in several provinces following the lifting of restrictions in April.
Iran has deemed more than 150 counties across the country as low-risk from the virus and has allowed them to reopen mosques.
Since April 11, it has allowed a phased reopening of its economy and lifted restrictions on intercity travel.
Things must be serious, last week Iran cancelled the annual Quds day rally which calls for Israel’s annihilation.
Meanwhile the Iranian rial has lost much of its value and will be replaced with a new currency, called the toman which will be worth 10,000 rials. Inflation is a sign the Iranian economy has been subject to a currency virus.
Pakistan has decided to build a wall — or at least fencing along the 959km border –– to keep out Iranians. The Iranians are reportedly not happy about that. Possibly, neither are the drug lords of body traffickers.
Foreign Policy Mag has a good description of the dismal response the first time around.
Wikipedia on Iran and Coronavirus
Things worth knowing about Coronavirus:
- Quarantines work: 12 days after lockdowns, quarantines and isolation, Coronavirus slows. This is text book microbiology.
- The stroke virus? Covid causes hundreds of microclots throughout the lungs (and everywhere else)
- Coronavirus causes clotting: hold the ventilators, stop blood clots instead
- Coronavirus can affect brains, may increase stroke risk.
- Solve Vitamin D deficiency first to help beat Coronavirus.
- New York is “like mass casualty event”: coronavirus and other deaths are up three-fold
- Coronavirus may be man made. Why did the CCP destroy the evidence?
- Looks like we can extinguish Coronavirus: Australia and NZ tracking to zero.
- Large coronavirus random tests in Austria show only 1% infected
- Read Crush the Curve — save the economy
Jo should take a look in Brazil, Iran is peanuts close to what’s going on there. The president is mad about the social distancing( we haven’t had lockdowns yet) and is persecuting everyone who dares to disagree with his genocide policy. Brazil is likely to become a new covid hotspot in a few days.
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Lance, indeed. I check Brazil stats daily. Bolsonaro has become the poster boy for leftie journos to mock, and weave in the word “Trump” somehow. So finding clean reports of what is happening there is difficult. And I am very interested to hear more. Is there any rational defense for what Bolsonaro is doing? I’m not finding it.
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Bolsonaro wants to follow the swedish model, he stated brazilians used to literally swim in the sewage without any consequence, so covid-19, a low-lethality disease, would mean nothing.
Bolsonaro is also looking for a new health minister who thinks chloroquine should be used in the initial stages of the disease, even though it was proven not that effective. We’ve had two health ministers in just a month solely because none of them openly defended the widespread use of chloroquine as THE cure for covid-19.
You can get very detailed statistics from the government here, updated daily.(portuguese)
Also, Brazil is under political turmoil as the president probably intended to intervene in the police to protect his family from allegations of corruption. Plus, the country did not recover from a previous economic crisis and already had 11 million unemployed before the novel coronavirus first appeared in Wuhan.
[Thanks Lance! – Jo]
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About a rational defense of his actions, because Brazil started social distancing too early on average, many businesses are going bankrupt all over the country as more strict measures are taken by state governors opposing the federal government guidelines which are lax and didn’t ask for any social distancing or quarantines. Covid hit some cities so hard that they are even adopting lockdown, but part of the population is not respecting it. Employers are pressing the president to jump-start the economy, as they would need to fire their staff.
The federal government offered a $100 to $200 aid for anyone in need, but this money is struggling to get to the hands of the now unemployed.
The rationale is that social distancing and lockdowns would cause more damage than the virus itself, so they think some people will die, but not as many as when they are unemployed and have nothing to eat. What is kinda odd because the country already had over 10 million for over 5 years in that situation before the coronavirus thing started, and then, magically, they discovered over a quarter of the population earns less than $50 per month. Bolsonaro also believes Brazil will get to herd immunity faster, and so wants the virus to spread as fast as possible, that’s why he chose the “do nothing” approach instead of crushing the curve.
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[ Please stay on Topic especially this early in the thread.]AD
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Jo this is not a second wave. Iran eased it’s lock down with over 1000 new cases a day still being found each day.
That tells me that it never went away. Iran was still in the midst of the pandemic.
But it’s religious leadership believed that A!!ah would protect them.
Umm ? Well then what went wrong ?
1710
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=289NWm85eas
Iran faces economic collapse. They have run out of choices. It would make no difference if they were all Catholics.
When Australia gets to economic collapse (we are rapidly going there) we will run out of choices.
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Yep. Those that are totally happy to remain in lockdown are those who have had to give up very little or even benefited from the lockdowns: politicians, public servants, welfare recipients etc. you can guarantee if pollies and public servants had to go on JobKeeper wages we’d have been out of lockdown weeks ago.
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https://youtu.be/Da8ZspnvR2s
The Plan that our PM has not explained to us. It comes from lessons learned from 2008.
A second wave is not part of this plan.
Climate change is not part of this plan.
No journalist in Australia has examined this plan.
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Bill, obviously this is a second wave defined as the second round of significant sustained upward trend.
Nowhere is there a definition of a “second wave” that requires complete elimination of the first. Ask yourself, will there be a second peak? Is it more than just noise?
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Completely Of Topic Geoff
All about what USA economist thinks is the best way to avoid a depression. This post in case you did not know is about Iran and the Corona virus. Maybe you meant this for another blog ?
10 red thumbs
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This is the person whose plan we are using. If you want to critic something at least listen to it. Our country’s way of life depends on it working.
As you critic everyone you may wish to find some fault with his plan. Love to hear it. Otherwise its just more Bill.
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Geoff, ‘economic collapse’ is at this time a relative term. Every country in the world is facing similar problems. Australia us a wealthy country with vast resources of materials and we will come through this crisis better than most. To do this we must maintain the lockdown measures till we’re out of the woods and have a clearer understanding of the extent & effects of the virus.
GeoffW
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Iran has vast petroleum assets.
Material assets are only worth something if there are buyers in the reserve currency.
We know the virus outcome. We know how to react to outbreaks. We know the medical requirements.
The problem is State Governments.
They are negotiating over the coming Federal Government stimulus. Part of this process is to delay opening up the economy.
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Australia does not buy an crude oil or petroleum from Iran Geoff.
Because of building nuclear weapons : A grave sin indeed for Iran !
They clearly should have been spending money on their health system
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Are ther Catholics in Iran ?
Don’t think so.
Pushinga USA off topic again Geoff !
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if my post at 2 had not been cut off yesterday, then i would not have been posting it early today! no reason given yesterday, certainly low on list, it was, but crucial as can be. else maybe mountaineer does’t fit industry standard chez vous. tough.
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In relation to Karma perhaps Iran is experiencing QUDS PRO QUO.
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Justice is preferable to karma. The regime and the hardcore religious fanatics are the ones who deserve to suffer, unlike the majority of the Iranian people who are oppressed.
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Very clever yonnie….
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“What’s up, doc? said Bugs Bunny.” Keep moving on. https://balance10.blogspot.com/2020/05/montagnier-nature-loves-harmonious.html
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seriously? Your regular self promotion is tedious enough but you can’t plead ignorance of the existence of regular off topic threads where you can let loose.
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o, so sorry, captain; have you heard of necessity or precaution? as to being ignorant of most things, quite true.
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that about sums it up
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Leaf, thats a bit esoteric, even for you…. are you bored?
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Gee Aye could relieve his boredom by updating his website (which has been neglected recently)
https://geeaye.blogspot.com/
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thanks for the promotion but traffic was already heavy
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From a experimental viewpoint, we are seeing a full range of tests, from Belarus to New Zealand, and the results are clear, sans a vaccine, lockdowns are the only dependant variable which works.
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Yes that why Sweden sits in the middle of the pack in Europe in terms of excess mortality, yes its clear. Whats clear is that there are a variety of approaches although lockdowns of various flavours dominate. In some countries you can talk about lockdowns but culturally and practically they cant be implemented except in the deluded minds of politicians and their controllers.
Having dug the hole, now we have to say how great it is.
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Did you mean Dependable?
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Keith – the main variable in controlling the number of cases is related directly to the speed and length of the lockdown, ergo the number of cases depends on the lockdown. The only other variable which comes close is social distances, but it is not anywhere near the statistical impact of the lockdown.
What I find interesting is that a number of countries have not learned that lesson, both in the initial wave, and for the easing of restrictions.
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I have to disagree strongly, Fitz.
You haven’t caught on, have you?
Jo has already done two posts on the best method to preserve our societies and economies by ending the second silent pandemic. How many more does she have to do?
Bill in Oz and I have spread it all across the blog and back again. Ending the Silent Pandemic will be a lot cheaper, will save tens of thousands of lives, millions of dollars which would otherwise be spent on auto-immune diseases which will no longer be necessary and will also make lockdowns unnecessary too, but until then, time is a-wasting while everyone witters on about when to lock down and how hard.
There are now 20 new Covid viruses out there. Maybe, if we continue to mill around like a herd of stupid sheeple waiting for single vaccine which can now never happen, those 20 viruses are still mutating and creating newer and, sometimes nastier versions of themselves.
FHS. Get a grip and Get On With It. Or Get Out Of The Way.
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I’m sorry – why does a lifestyle disease need an intervention? (By the way I’m assuming you mean type 2) The blog is firmly in the libertarian camp, where the individual is responsible for their lifestyle choices.
Are you saying that you want a mandated diet for everyone on say New Zealand? You get diabetes because of your lifestyle, it is your choice,
FHS. take responsibility for at least one part of your life.
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Is cretinous coprocephilism acquired as a lifestyle choice or is it expressed genetically?
“Are you saying … ?” No, I’m not. I know it’s difficult with such limited faculties but try to think of simple things like availability, access, education, assistance, ranges of concentration, if/where/when needed and so on. You assume type 2) — do you now? Look up sulfonamide allergies and liver/pancreatic damage in babies, then have a friendly doctor administer a massive overdose of sulfonamide anti-bacterial; then, oh joy, experience type 2 forever. Don’t eat two of the yellow (sulfa-based) food dyes ever again — they cause intense pruritus at best and anaphylactic shock at worst.
From first hand experience: Lockdowns just get in the way, and from observation, they’re as much an obstacle to the [snip] challenged and those under-resourced with reason as they are to all others.
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You are now way off topic and insulting as well
Admins please take note
[Removed offending comment]AD
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Sorry for the mistake.
That should have read: “dependent”.
Not dependable.
KK
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Sorry again.
I’ve replied to the wrong Peter.
Meant to respond to the orange/brown Peter Fitzroy 111.
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I tried to answer you Keith, but used the wrong email address, went to moderation, and then disappeared.
Dependant means that it has the major impact, statistically speaking, on the outcome. Thus the spread of the virus depends on the efficacy and length of the lockdown.
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How many email addresses do you have Peter orange/brown?
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“we are seeing a full range of tests”. Yes we are seeing a range of tests, but is it really the full range? I’m not aware of any state that hasn’t applied a “one size fits all” strategy (counting Aus states as states). Couldn’t some state somewhere have tried protecting the vulnerable while letting everyone else continue their lives using state information and advice but their own judgement? Couldn’t some state somewhere have seen early on that the Wuhan virus thrives on high population density, so rural and city rules could be different? (Just two examples that one size doesn’t fit all).
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That would have been helpful. The main problem is our experience with flu to date says you are not infectious until symptoms appear. COVID-19 appears to remain asymptomatic in many, and yet they are still infectious. Protecting the elderly / vulnerable becomes much more difficult with this single error.
Now that we know that, yes, I believe this is something that could be done, but given the chronic fear-driven zeitgeist, I doubt anyone would.
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Not so simple Aaron. Check your flu assumptions. It is very much considered to transmit asymptomatically, though definitive proof of that is limited to viral assays showing asymptomatic people shed viral particles.
The studies of Covid Spread hints at new studies we should do on asymptomatic spread in Flu cases. I suspect the answer depends on viral loads and singing, yelling, loud concerts and churches will turn out to be asymptomatic influenza spreaders too.
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“Not so simple Aaron. Check your flu assumptions.”
They weren’t assumptions.
CDC: Most healthy adults may be able to infect others beginning 1 day before symptoms develop and up to 5 to 7 days after becoming sick
Healthline: Once you have the influenza virus, you can spread it to other people about a day before you first notice symptoms.
health.nsw.gov.au: People with influenza can be infectious from the day before their symptoms start. Adults are most infectious in the first 3-5 days of their illness, while children remain infectious for 7-10 days, and people with weakened immune systems may be infectious for longer.
Whereas the reports I keep reading for COVID-19 is people with antibodies had no idea they had it. I have not seen any reports of this happening with seasonal flu.
The point being: if you have young, healthy people who get outside and have good immune systems, working in multiple care home residences, they could easily be shedding all over the place and never have symptoms, vs someone with the flu who will always have the symptoms so at least be able to tell when they should stop working.
1 day of asymptomatic + 7+ days of symptomatic is a very different story to “never even know they had it”.
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Aaron you said: “The main problem is our experience with flu to date says you are not infectious until symptoms appear”
Then you backed that up with quotes showing the CDC says people can infect others while asymptomatic, which is the opposite?
If you haven’t read about asymptomatic influenza rates it’s because you don’t read medical journals. It’s well known and a large fraction. Many people carry antibodies to flu’s they didn’t know they had.
Please. if you haven’t studied this area at all beyond “watching the news” can you refrain from making statements with 100% certainty about things you haven’t even done a 10 second google search on?
As I said, check your assumptions…
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An example – Spain – no construction during lockdown and New South Wales, construction is OK, so I don’t agree with your first point. There are statistics for rural vs urban areas, again I’m familiar with those for the NSW health districts.
However, none of that matters against the efficiency of a lockdown to control the virus.
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I totally agree.
Nothing matters.
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https://youtu.be/KqCudv-JQ2o
Lockdowns kill more people than diseases. Are we going to account for those that die because of the lockdown?
All we needed to do was close the international border in early January.
Now we need to open up the economy almost completely asap.
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He’s an ancient Greek historian…What expertise does he have in this modern infectious pandemic disease ?
And oddly I doubt he is a competent ancient Greek historian. He should know that Sparta won the long Peloponnesian war against Athens largely because Athens was afflicted by a major plague which also wiped out leaders like Pericles and about 20% of the population..
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Geoff — with respect — could we aim higher than blanket statements for which there is zero evidence yet? Eg: “Lockdowns kill more people than diseases.”
On suicides for example, psychology is perverse. We are a gregarious species, and the solidarity of the lockdown and the common foe unites people — this is completely the opposite to the ways that normal wealth and competition divide them. Paradoxically, suddenly the service workers are essential, needed people. The wealthy lawyers/elite of normal society are not being applauded, they can’t show off their fortunes. They can’t use their gold class frequent flyer points.
The heroes in this situation are the delivery workers, packers, cleaners and front line nurses.
They almost never get a chance to bask in the glow of that status. Suicides may well increase among some groups (small business, self employed retirees) and we should be concerned about that, but net suicide rates might even decline. We have no data.
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The point, Geoff, is that in my post I pointed out in Belarus, where Lukashenko bets on no lockdown, and according to worldometer, has now a classic hockey-stick graph with 28,000 cases and 156 deaths, out of a population of 9 million, and New Zealand with a fast and strict lockdown had 1,500 cases and 21 deaths out of a population of 4 million. Tell me again how lockdowns kill more people, and maybe provide an example.
Ease up too early and you get a sawtooth graph, which is even worse. That is the risk here
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4.884 million which is closer to five million than four.
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I haven’t seen the Australian stats, but in Japan its looking good.
‘The suicide rate in Japan fell by 20% in April compared with the same time last year, the biggest drop in five years, despite fears the coronavirus pandemic would cause increased stress and many prevention helplines were either not operating or short-staffed.
‘People spending more time at home with their families, fewer people were commuting to work and delays to the start of the school year are seen as factors in the fall.’
Guardian
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Great to hear. The suicide rate in Japan is just terrible.
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Agree totally Geoff.
And I agree with what you said earlier on.
Iran never got on top of this in the first place. And add in great distrust of the govt in that country, and you have the recipe for more problems.
Whilst of academic interest its not something we should be claiming will be mirrored here. And other comparable countries to us with 2nd waves seem to be able to manage them well.
The lockdowns and massive damage economically will, as you correctly said, cause far more deaths than the virus here in Australia. As has been commented in the comments section for weeks we have stupid regulations that do nothing about the virus and just damage businesses and lose jobs. We still have not got rid of all of those.
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I’ve been more focused on the ‘second waves’ of countries more comparable to Australia – like Germany, Japan and Sth Korea…. but despite the predictions … nothing like a wave is eventuating…. so let’s talk about Iran. It’s much more scary.
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Harves,
Iran was one of the first nations to get a huge wave – to be “the epicentre” outside China and main transmitter to Italy and thus Europe. Predictably it has also released the quarantine measures earlier, but when there was still 1000 new cases a day.
Currently there are nine US states with more than 1000 cases a day that are talking about releasing quarantine measures.
Right now what we need more than anything is to know which measures can be released without a second wave.
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Of all the countries that have eased restrictions, Iranian society, health system and culture are probably the least similar to anything in Australia or the US. Surely looking at Spain, Italy or Germany is going to give a more analogous situation? None of those are experiencing a second wave, despite easing lockdowns a couple of weeks ago with around a thousand cases a day. Why would we look at Iran instead of these countries?
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Is there some sort of rule that something has to be similar to Australia?
The other thing to think about is similar when? You learn from all examples and scenarios so you are prepared for what comes next.
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I think it’s a pretty common ‘rule’ that when you are trying to learn from others you actually first check that their situation is relevant to yours, no?
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Harves, there is no data yet.
When we get results of the release from lockdowns in Spain, Italy, Germany, we’ll look at it. Are there second waves yet in any of them that I’ve missed. I look nearly every day at the biggies graphs.
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No.
00
I suspect opening mosques might not be a good thing … but this may not be much of a problem in southern US stayed.
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*states
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The rural & small town South is very Church focussed
A major pilar of the community.
And there is one example of an outbreak where churches & funerals were the main gatherings where people got infected.
Check this out : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-16/coronavirus-second-wave-hits-rural-america/12251058
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I don’t think you’ll learn much about churches by analysing Iran though ….
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No that’s true. But that ABC article had a lot in it for any Australians wondering just how the USA got itself to the top of the league table for Covid 19 deaths.
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They bribed somebody at their ABC?
Unthinkable.
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Try again….in moderation…
The headline says “second time” which may be misleading, rather “resurgence” implies they never fully cleared the virus the first time.
Note the headline which appears to be designed to scare people into demanding a vaccine…. surprise……
https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-16/coronavirus-update-australia-covid19-restrictions-relaxed/12254438
“Coronavirus update: Five sailors aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt contract coronavirus for a second time
“The resurgence of coronavirus in five sailors on the USS Theodore Roosevelt underscores the unpredictable behaviour of the highly contagious virus and raises questions about immunity.
“Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump says the US is “working very closely” with other countries in the global mission to produce a coronavirus vaccine, while New York has begun to reopen its beaches.
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The use of numbers and language during this outbreak has been interesting. The mainstream media focusses on deaths (if it bleeds it leads) until it became clear that wasnt big enough, then they go to hospitalisations, ICU beds and ventilators, and finally infections. Mostly talking in absolute terms when doing ranking so the numbers , apart from creating alarm, arent really meaningful. Then you have language as you say, the other day I heard a story on antibody research being done in QLD, and they talked about taking sample from Covid “survivors” . The drama, it appears, is eveything.
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I think they are keen to scare up support for the vaccine-only paradigm and have people begging for a vaccine, presumbly supplied by gates et al.
The media has consistently downplayed alternatives to vaccines and its becoming clearer what the agenda is.
The headline is often inconsistent with the content of the article, but people often only see the headline, ergo in effect its a form of fake news by design.
[OS your pushing your luck ,stay on topic please .]AD
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There are now over 20 Covid viruses.
Which one do you want to vaccinate against?
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We all know the story of the boy who cried wolf 2 times when there was no wolf. And we know that then the third time he cried wolf, no one believed him. The problem is there is a wolf the third trine. And wolves kill.
You have that same disbelief Yarpos. But there is an infectious pandemic viral disease. And the deaths should warn you to re-
evaluate your thinking.
The MSM are learning a hard lesson also from this disease. For them the lesson is’ Don’t blow your credibility with BS stories such as Gore Bull Warming. “.
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Yep. My favourite is when they say things Australia’s Covid cases have “increased overnight” and now “exceed 7,000”. Reality is there’s about 650 active cases and virtually none in most states and territories.
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Oh yes our media being so mathematically inept don’t seem to understand a cumulative total (or chart) is monotonic.
The other thing that strikes me is that this tail in the distribution does seem to be less virulent in that the new infections aren’t dropping dead in the ambulance. Are we seeing TDef’s (and My) live virus vaccine candidate playing out? It does seem logical that mild disease mutations would remain undetected the longest? We SHOULD be studying this.
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Second Wave of people presenting for testing with Flu like symptoms in Washington State as well.
https://depts.washington.edu/labmed/covid19/
But!!!
Those testing positive for COVID_19 virus as a proportion of those tested continues to decrease in a straight line from the 24th March (R2 = 0.76)
Is this due to a lock down, warmer weather, immunity?
Has there been a change in the testing regime?
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The CDC in the USA definitely stuffed up the testing regime and the test kits.
Incompetence and stupidity reigned supreme for a while there……
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Sounds to me like an opportunistic infection is piggybacking the epidemic
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Sorry Bob and Bill but this lab is just an old clunker churning out data. There hasn’t been notification of a stuff up or piggy back rides. The results show the saw-tooth weekly cycle Willis has referred to at wattsupwiththat. Nothing wrong with the sick, the clinic, the courier or the lab having a relaxed week-end I suppose.
Hopefully your smoke will clear and someone will be able to explain these daily figures. Results lacking the pandemic the John Hopkins data and the CDC reported.
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Movie Night Bill-e-os
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NITQYi83sY
I disagree with them about Tamiflu but they are struggling with the data. What happened to the influenza outbreak?
Apologies Freudian slip!
You got to feel for Jason. He is now having trouble going outside his apartment now he has stirred uo New York’s finest.
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60 secs. ! That’s it. My time is too crowded to be bothered watching this USA conspiracy chat fest.
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Eliminating CV19 remains a huge challenge. In Australia, that has been world class in avoiding deaths, there seems to be a long tail of new cases.
By April 26, Australia had reached a 7 day average of just 16 new cases per day, way down from the March 29 7 day average of 376 cases per day, but by May 15 is still averaging 15 new cases per day.
In Victoria, there was a daily peak of 74 new cases in the week ending April 2, and by the last week of April the number of daily new cases was averaging just 3, but now the daily new cases average is 14 – a small second wave? Firstly caused by the huge outbreak at the infamous meat works (Premier Dan said it was handled perfectly, but just this week the CHO confessed they got it wrong), and now at a couple of Maccas. Current total active cases 115. (NSW still has 419 active cases).
But the good news in Victoria: Of 70 local government areas, 40 areas have no active cases. The hot spots are Brimbank, central Melbourne, Hume, Melton, Wyndham, Melton and Moreland, mainly western suburbs.
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Maybe not.
SARS in 2003 resulted in 8,000 cases.
Since 2003… nada.
This info is from WHO.
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SARS 1 did not get to Australia.
It did get to Canada where it got into their hospitals.
The hospitals in Quebec & Ontario became major infection centers for SARS 1
Largely because medical staff were not washing hands and using PPE gear.
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Just to be clear – since 2003 there has never been another case of SARS – in the world (except for the odd accidental infection in a Chinese lab).
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Winter Robber, the tail is still around but winter makes this more infectious, even with test and trace you will still have a small infectious window which will keep cases trickling along (unless the disease is eradicated through it accidentally infecting nobody but hermits). I would expect to see some increase in the cases the small window generates as the virus becomes more infectious due to the weather allowing wider ranging and more prolonged microdroplet transmission. This is how the flu gets about in winter, it gets carried on the wind, hence cases should be isolated by more distance during winter. EG the Rottnest Is solution.
Funnily enough the winds are predominantly westerlies in the winter so the east coast islands (or New Zealand) are probably good places for quarantine stations
As long as the infectiousness window is kept small (case loads are low) we will get through winter, and next summer will kill it off.
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Crystal ball ponderings Bob. In the northern hemisphere it is now late Spring… That includes Iran where the virus raging again..
And I note that in tropical Brazil is also still raging ahead.
Plee ensure your ponderings are in line with what is happening.
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“Plee ensure your ponderings are in line with what is” approved by the palace guard or we will crush you to a bloody viral pulp and send you to live in some “foreign” place.
Sarc V2
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Labor party heart lands…
I wonder when the virus did it’s cross over from rich international jet setters
to poor casual employed migrants ?
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Maybe it didn’t cross over and they are completely separate outbreaks,
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That could be. The company is owned by a Lebanese migrant family. The virus could have come from the Middle East aboard a Middle East migrant worker before all flights were stopped.
Remember how SLOMO was originally asking all inbound travellers to self isolate for 14 days on arrival ? Naeve stupidity reigned in the early days.
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There is, one thinks a distinct “home field effect” that must be corrected for;
it probably won’t show up quantitatively until scholarly analysis is done.
Iran is very different from Japan on a host of cultural variables that will impact public health and virus transmission.
New Orleans is different than Tampa and very different than Indianapolis; SanFran has not much in common with
Charleston a continent away.
I’d guess everywhere coastal life is different than interior life, and urban differs from rural.
In many cases I’d say Covid fatality statistics by country are as meaningful as the temperature data from 1200 world wide mostly
airport thermometers has been. And I find it disturbing that it’s being flogged by some of the same folks, and that Greta is now an epidemiologist.
There is a lot we don’t know.
I’m more bothered that too much of what we “know” is wrong.
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Richard, you mention this:
There is one silver ling in all of this current disaster ….. scholarly analysis.
Right now, I can envisage Universities all across Australia, all of them, ramping up their grant applications for when all this recedes from ‘front of mind’ of the rest of us.
ALL of those grant application will now feature in BOLD the wording COVID19, to, umm, make certain that the grant is approved. They will all then especially ramp up with the election of a compliant Labor Government.
I can see University Administrators right now issuing memos to all heads of staff ….. you know that grant application you have written up for me, well, I’m sending it back. Just replace the words ….. climate change with COVID19, and then resubmit it for my signature.
See, I told you there was a silver lining.
Tony.
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Tony,
He did qualify that with the term “scholarly”, and in today’s world that probably defines a person of learning in a former age and not currently reliant on “grants” from greatful politicians.
🙂
00
The Herald Sun in Melbourne reported an interview with Brendon Murphy, Australian Chief Medical Officer, in today’s paper. Link is paywalled.
He is reported as stating that he realised how serious CV19 was when he saw the devastation in Italy, with its modern health care system. That indicates he had no respect at all for the Chinese medical system. China’s response in quarantining Wuhan and building a massive dedicated CV19 hospital in two weeks should have been sufficient to convince anyone that this was not seasonal flu.
Asian countries that appreciate China’s medical prowess (and rubbery official numbers) all acted decisively in controlling the spread of the virus without serious economic impact – arguably Pilippines and Indonesia are still on the cusp of control. Western countries underestimated the ability of China’s health care systems to treat CV19 and grossly overestimated their own capacity.
No doubt China held information back but there was clear evidence coming out of China in January that indicated the virus was highly contagious and deadly.
POTUS Trump epitomises the arrogance of western countries. There was bravado in the beginning of a quick solution; realisation that it would be a long road; depression over the economic impact; frustration that not much had been achieved in controlling the virus spread for all the economic cost and now outright anger directed mostly at China although I figure no staffer wants to give him more bad news.
In Australia, the AFL and NRL players are back at training and matches are not far away. Road traffic around here is building each day now. Things are looking brighter on this little island in the Southern Hemisphere.
Melbourne would be a little better with a solid dose of global warming today. Will be nice out though later in the day; clear sky and no wind.
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Rick,
Ah, yes! Bread and Circuses I think they called it in ancient Rome.
Tony.
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Tony Sport is the only true religion in Australia.
How dare you compare it to Roman Bread & Circuses
29
The southern States, including WA, get tremendous social value from football clubs. Communities work hard to keep local football clubs operating in regional areas as they are recognised for the social benefits they provide. Football clubs are often more active socially than the local pub in small communities.
My wife is actively involved in the local tennis club. This week they were provided guidelines for operating with new hygiene and separating requirements. There is huge pressure from the local tennis community to get up and going again even if it is social tennis and just coaching lessons for now.
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So true, the combined football/netball clubs arund my area are cornerstones of social activity.
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Tony, absolutely!
Have you noticed that the media have been fast to identify those “industries” most badly hurt economically and so needing handouts fast? Look at them. Sports – here in Melbourne, no broadcast is complete without mention of the footy AFL hardships, then NSW with the NRL rugby, then tourism, the performing arts, banking, insurance, investment advisors. None of them producing a single solid item of tangible sale value, all of them involved in recycling existing money, usually OPM $$$.
IN the coming recovery, we need to concentrate on industries that create new national wealth and make products that can be exported, industries that supply vital goods demanded for living.
We need more land under agriculture using modern methods, chemicals and machinery. Dump that fake organic gardening that ABC has been Force feeding us for decades. We need more mineral exploration and mining, more coal and oil and gas to make efficient self sufficiency and keep proper reserves from new more refineries. More Australian production of medicines, self-sufficiency the target.
It is easy to paint a clear, inarguable picture of where the recovery dollars need to be directed and that is NOT to a bigger bureaucracy. As an overall guideline, not to special pleading whingers unwilling to recognise real need, real worth and real progress. Geoff S
130
“Please Sir can I have some more ….. Government money.”
Umm, don’t you mean taxpayer’s money.
Tony.
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Jo
You have special expertise in this area and have been vocal in warning of second wave . You previously used Singapore as a second wave example and on the face of it you are correct. Could you please explain the Singapore second wave Anatoly. I’ll explain. In early April Singapore’s second wave started. They had about 900 total cases . Seven weeks later they have had 26000 cases. Wow how frightening! . But here is the anomaly ;they have had only 21 total deaths of which only about 8 or 9 could be related to this surge in active cases. I have monitored this closely and had assumed the death rate would accelerate as time passed . But it hasn’t. I know it will rise but only 18 cases are deemed serious and there are now over 7000 people who have recovered. I surmised that this incredibly low death rate ( superstar Australia had about 65 extra deaths in the same time) was due to 1.Singapore’s preparedness to deal with this,ie better hospital care, better tracing , better protection of the vulnerable, successful use of HCL or other drugs, 2. That the second wave was contained and spread amongst young people 3. That the extra testing captured the huge numbers of asymptomatic cases that were there anyway. 4. Maybe the second wave version in Singapore was a mutated version which is much less vital.
I think Singapore is a case study that is vitally important because if indeed a second wave can be managed to be not so lethal then we really have nothing to fear from it. Even as time goes on that the number of deaths in Singapore increases further that would hardly be judged as a policy failure.
If governments keep rattling on about beware of the second wave boogeyman we’ll never get people out of their houses. In the end active cases are irrelevant, it is only the death rate bottom line that matters. If indeed everyone knows that for whatever reason only a handful of people will die with a second wave you could open up society. That’s why the understanding of the Singapore second wave death rate is so important.
Jo or in fact anyone do you know what is happening in Singapore and are there lessons from this for the rest of the world.
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Ziggie, another big block of ponderings..You seem to have a focus on Singapore. Maybe because you live there or come from there. But you have no provided any links with evidence to support any of your ponderings…That would help with credibility. What’s the chances of getting some ?
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Bill
The ponderings relate to the world o meter data which I assume is as reliable as anything to base ponderings on. Another observation If.one also looks at a number of Arab states UAE, Saudi, Qatar, Kuwait all have relatively low death rates for the number of cases. QAtar has only 14 out of 29000 cases. It is clear that there are some regional differences that explain these anamolies. Different weather, more vitamin D, better hospitals, better monitoring, ethnicity etc. I would rather look at successful Covid stories and try to understand how to be more like them rather than less successful Covid stories such as Italy, Spain, UK and US and learn how not to be like them.
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Zig, thanks for the reply and the source. Yes I agree the world o meter data is about as accurate as we can get at the moment With certain reservations for certain countries which do not have the infrastructure to provide any.
I am also interested in knowing more about the countries which have succeeded is throwing off the virus. But such success is always a non story for the MSM. It does not bleed…
36
My wife takes the view that everyone in Australia should be pushing at the limit of the rules as the place opens up, which appears to be happening. She is quite pedantic about following the rules but, with government cautiously easing the rules with people staying quarantined, hardly provides the necessary feedback on rate of infection with relaxed rules and the ability to track and trace.
She has even said that a second wave in Australia would prompt her to get a new phone so she can run the COVIDSafe app.
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You would need to look at the actual cases in the second wave in Singapore for age profile and type of work but it is known they were predominantly migrant workers housed in dormitory style accommodation. I figure these people are a different age profile to Singapore nationals. Those housed in cramped accommodation are also more likely working in construction, industrial and shipping operations that give good exposure to sun compared with indoor work. The migrants working in home services would most be accommodated in less congested quarters. I have not spent much time in Singapore so this is based only on what I have read.
Australia renewed visas for temporary agricultural workers so the pre CV19 group could stay on rather than needing to bring in a new group.
Germany brought in a lot of seasonal workers not long ago. I do not know how the risk of CV19 was managed there but likely better than other locations.
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you don’t have to dig too deeply into the Singapore story to see that it is not applicable to many other places. There is no single route to a second wave.
20
G’day Z,
Thanks for for your info about Singapore. I hadn’t registered the low death rate there, and it certainly is fascinating. I reckon your point 1 is the probable answer, using hcq (HCl might be a bit severe) in the Zelenko cocktail, given early, would give those sort of numbers. Especially if they also added vitamin D.
Cheers
Dave B
40
Zig, you are right that watching Singapore is important.
They have had lower death rates all along, possibly because 1/ Excellent medical system, 2/ Preparedness, 3/ Near equator (high vit D?, warmer temps?) Possibly they didn’t make the same assumptions about ventilators, but I’m only speculating.
In this case, their second wave was from letting in immigrant low paid workers and putting them in dormitories. It’s hard to believe they made such an error, but the message for us is to keep that two week quarantine and tracking running.
Almost certainly the second wave are younger. There wouldn’t be too many 70+ immigrants. Hence the death rate is lower just because this infection isn’t spreading among the old.
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Jo they are not migrants able to live and stay in Singapore.
They are Guest workers who send money to family at home & who go home at the end of the contract.
This lower ‘status’ ( thus lack of care ) is I suspect the key reason why the infection got going in this group.
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Jo
Thanks for your reply
20
Hi Zig,
Until I looked at Jo’s comment and the point about the age distribution, I was thinking more along the lines of your point 4.
It links to the point made by TdeF about CV19o and CV19b with a later less aggressive version taking over.
Interesting case study.
00
Inshallah?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inshallah
11
Bugger that mythical being A!!ah gets a lot of publicity !.
09
Around this area
“Featured Comment”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/05/15/featured-comment-6/
02
Don’t want to get sick? Make sure your vit D level is up (sun and tablets) take plenty of vit C and zinc.
I never get any vaccines and I have not even had a cold let alone the flu or any sickness for that matter for 25 years.
I am 61.
91
Given that the two approaches are irreconcilable, elimination as in Australia and herd immunity as in Brazil and Sweden, we can only watch. And be glad our State governments showed sense and that we are an island.
The legend of herd immunity has grown from the fact that pandemics all seem to self extinguish but the explanation for this may be slightly wrong.
Herd immunity is impossible with the current lethality without truly massive loss of life and suffering but would be possible with a mutation which is indistinguishable but less deadly. I can think of no other explanation. And the fact that high levels of apparent exposure appear in retrospect seems to confirm this. Right now we cannot have high exposure without mass deaths.
So the good side, strangely, may be that unrestrained virus in Iran means the chance of an even more infectious and therefore dominant but far less lethal mutation increases.
It’s a terrible tragedy for the people of Iran and Brazil and a hell of a way to use people as human sacrifices instead of science, but sadly it may work. It means the sacrifice of millions in the hope of an unlikely miracle mutation. Even if no one knows that. People keep looking for that massive hidden exposure without realising it is not possible with the existing virus.
A very similar virus in a far less lethal form would sweep largely unnoticed through society exponentially rapidly, in mere weeks and at a very low cost in lives, conveying immunity ascribed then to the lethal virus. I am increasingly sure that is what happens. But nowhere yet. It’s luck. If it happened in 1918 in a year with 1.8Billion people, I would guess as the same time with the Western world in lockdown. The lethal virus would then have a real competitor for victims and society would be self innoculating.
To save mass deaths, I would be checking reported miracle survival especially in old people where RNA duplication is more likely to be faulty, as with cancers.
Consider the 80 year old woman reported yesterday as a miracle survivor. A sample of the live virus might just show a less lethal but dominant mutation which gave her time to respond with antibodies. Isolating this virus would short circuit the hunt for an immunization. Then millions of lives would not have been wasted trying to find a cure by serendipity. Or faith.
94
And almost to confirm this, the lethal virus which was the Spanish Flu appears to still be with us, mutating occasionally into a more lethal forms of the flu. That is because mutation goes both ways, more lethal and less lethal. So it has not left us. Also SARS and MERS never struck.
However if the world minimized these flus by testing of travelers and rapid closing of borders, they would not become pandemics. The difference between Wuhan Flu and SARS and MERS is that this time WHO intervened to enable a pandemic, even after the report from Taiwan.
There is no question the President of WHO hid the known infectiousness and the flood of Wuhan Chinese tourist continued, especially to Milan, centre of the textile industry of Italy.
He should be charged with crimes against Humanity in the Hague. The fact that he is still President of WHO shows how the UN politics corrupts all institutions. And the fake IPCC, an organization created with the World Meteorological Association in 1988 for the explicit purpose of pushing Climate Change as an issue for the United Nations. Scientific and medical organizations should never be run by politicians like the former member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front who is now head of the WHO.
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Nahhh TdeF…
That doesn’t fit with the Plandemic Conspiracy BS being pushed here on the blog now.
So the role of the WHO and the CCP have to be downplayed and ignored.
112
China has never been a world power. They invaded no one. However they find themselves on the big stage and they are engaged with the world economically. That is the brake on expansion, that their brand of communist capitalism needs customers. All the Generals are rich controlling businesses. To lose America as their biggest customer would be a disaster. So the world politics is in flux. One group would love to invade Taiwan and the other would not dare. Meanwhile America is openly patrolling with B1 and B2 bombers while China is going through war games simulating an invasion of Taiwan. We can only hope that it all resolves without conflict, another proxy war like Vietnam or Korea. China is even getting agressive on the border with India. And the vanishing act of Kim Jong Un is puzzling.
As a complete conspiracy theory, what if Kim Jong Un is a double? Who could tell anyway?
I believe the hiding of the Wuhan flu was a childish attempt to shift blame for total incompetence by the General in charge. The ultimate cost to China may be very large, especially with their dream of world economic domination through the Belt and Road initiative.
In the meantime, controlling every committee and department of the UN is a typical communist approach. It is why the WHO should be disbanded. And the IPCC should never have existed.
134
TDeF — the problem with China and war is that the decision to launch an attack will probably have more to do with internal domestic power games than with global geostrategic forces.
If the pandemic puts the top powers in China under threat (I’m sure it has), the response may affect all of us.
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My concern too. Childish behavior is first, to hide what you have done. Second to attempt to blame someone else. The third is to create such a crisis that everyone forgets what you have done.
115
There won’t be any military conflict over Taiwan or the South China Sea and Xi has the internal situation under control.
https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/forget-a-coup-against-chinese-president-xi/
30
Xi holds the mandate of heaven and has no intention of surrendering it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven
31
In Breitbart, Donald Trump agrees. “Like a giant baby on the brink of a meltdown”. That is serious for a nuclear armed country. And Taiwan is a rich prize. Also most Westerners think it was part of China once.
It’s a form of racism based on ignorance, that all Chinese are the same so any country with Chinese people must be part of China. That would make the US part of England.
52
If push came to shove the US would lose the Pacific war and Taiwan’s place in the scheme of things …. cactus. Don’t concern yourself unnecessarily, Beijing has invested heavily on peace and according to Xi, war is a total waste of resources and not worth the effort.
00
1.438 bn people are the same. That and the tension it creates is the essence of Chinese culture, no? Quite remarkable really
00
Why did Swine Flu and others disappear ? Is it likely that Covid19 will do the same ?
I see it as the only hope of getting rid of it. The USA and UK – who refuse to shut borders – have only flattened curves and are under huge pressure to stop the lockdown. Therefore I don’t see this virus going away unless it disappears like those before it. All efforts like Australia has done will be for 0 unless we keep borders shut, which is highly unlikely.
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No, it is not for zero. We have kept out many pests, insects, fungi, viruses. HENDRA is another Chinese bat virus. It nearly destroyed the Melbourne Cup. Quarantine stopped it.
We also do not have a lot of viruses like Rabies and we do not want them.
We just have to test, isolate, quarantine but yes, rapid cheap international holidays withe the children may be over. Children are particularly active carriers who are sent to school sick the day after they get home. All this has to stop. Frankly, taking young children on international holiday is pure folly. The children never remember it, have no love of foreign cultures and food and when sick have no understanding.
So hard virus borders. As we used to have against Yellow Fever and any fevers. It is only in the last 30 years that airports have stopped checking mandatory innoculations. THe laws are probably in place, but it was too hard. M*slim terrorism though costs me enormous grief in travel, even domestically but no one cares if you are carrying an infectious deadly virus. Like the latest European flu. That has to stop.
And don’t try to get through an Australian airport with an apple. Isn’t that madness in priorities?
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Swine flu didn’t disappear. It’s still circulating — causing a significant burden. Look up H1N1 and H1N1/09. Still nasty. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemic.html
We’ve never done a lockdown to deal with it (and wouldn’t) — we could theoretically eradicate it, but the cost is not worth it.
Because we can’t live with Covid — it’s too expensive in lives and in economics — we and all the countries that get rid of it will be able to fly to each other (20+ nations are getting there now), but all need borders and quarantines need to be maintained to nations where it spreads free.
I fear however that this will not include the UK and US, and these orbiting giants have a gravitational pull that will test quarantines in many nations. Another reason to sort these two giant messes out asap.
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Pure unadulterated speculation Jo. How do you you know they were doing everything they could do to achieve herd immunity? It is almost comic.
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Facts ES…Iran did nothing to control this disease for weeks ..They ignored it and said A!!ah will protect us.
And thousands of the infected died… So effectively a cull to gain ‘herd immunity”
Or maybe the survivors are those who A!!ah decided to bless with healing miracles…
PS It’s curious, Trump constantly mentions ‘miracles’ when talking about this disease as well.
PPS : Maybe this Covid19 virus is a devilish way of culling and changing such irrational religious obsessed countries ?
311
According to the ABC who have intelligence and undercover newsagents in Iran, on the spot, right there, to find out the truth, there is a pandemic of methanol poisoning. I didn’t believe it myself either at first. 🙂
53
Lets just concede we don’t know everything about the affairs of others.
72
I’m willing to concede your ignorance ES.
But I prefer to stay informed about such matters.
Even if 85% of what the ABC puts out is dross
There remains 15% which is worth the knowing.
And that is a higher percentage than your own offerings
: -)
112
You’re on the right path with that C*ll word Bill.
At the rate it’s mutating, I can’t see anything but a short-lived vaccine. It may become a case of “Which one do you want to vaccinate against?” There are now 20 Covid-19s. Like all corona viruses, it’s not letting much time get in the way of new versions. It’s faster than Windows ever was with its rapid mutation.
Those who had high death rates could have been just unlucky with their strain of the virus.
Influenza viruses SARS-CoV-1 and MERS are corona viruses, and it’s their mutability which makes annual vaccination necessary (unless Gates was behind their production … Version 3.1 now available, 3.5 coming.) Now we have SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) and it’s already up to 20 separately identifiable versions. A vaccine for it doesn’t exist for it —Yet. The Common Cold which is a mixture of viruses, some of them corona viruses, is still with us and it has been regarded as too difficult to make vaccines for it because of the mutability of the viruses responsible. .
But on a better note, there seems to be some interesting news from Oxford University. I’ve yet to follow it up, so if I’m beaten to it: great! 😀 (It seems University students may be their Herd …)
40
ES says: ” It is almost comic.”
Indeed, satire is meant to be that way.
102
By whatever mechanism, comical/etc, there is still the question of how the WHO and Worldometers somehow have special intelligence and undercover newsagents there. How are we to believe this?
40
We are looking for granularity in the data i suspect.
20
In 1978 I was in Tehran as relief manager for a large Australian contract to find uranium and other minerals for the Shah. Soon afterwards, the Shah was gone and the mad religious communists that replaced him are still there in form. I had a chance to see how the rulers of a Nation affected the people. This leads me to say, as many are now saying of China, blame not the people, but the rulers, when events go bad. (And remember to say China with your mouth shaped like a cat’s bum, because that is trendy.)
I met a number of lovely Iranian people, cultivated, worldly, excellent conversationalists, economic realists. I feel for them and their type, with religious belief gone mad. Also, the women of marriage age were among the most beautiful of face and figure I have seen anywhere. Now they are required to cover these beautiful assets with black bags, or be killed by stoning. What a dreadful outcome.
Geoff S.
180
What’s the status of taking Vit D3 in Iran? Here’s something for everyone though.
OVERWHELMING PROOF THAT VITAMIN D3 DEFICIENCY CAUSES MOST HUMAN DISEASES
https://jefftbowles.com/vitamin-d3-deficiency-causes-most-human-disease/
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St John,
No data here, but I suspect the high altitude cold areas of Iran would be deficient. People in winter cover up, and they have more pigment in their skin.
I wonder if the worst outbreaks are in the higher colder zones?
72
Iceland and Sweden are examples of cold dark places at the start of the pandemic
50
So is Greenland.
50
Amazing how the moats override even Vitamin D levels.
42
From Herodotus, The Histories –Book III (Thallia) (Pub:421 BC.)
Cambyses son of Cyrus, king of Persia was preparing to wage war against Amasis, the Egyptian Pharoah in 526BCE. But Amasis died and Cambyses attack fell on Pharoah Psamtik III who had been enthroned for only 6 months.
Herodotus wrote:
On the field where this battle was fought I saw a very wonderful thing which the natives pointed out to me. The bones of the slain lie scattered upon the field in two lots, those of the Persians in one place by themselves, as the bodies lay at the first- those of the Egyptians in another place apart from them. If, then, you strike the Persian skulls, even with a pebble, they are so weak, that you break a hole in them; but the Egyptian skulls are so strong, that you may smite them with a stone and you will scarcely break them in. They gave me the following reason for this difference, which seemed to me likely enough:- The Egyptians (they said) from early childhood have the head shaved, and so by the action of the sun the skull becomes thick and hard. The same cause prevents baldness in Egypt, where you see fewer bald men than in any other land. Such, then, is the reason why the skulls of the Egyptians are so strong. The Persians, on the other hand, have feeble skulls, because they keep themselves shaded from the first, wearing turbans upon their heads. What I have here mentioned I saw with my own eyes, and I observed also the like at Papremis, in the case of the Persians who were killed with Achaeamenes, the son of Darius, by Inarus the Libyan.
From a translation by George Rawlinson ©1994-2009
[13 lines from 143] http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.html
A case of Osteomalacia, or adult rickets. That was c. 2500 YA. Conditions of weather, ways of dressing and living may be not be dis-similar today. Herodotus was mostly correct in his surmise but not quite. You may be quite right, Jo, with Vitamin D Deficiency of the order of 20ng/ml or less being
the prime cause for the deaths. Not, though, a new phenomenon for that region, but certainly an historical one.
40
To: STJOHNOFGRAFTOB @ #21
Great: another convert! 😀
Welcome.
You can find all that here along with scientific papers.
You might find this interesting:
In 1935 you had 1 chance in 1700 to be afflicted by a Malignant Melanoma Skin Cancer (MMSC)
Today, you have 1 chance in 66 of being afflicted by an MMSC.
Sunscreens were invented in 1935.
Do Sunscreens cause MMSC?
Melanoma is caused by too much UVA and esp. UVA without UVB.
Sunscreens block UVB very efficiently but UVA poorly or not at all.
I threw out all my sunscreens and now use only a low strength blocker on my face.
Our public hospitals are seeing rickets again.
40
Depending on a second round
”
Our governor opened restaurants back up two days ago . Most of them just took out a few tables so there is more room between guest .
People flocked in. Many of them going out of their way to thank the owners .
Look at it this way , Lincoln , the second largest city in Nebraska with just under 300 thousand ( known) residents has had three yes that’s right three (3) THREE as in one two three THREE DEATHS .
THREE DEATHS
YOUR MORE LIKLY TO GET HIT BY A FRICKING BUS!!!!
”
https://www.redpowermagazine.com/forums/topic/128041-corona-virus/page/41/?tab=comments#comment-1426597
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Now we know why there has been a Corona 19 disease outbreak in Rockhampton. The nurse who worked at the aged care home there developed symptoms and had been tested. But did not go into isolation while waiting for the test results…
Ummm… Even medically trained folk can be completely dopey !
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-16/rockhampton-nurse-worked-while-waiting-for-covid-19-test-results/12252810
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There must be zero tolerance everywhere. Including McDonalds. And the source of the virus in nurses must be found. No one invents this virus. There must be a source.
45
Health and hospitality. Even someone and especially someone emptying a dishwasher can be a super spreader. Why Cedar Meats was not thoroughly tested needs explanation. And the idea that the meat they handle could not carry the virus needs explanation. I would have thought it an idea medium. Cold does not harm an inanimate chemical.
85
ideal medium
44
Why isn’t Jo onto this?
35
Because the contact tracing teams are.
But your point is to mock the blog host.
10 Red thumbs !
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I’m more concerned about people who pack freezers. One superspreader loading goods into a freezer could be storing outbreaks on the packaging there for several months. That would foil the tracking…
If they clean a meat packing plant, sadly they need to deal with the freezer contents. Only safe option is to incinerate the lot plus full decontamination of the warm dry fridges and freezers before reopening.
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Hot soapy water if plastic packed? Or methanol. Or pure ethanol.
54
I dipped frozen vege packs into hot soapy water during the peak here. This hopefully cleaned the plastic. Then I kept them frozen and obviously later cooked the contents before eating. I did this fast in large laundry buckets out the side of the house. My policy was to keep the inside of the house as a clean zone. Don’t bring any contaminated goods or packaging or shoes in. Yes, I am a freak (though the inside of the house is still messy). I bet some other people trained in aseptic technique were doing the same.
I also gave up salads for a month. Too much risk of people coughing on the kale at Coles. 😉 Cooked veges are OK. Raw, not so. To keep raw nutrients I grew sprouts from bulk seeds I ordered in Feb. I will keep doing this. I like my sprouts.
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No Jo – it’s Lived In, not messy. 😀
70
irradiation? COmment & reference below.
00
Hi Bill
Here in Rocky everyone I know is shocked and angry. She not only worked at the home while having a respiratory illness, she went to the Uni library 7 times and was out and about shopping etc. 70 contacts outside the home being traced and tested. Some possibilities:- 1. False positive I hope. 2. Inadequate and incompetent administrative oversight of legislated procedures. 3. Irresponsible selfishness and stupidity.
But even if it turns out to be a false positive, 2 and 3 apply as she continued to work for 3 days after being tested! She isn’t too popular in Rocky.
Good news is all of the old people in the home have tested negative, and a goodly number of staff.
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Good to hear that news Ken !
I hope all of you there in Rocky stay well.
53
Another Ian, I don’t know about being hit by a bus but since Feb 1 in Australia 77 people under 90 years old have died from the virus. In the same time period 75 people have won a first division lotto prize.
53
And more men have died falling off ladders.
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also impacting older blokes, they special in the ladder plunge
60
Largest cause of accidental death in older men.
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I know heaps of people who fell off ladders..
30
Ageism E S ?
🙂
03
Apologies E S..It was TdeF who was being ageist.
How could you TdeF ?
🙂
03
Deaths that matter in this case are the ones that didn’t happen and won’t happen in future.
53
Another Ian, I don’t know about being hit by a bus but since Feb 1 in Australia 77 people under 90 years old have died from the virus. In the same time period 75 people have won a first division lotto prize.
52
The same 75?
30
no self-promotion to my motive, darlings, but we have business afoot, onward ho:
a research center to study natural and man-made epidemics
https://balance10.blogspot.com/2020/05/a-research-center-to-study-natural-and.html
11
An inanimate chemical like the RNA in the Wu Flu virus has one function, to reproduce itself. The selfish gene. It has no purpose. A bit like the replication curse in Harry Potter and Gringott’s vault.
The virus has no idea that it is killing the host. That is why more benign viruses have a better chance of survival without reaction by the host and a key reason why viruses mutate into milder forms. Less destructive versions spread more easily and reproduce more, overwhelming the pool of victims and leaving no space for the original.
The question with this virus is how to defeat it when you are the victim. Like the 1918 virus, the lethality of Wuhan Flu is extraordinary and you can die of many things and survive but crippled. That is why it is a pandemic and not just another carona virus flu or rhino virus.
And so we trust to a mistake in the countless trillions of copies that a mistake is inevitably made which makes a more benign copy and that this benign copy is able to replicate in others. In the search for herd immunity, we are really hoping for a mistake. The odds are in the trillion of trillions to one, but so?
Maybe in the sheer size of human society now, the creation of a benign form is going to happen faster than it did a hundred years ago. Maybe it never happens, not the mutations but the transmission. And a million opportunities are overlooked.
That is why we should look for it. Especially in those countries where the virus is rampant, or in the old peoples homes where it is both rampant and mutation is high and survival rates are low. The problem is that we have to find the live benign virus, not the antibodies.
And that would make innoculation easy. There would be nothing to do but party.
74
We are heading to a saw toothed recovery, where as restrictions are ease, infections will spike, and therefore force restrictions to be reimposed.
Is Australia immune?
Not really, as Jo points out there could be reservoirs of the virus in freezers (and those commercial ones that supply McDonalds would be a prime vector), and we are still importing potential vectors, by the thousands each month.
sans a vaccine, we could be looking at more lockdowns between now and when we get one.
43
Second wave in Guam.
https://thediplomat.com/2020/05/sailors-on-sidelined-us-aircraft-carrier-get-virus-for-second-time/
20
With footage of crowded buses and trains on the telly lately, why isn’t government recommending that people wear masks on public transport when they still require social distancing?
‘It has long been recognized that respiratory viruses can be transmitted via droplets that are generated by coughing or sneezing. It is less widely known that normal speaking also produces thousands of oral fluid droplets with a broad size distribution’
‘we estimate that 1 min of loud speaking generates at least 1,000 virion-containing droplet nuclei that remain airborne for more than 8 min. These therefore could be inhaled by others and, according to IAH, trigger a new SARS-CoV-2 infection.’
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/05/12/2006874117
70
Breaking news – a cure ?
https://www.foxnews.com/science/covid-cure-california-biopharmaceutical-coronavirus-antibody-breakthrough
30
Yet another candidate for the Nobel prize for medicine.The Swedish academy is be so pleased as it will help prevent Swedes being killed by this virus.
Certainly the Swedish government will not get the prize after it’s herd immunity program killed so many Swedes.
44
Be wary. I think I have seen that headline in some form every week for three months.
70
Yes we need to be wary indeed
Hence my flippant remark about the Nobel prize.
But if this ‘cure’ is a cure, then it would indeed be worthy of the Nobel prize.
04
Not sensing much fear of the 2nd wave or getting out in general in the glorious Socialist Republik of Victoriastan. I was in Yea north of Melbourne today around lunchtime (its at the junction of two highways and one of those town were people frequently break for coffee and munchies.
There were about 100 to 150 motorbikes there, with riders standing around in groups chatting, and all the main car park areas were full. We went down one end near the police station that was less crowded and walked back. The town has a wide island/park down the centre with park facilities our numpty council has roped off. There were group of picnicers , some with camp chairs , some sitting on the grass enjoying the autumn sunshine. Looked funny with them there and the picnic tables right beside them roped off.
Rightly or wrongly , methinks the people of VIC have given Chairman Dan the middle finger and his control at this stage is now only in his imagination. They were centainly out in force today. I feel sorry for the hospitality people impacted , hopefully Dear Leader Dan will allow them to open at some stage perhaps determined buy dragging goats entrails accross the spreadsheets provided by the Medical Officer. I’m sure “the science” will light his way.
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I hope you enjoyed your trip to Yea Yarpos and had a good outdoor take out meal break.
35
The traffic along our road was unbelievable today. The racket nearly drove me mad. A lot of stuff was presumably going to Lake Eildon and surrounds. I commented to my OH it all seemed to be a strong nose thumb at Desperate Dan and his gang.
The local town was busier yesterday too.
30
In reply to TdeF, #18.1
“Children are particularly active carriers who are sent to school sick the day after they get home. All this has to stop. Frankly, taking young children on international holiday is pure folly. The children never remember it, have no love of foreign cultures and food and when sick have no understanding”
It is our eldest son’s 13th birthday today. My wife and I are extremely thankful/overjoyed that we travelled internationally with all of our three children when we could: Bali (2012), Fiji (2013), Vietnam (2014), America (2015), N.Z. (2016) and South Africa (2017). We discuss these travels constantly with our kids who wrote journals during their travels; we have photos on the wall, amazing family albums.
My wife has taken the opportunity of this lock-down to create wall hangings of the badges they collected in U.S. National Parks, which we visited (America’s amazing Junior Ranger Program). Not one of us returned to Australia sick or infected other children to our knowledge. Since 2018 we have been travelling locally and have a booking for Lady Elliot Island this October, cross fingers. However, once international borders reopen, we can’t wait to visit Italy and especially Rome.
10
Then you are quite atypical and you know it. I can only generalize. And if they wrote journals, they were older than six. And you visited National parks with the Junior Ranger Program, you had a different open air agenda.
12
Actually, our eldest son started writing in a journal from age 5 in Kindergarten (Fiji)… younger brother and sister still had a journal but drew instead. Using New York’s subway to commute from Brooklyn for 10 days wasn’t following an open air agenda. Our youngest was only 3 when we caught the overnight sleeper train from Hue to Hanoi and he remembers it like yesterday.
I just had to take you up on your “pure folly” comment, TdeF. Our experiences have been the complete opposite of what you describe. We have a couple of friends who too have travelled overseas with their primary school children, and experienced the benefits that brings to their education.
00
Somewhat O/T but hopefully
”
Colonialista
May 16, 2020 at 12:49 am
I don’t think I’ve gotten any smarter, but your reflexes slow down before you do something stupid when you’re older. ~ Kris Kristofferson”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/05/16/may-16-2020-reader-tips/#comment-1317664
10
Population control is a beautiful thing.
11
So the evidence that lockdowns don’t work (except to delay the inevitable) mounts more and more and yet still some people won’t admit it!
A delay is not a solution, it is pointless damage to the economy with enormous ramifications, some deadly.
And again I point out there is a difference between quarantine when you have no/very isolated infection, and a futile lockdown when the infection is well seeded.
In the UK you can see the effect, in London the epidemic was established and the infection rate started off naturally with a rapid spread – the important question now is did it peak naturally or was it stunted by the lockdown.
In areas where the the epidemic was less well established we now have an excruciatingly slow flat curve that could go on for years.
Countrywide the R is stuck at 1 – the government has upped it from 0.4-0.9 to 0.7-1, I said before it was obviously stuck around 1.
The problem isn’t that Iran went for herd immunity, the problem is that it didn’t – just like the UK it changed policy, which is the dumbest of all.
32
Crushing curves can be achieved in the confines of a level 4 biolab.
31
From wikipedia of a level 4 biolab setup.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Structure_of_NIAID_Integrated_Research_Facility.jpg
And: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#BSL-4_facilities_for_extraterrestrial_samples
21
Not on topic here all the time too Original Steve. I use the ‘non expert’ disclaimer most of the time when i actually remember to include it. Like this one, ….”in my non expert opinion” (IMNEO) or this one “in my non expert student opinion” (IMNESO). Works for me.
31
I was replying to Original Steve’s original comment.
“OriginalSteve
“May 16, 2020 at 7:09 pm · Reply
“AD please don’t mistake my intent, while I try to stay on topic, occasionally I add extra stuff to provide a broadened info-scape without compromising the core info.
“If any of my posts here today are not OK, please feel free to delete, no hard feelings.
10
Totally agree OriginalSteve!
Quite an precept you have there. I like it!
10
RE: good contents in commercial freezers.
We have considerable food irradiation capability, mostly mothballed because the yahoos
have decided that anything “nuclear ‘ is too terrible to contemplate (which is why nuclear medicine
changed the label a while ago).
I think irradiation actually kills the virus, and can be done on a large scale to rucks of frozen
goods as well as fresh ones, without thawing or otherwise damaging the contents.
https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/food-irradiation-what-you-need-know
Might be a way to fix the food chain issues on a large scale; and we might be able to impelement
it after only a few years of lawsuits from environmentalists. Might also work for consumer goods like clothing.
20
Good point Richard. UVC also might be useful.
00
Somewhere, in the dark past, statistical theorems where based on something called “a well defined set”, etc. Besides the inherent flaws of epidemiological observational studies, there is significant issues with “well defined”:
https://townhall.com/columnists/johnrlottjr/2020/05/16/the-us-is-dramatically-overcounting-coronavirus-deaths-n2568925
Future historians, should the humans even survive CV-19, will likely never determine what reality there is nor the factual rationale that produced the lemming effect on the world wide economy.
10
The internal politics of the US are baffling to those of our who live here.
We have a federal government, 50 states, several territories, a capital zone, more than 3000 counties,
and some 10,000 plus cities all with taxing authority and police powers, and in many cases, tiny tyrants.
And then there’s this:
https://apnews.com/ad0ffb298966217d09e4e0f4ecdd56ca
It won’t happen here unless we have social concensus, and probably not then. I think Jo is regrettably right that the US will harbor the
virus through several cycles, and end up being quarantined from much of the world.
The Chinese will lie about their status and travel.
Oz may be best off closing up to everybody for a while.
50
anyone for a 3rd wave?
A major new Australian study of COVID-19 has found that it seems specially adapted to infect human cells https://www.newsmax.com/scitech/covid-19-study-australia-human-cells/2020/05/16/id/967713/
………………………
Brazil 14.5% rise (new cases/active cases) https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/brazil
Mexico 24/72.4= 33% rise https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/mexico
Russia 106/1916= 5.5% rise https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/russia/
Iran 21/179= 12% rise https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/iran
Pakistan 14/262= 5.3% rise https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/PakistanIndonesia Indonesia 49/1035= 5% rise https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/indonesia
Spain 17/562= 3% rise https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain
…………………………………………
https://balance10.blogspot.com/2020/05/2005-illegal-biological-arms-race-with.html
00
Jo educate yourself, listen to Dr Judy Mikovits talking to Dr Joseph Mercola, Could Retrovirus Play a Role in COVID-19, she is a true expert
00