Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

This blog will pay for itself.

Consistently wrong since 2002

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

The words do not have to be perfect.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / COVID-19 Coronavirus Update – Thursday / Friday, May 21-22

COVID-19 Coronavirus Update – Thursday / Friday, May 21-22

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  1. 1.

    terben

    From the Australian Dept of Health:

    ‘As at 3:00pm on 22 May 2020, a total of 7,095 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in Australia, including 101 deaths and 6,479 have been reported as recovered from COVID-19. 

    Over the past week, there has been an average of 11 new cases reported each day. Of the newly reported cases, the majority have been from Victoria.

    Of cases with a reported place of acquisition, 62% have recent international travel history, including over 1,300 cases associated with cruise ships.

    To date, over 1,170,500 tests have been conducted nationally. Of those tests conducted 0.6% have been positive.’

    This is an increase of 14 new cases today (15 new, 1 removed) and sadly, 1 death.

    The new cases were mainly in Victoria (12), with NSW the other state to have an increase. These two states also have 30 of the 39 hospital cases, while Victoria has 5 of 7 ICU cases and 4 of 6 ventilated patients.

  2. 2.

    Amir Khalid

    Malaysia’s daily numbers: 78 new cases; foreign nationals 40, including 25 illegal immigrants under detention; local infection 53 cases, imported 25 cases. Total 7,137 cases. 63 patients recovered, total 5,859 or 82.1% of all cases. Of 1,163 active and contagious cases, nine are in ICU of whom five are on ventilators. One death, total 115. Infection fatality rate 1.61%, case fatality rate 1.92%.

    The National Security Council has now ordered a halt to all interstate travel — perhaps because it was exasperated by the thousands attempting to defy the movement control order and sneak home for Eid.

  3. 3.

    WereBear

    The commonality of co-morbid conditions seems connected to Insulin Resistance: and the large pool of undiagnosed/untreated diabetes cases out there.

    We need everyone covered, more than ever, because I keep reading how states who avoided Obamacare are in much worse shape.

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    On Oahu:

    In a generous act of kindness, an anonymous donor paid for the groceries of nearly 2,000 [senior citizens] at Foodland stores on Thursday morning. Source

  5. 5.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Just 7.3% of Stockholm’s inhabitants had developed Covid-19 antibodies by the end of April, according to a study, raising concerns that the country’s light-touch approach to the coronavirus may not be helping it build up broad immunity.

    The research by Sweden’s public health agency comes as Finland warned it would be risky to welcome Swedish tourists after figures suggested the country’s death rate per capita was the highest in Europe over the seven days to 19 May.

    Sweden’s state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, said the antibodies figure was “a bit lower than we’d thought”, but added that it reflected the situation some weeks ago and he believed that by now “a little more than 20%” of the capital’s population had probably contracted the virus.

    However, the public health agency had previously said it expected about 25% to have been infected by 1 May and Tom Britton, a maths professor who helped develop its forecasting model, said the figure from the study was surprising.

    “It means either the calculations made by the agency and myself are quite wrong, which is possible, but if that’s the case it’s surprising they are so wrong,” he told the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. “Or more people have been infected than developed antibodies.”

    Björn Olsen, a professor of infectious medicine at Uppsala University, said herd immunity was a “dangerous and unrealistic” approach. “I think herd immunity is a long way off, if we ever reach it,” he told Reuters after the release of the antibody findings.
    …………………………..
    In April, officials estimated one third of Stockholm residents would have contracted Covid-19 by early May, subsequently suggesting that the capital could reach herd immunity of between 40% and 60% by the middle of June.

  7. 7.

    OzarkHillbilly

    In Bergstrom’s tweet thread up above he speaks of the “IFR”. WTF is IFR? Google tells me it’s instrument flight rules, or maybe the International Federation of Robotics.

  9. 9.

    terben

    @OzarkHillbilly: I found this ‘useful’ definition.

    CFR is the ratio of the number of deaths divided by the number of confirmed (preferably by nucleic acid testing) cases of disease.  IFR is the ratio of deaths divided by the number of actual infections with SARS-CoV-2.  Because nucleic acid  testing is limited and currently available primarily to people with significant indications of and risk factors for covid-19 disease, and because a large number of infections with SARS-CoV-2 result in mild or even asymptomatic disease, the IFR is likely to be significantly lower than the CFR.

    Virology Blog : Vincent Racaniello

  10. 10.

    Amir Khalid

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    In this context, IFR means infection fatality rate: deaths as a percentage of the number who have tested positive. (There is another number, case fatality rate: deaths as a percentage of cases that have had an outcome, either recovery or death.)

  11. 11.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @rivers: That occurred to me, but what then is the difference between a case and an infection? Are there cases without infections? Infections without cases?

    Saying that in my mind, they are the same thing. So I missed something somewhere along the line?

  12. 12.

    Tony Jay

    I won’t bother posting statistics from the Rotten Borough of Lower Brexitannia. Suffice to say the Tories are claiming one figure for C-19 deaths, while the Financial Times and the Office of National Statistics, using actual ’cause of death’ records, are saying it’s actually close to double that. Guess which figure the British Media uses as the ‘official’ one? Yeah, that one.

    It’s just shit here, and getting steadily shitter. Government pedal-bins in suits stand in front of grossly out of place patriotic bunting opening and closing their lids to disgorge the latest barrage of lies and misinformation and our ‘independent Press’ just gobbles it up and regurgitates it virtually unchallenged.

    Frex, it was clear Government policy to deny PPE to care-homes, with evidence to prove it, but somehow a blunt denial of reality by The Man is enough to shunt that off into “he said, she said” territory and down the memory hole. The same goes for the clearly evidenced Government policy of throwing old people out of NHS hospitals into care-homes without testing them for C-19 in order to keep the Hospital Deaths numbers artificially low, which led to a massive death-rate among the abandoned and untreated elderly residents, but Ministerial Drone 4-Alpha Sigma C-Dot bleeps out a Negative and suddenly its only “critics” suggesting that there might be a link between these two events.

    It’s all like this. Incompetence, greed, ideological brutality and deceit, rolling on down the hill of time like a slowly growing snowball flecked with turds and startled animals. Pick any aspect of Government policy, especially anything to do with Coronavirus, and the stench of death from all the people they’ve put into the morgue is the first, second and third thing that hits you. Well, unless you work for the British Media, that is. Then every day is a brand-new mystery and they might as well be Westworld hosts babbling on about their Loop backstories. “I don’t know nothin’ about that” should be printed at the top of every newspaper masthead and be on permanent scroll at the bottom of every BBC News report.

    These fucking people.

  13. 13.

    Barbara

    @OzarkHillbilly: Infection Fatality Rate, as opposed to Case Fatality Rate. In other words, the holy grail number that experts have been chasing to understand the true population level risk of the disease. To do that, you need to know how many people have been infected but not tested or not even presented for care. CFR is based on “known” cases, and more reliable as such. IFR to date is based on estimates, but with antibody testing should come into sharper focus.

  14. 14.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @terben: @Amir Khalid: Thanx, but this only tells me that for my purposes I can in this case at least, ignore Bergstrom. He is getting so down into the weeds here that the information he is putting out is of no practical value to me.

    Again, thanx.

  16. 16.

    Barbara

    @OzarkHillbilly: The disease is highly infectious and assumed to be non-threatening to a high percentage of infected people. Since it is deadly to a substantial number, even if a clear minority, I am not sure why that matters, nonetheless, it has given rise to the idea that building herd immunity could be accomplished without too much damage. In the case of Sweden, it appears that people are doing a better job of protecting themselves from infection than their government expected, which also has the perverse effect of not allowing Sweden to claim a low enough IFR to make the idea of cultivating herd immunity an acceptable strategy. My take? Don’t become hypnotized by numbers.

  18. 18.

    YY_Sima Qian

    2 new domestic confirmed cases in China yesterday, both reported by Shulan in Jilin City. One is a person “connected” (likely close contact of close contact) to a previously confirmed case, and has been under self-quarantine at home for 10 days. The other is a close contact, and has been under centralized quarantine for the past 7 days. If this keeps up, the Jilin City outbreak might be contained and suppressed. After exports to Changchun and Shenyang, no further confirmed or asymptomatic cases have been found there in the past week+.

    The “100%” mass survey is actually not 100%. Anyone who had been tested in the past 7 days are exempt, as are children under age of 6. Testing is also mandatory, but strongly encouraged. There will be a lot of WeChat and phone call reminders from community workers until one takes the test. On 5/20, Wuhan reported testing 887.3K individuals, finding 28 asymptomatic cases. 35 asymptomatic cases have been found on 5/21, but the number tested have not yet been released. From 5/14 to 5/20, a total of 2.96M individuals have been tested, and 99 asymptomatic cases found. The municipal government just announced that residents will be able to check their test results on government service APPs, after all. If the samples really are tested individually and not in batches, I would be very curious how the logistics of sample processing is handled.

  19. 19.

    Bruce K

    So … Greece is talking about reopening to tourism, with certain restrictions. Based on my (admittedly incomplete) understanding: first, they’ll have a whitelist of countries that will be allowed entry, based on COVID statistics; then later, they’ll open up to countries that are not on a blacklist, again based on COVID statistics.

    Unfortunately for me, I’d be willing to bet cash money (coins, not bills) that the US is not going to be on the whitelist, and will end up on the blacklist. Things are too comprehensively fkanked up in the US for the safe money to bet any other way, I’m afraid.

  22. 22.

    Barbara

    @Bruce K: Trump and company seem clueless to the idea that our failed response will have an enduring impact on the willingness of those in other countries to travel or invest in the US.

  23. 23.

    Barbara

    @John S.: Our saving grace in this instance for some states is federalism. There are competent governors who can try within their means to do better. No such luck in the UK.

  25. 25.

    Tony Jay

    @eclare:

    Thanks. I outsource them to a 13-year old Micronesian refuge called Billy (well, I call him Billy) who lives at the bottom of my garden and survives on bread crusts soaked in generic Cola.

    Brexit Britain – The Scary Woodshed of Opportunity

  26. 26.

    Tony Jay

    @John S.:

    Believe me, looking around the leaky, creaky hold of the HMS Brexitainia at the brutalised faces of my fellow ‘involuntary passengers’, and all other things considered, I think I’d rather be in Brazil.

    Fighting fascism in a banana-hammock is just somehow more satisfying, dontchathink?

  27. 27.

    YY_Sima Qian

    There are actually two different CFRs: Crude Fatality Rate, which is number of deaths divided by number of confirmed cases; and Case Fatality Rate, which is number of deaths divided by number of resolved cases (deaths + recoveries). Most of the time people are referring to the former. Case Fatality Rate tends to start very high early in the epidemic (patients tend to die more quickly than recover, see Wuhan or Lombardia early on), Crude Fatality Rate tends to start very low early in the epidemic, especially if there is robust testing (many more people test positive than pass away each day); the two numbers will converge as the epidemic runs its course.

    Infection Fatality Rate can be important even to individuals, as it estimates the true risk if one is infected (need to adjust for age and co-morbidities, of course). However, IFR can only  be guesstimated, when testing is inadequate and there is such a high percentage of asymptomatic to very mild cases. COVID-19, with ~ 1% IFR, is less dangerous than the ~ 5% CFR might suggest, both assuming still functioning health care system. However it is still 10 – 20X more deadly than flu, and left unchecked will overwhelm the health care system, which in turn lead to much higher fatality rates, and still higher excess mortality (people with other illnesses die needlessly due to lack of available care).

    Unfortunately, a 1% IFR, or deliberately low balled further, could lead many individuals to conclude that the COVID-19 is not such a big deal after all, and their personal risk does not justify the price they have to pay (financially, emotionally, whatever) with social distancing. This mentality can quickly cause the epidemic to rage unchecked, leading to the worst collective outcome. This is when competent government is needed to regulate behavior to ensure the best collective outcome (or at least the least worse outcome).

    Fatality rates, however calculated, also does not account for the weeks of agony the severe and critical cases will go through, the long term damage to internal organs of recovered cases (even the young and healthy), and the impact to the economy of the cost of care (either via the state budget in welfare states, or individuals liabilities in the US). Even the moderate cases that self-heal, COVID-19 is like the flu from hell…

  28. 28.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Barbara: One of the problems that the states with competent governments face is continued importation from states with incompetent government. The states in the US cannot be cordoned off from each other. The competent states governments appears to be standing up contact tracing forces, but contact tracing happen efficiently across state lines, and sharing of data that feed contact tracing? That is where the Federal government is MIA, and states are forced to fill the vacuum by forming regional coalitions.

  29. 29.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Barbara: Trump and company seem clueless to the idea that our failed response will have an enduring impact on the willingness of those in other countries to travel or invest in the US.

    That is why I am concerned that I may not be able to see my parents, who are in the States, for a long while. China may not be open to normal visitors from the US, while COVID-19 is still prevalent there. I can’t leave for the US, since China is not recognizing any visas or residence permits issued for incoming visitors, while the pandemic is still on. If I leave China for any reason, I cannot return to reunite with my wife and daughter, if the ban is in place. I sure hope my residence permit will be renewed at the end of the year, too…

  30. 30.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Tony Jay: At least Keir Starmer was able to shame enough Tory MP’s into threatening to support the Labour amendment to exclude foreign NHS workers from the NHS surcharge, causing Boris and the Gang of Death to think again.

    Small wins, my friend. Hold on to them. It’s what keeps me sane.

  31. 31.

    Another Scott

    @Tony Jay: The BBC News is almost unwatchable to me over here in ‘murka.  Just about every story I see about the UK is about “yay, the UK is opening up again just like civilized countries”, and meanwhile “Brazil has a new record of new cases; yay the USA is opening up again just like civilized countries; etc.”  Lots of whistling past the graveyard, it seems to me.

    After all the US and the UK went through with the lies and deception up and through the Iraq war, our press should have learned.  It really is horrible that RWNJ ideologues have so much power in reporting vital facts and information to the public.

    Hang in there, and thank you for your reports.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  32. 32.

    Jinchi

    At some point you have to conclude that Trump is failing at this so badly, because he wants the U.S. to fail.

    Regulators freeze the team that first identified US community spread

    “The Seattle group was literally the only group that has really figured out these logistics, and was trying to scale this, and now you want to shut them down?” asks Sri Kosuri, co-founder of Octant, a biotech start-up in Emeryville, California, that is developing tools to diagnose COVID-19. “It blows my mind,” he says.

  33. 33.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Jinchi: SCAN’s testing regime requires people to collect nasal swab samples themselves? Considering how uncomfortable nasopharyngeal swab can be, if done correctly, I do wonder if the average untrained person can manage it. The sensitivity of the test is very much dependent on the quality of the swab…

  34. 34.

    Amir Khalid

    In other Covid-19 news, my country’s PM is now in 14-day home quarantine after someone who attended a post-Cabinet meeting tested positive. Everyone else at the — I guess it’s a follow-up meeting after the actual Ministers’ meeting — has also been ordered to quarantine at home.

  35. 35.

    Tony Jay

    @Sloane Ranger:

    I’ll be okay. Venting about the horrific murder-bot regime here helps. PMQs certainly plays to Starmer’s strengths, and I’m happy to give him time and space to go all House Bolton on the Tory Party’s flacid hide, but it really sticks in my gullet that we’ve got four and a half more years of this slow-motion suicide to go at least partially because a well-connected and entirely soulless faction at the heart of the Labour Party hated people like me so much they colluded with the British Media to sabotage their own Party.

    Tories are vermin, but those people…. I don’t have words for how low they are, and if they don’t feel the full weight and judgement of justice come down on them sooner rather than later, I don’t think Labour will survive.

    I am so cheery today, aren’t I? What time can I start drinking?

  36. 36.

    Barbara

    @YY_Sima Qian: Totally agreed.  There is a limit to what individual states can do absent support from the federal government.  But it would be even worse if individual governors were not in place to provide a rational response, in the face of a totally MIA federal response.

  37. 37.

    Tony Jay

    @Another Scott:

    Sadly our Press did learn. They learnt that standing up to the Government would result in funding cuts, and since the ‘reforms’ that gave the Government free rein in appointing executives from the nether-reaches of the Right Wing Media to run the BBC, they’ve learned that only practitioners of Party-approved Newspeak get the good jobs.

    It’s not the BBC anymore. The Tories broke it, on purpose.

  39. 39.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Tony Jay: Sadly our Press did learn. They learnt that standing up to the Government would result in funding cuts, and since the ‘reforms’ that gave the Government free rein in appointing executives from the nether-reaches of the Right Wing Media to run the BBC, they’ve learned that only practitioners of Party-approved Newspeak get the good jobs.

    I think something similar happened with NPR (National Public Radio) in the US. National Geographic readers (like myself) were deeply worried when NewsCorp bought it in 2016.

  40. 40.

    Dupe1970

    @OzarkHillbilly: This might help.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_fatality_rate#Terminology

    “The term infection fatality rate (IFR) also applies to infectious disease outbreaks, and represents the proportion of deaths among all the infected individuals. It is closely related to the CFR, but attempts to additionally account for all asymptomatic and undiagnosed infections.[7] The IFR differs from the CFR in that it aims to estimate the fatality rate in all those with infection: the detected disease (cases) and those with an undetected disease (asymptomatic and not tested group).”

  41. 41.

    Amir Khalid

    @Jinchi:

    At some point you have to conclude that Trump is failing at this so badly, because he wants the U.S. to fail.

    Most of us reached this point quite a while ago.

  42. 42.

    Tony Jay

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    Yup. They do it quite openly. It’s always absolutely outrageous to suggest that any of the fine, well-respected professionals moving across from the Telegraph, the Mail, the Express or any of the satrapies forming Murdoch’s Empire of Lies are doing so in order to skew the BBC in a rightward direction and mince it up for the planned Big Sell-Off, but somehow the BBC under their management keeps on skewing further right and stumbling closer and closer to being sold-off.

    I guess its hard to get stories about this being actually ‘bad’ printed when your editor and publisher think it’s just super.

    But don’t call them biased. They get self-righteously pissy about that.

  43. 43.

    Alex

    It won’t just be Guillain-Barré— I’m seeing reports of at least 10 percent of seriously ill people showing signs of a post-infection fatigue syndrome like myalgic encephalomyelitis (aka chronic fatigue).  We will probably also see other autoimmune effects like Type I diabetes too, not to mention lung fibrosis and kidney damage. I’m afraid the public discussion has been too centered on the small percent of people who die without taking into account the wave of lifelong disability that will also result if we fail to control this epidemic.

  44. 44.

    Mo MacArbie

    @Amir Khalid: I hate to take up a dead thread to go all pedant on the esteemed Mr. Khalid, but I think the word you wanted here was “exacerbated”.

  46. 46.

    J R in WV

     

    I know we have problems with news media here. Recently CNN has been advertising a special news show about China and the Chinese work on Covid-19 with the most lurid possible audio of a “newsreader” talking about the Dreaded Yellow Plague deliberately aimed at crushing American strength. I exaggerate the word choice to make the sounds of the narrator more clear. It is as racist as it could possible be without the use of actual slur words.

    If it were talking about African-Americans people would be exploding with anger, but Asians are so polite they don’t appear to be exploding with anger, so I am on their behalf. Their actual news coverage doesn’t appear to be as bad as what Tony Jay reports from the BBC (which I have never trusted that much for domestic reporting about Britain) but their marketing people appear to have been recruited from 1909 Hearst publications, which were known for hysteria directed by top management.

    I guess my only option is to write a letter to someone in top management at CNN protesting the racist anti-Chinese rhetoric being used in their advertising. We already have absurd hatred and violence directed against Asians in this crazed nation, we don’t need a major cable news organization beating the racist drums to foment more violence and hate. The marketing guys are despicable beyond belief!!!

  47. 47.

    Ha Nguyen

    Unfortunately, when you say “Asians”, you’re painting a really broad brush.  For instance, many, MANY Vietnamese people would absolutely applaud this news show as would, most likely, Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, etc and any other country – in Asia or elsewhere – which has a beef with China.

  48. 48.

    Tony Jay

    @burnspbesq:

    God bless Troy.

    “What are they going to do (if he won’t play football because of safety concerns) take all my money? So what, I’ve been skint before”

    A nation of Tory voters goggle at the tattooed black man like he’s speaking Ethics.

  50. 50.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Ha Nguyen: That is an understandable reaction, but ultimately a myopic one in my opinion. As anti-Chinese hysteria is whipped up in advance of the election, the racism being incited will not distinguish being different flavors of East or Southeast Asian diaspora. For the countries themselves, they will be caught in the middle as if the US and China hurtle toward Cold War 2.0.

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