Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

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Coronavirus - Great Britain

Paul Homewood provided his analysis of the coronavirus in England and Wales:

There seemed to be plenty of interest last time I did an analysis on COVID-19, and now seems an opportune time to update things, with the latest ONS data to June 19th.

All data is from ONS here. and refer to England & Wales only.

First, the number of actual weekly deaths this year, compared to the 5-Year average:





Actual deaths began to increase above the average in Week 13, ie last week in March. Excess deaths peaked in Week 16 at 11854, and in Week 25 actually went negative.

During April, total excess deaths were running well above deaths recorded as “Deaths where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate”.

However, since the start of May this situation has reversed, with 2943 more deaths recorded as COVID than excess deaths have been.

The greater number of excess deaths at the start led to claims that COVID deaths were being under recorded. However, there was plenty of evidence that patients with critical, and often terminal, conditions were dying prematurely as a result of COVID infection, but not because of it.

For instance, someone with lung cancer who only had a few months to live, may have died after contracting COVID, just as he may have done with flu or a bad cold. The cause, as far as the death certificate is concerned, would be cancer. It is unlikely such patients would be tested, so COVID was not recorded.

What we seem to be seeing now is that there is some catching up going on, and current deaths are lower than would normally be the case because those terminal patients died a few weeks ago, instead of now.

Since COVID deaths were shown separately, the total of excess deaths still exceeds COVID deaths by 10263. At the current rate, this differential will be eliminated by the end of the year.



Finally a comparison of weekly deaths where the underlying cause was respiratory disease and the number where COVID was mentioned on the death certificate – remember that a death can be included in both categories.



To date, the COVID total exceeds the respiratory figure by 30975. In the final Week 25, respiratory deaths were higher than COVID for the first time since March.

Of course many of the respiratory deaths are not connected to COVID anyway. Last year, for instance, during this same period between Weeks 12 and 25, there were 18438 deaths due to respiratory illness. The equivalent figure for this year is 18026.

This is a hugely significant number. It is generally accepted that the main way in which COVID causes death, directly at least, is through pneumonia. Yet the figures tell us that these deaths are no higher this year than last. And as we can see from the graph, deaths from respiratory disease this year have not peaked, but instead gradually fallen since early March.

So where does all of this leave us?

My take on this is that most of the excess deaths have been premature deaths, maybe only brought forward by a few weeks or months at the most. People with lung cancer, emphysema and so on.

Equally with the very old. Deaths of over 85s this year is running at 30,000 above last year. This alone counts for more than half of all excess deaths this year. How many of these actually had COVID? We don’t know, but we do know that a dose of flu or a bad cold is enough to kill the old and very frail.

But other factors are also at play with the elderly. How many have died, because visits from family have been stopped? Certainly anybody in a care home with dementia will have been badly affected. There is also the fact that any elderly who fell sick would have probably been kept away from hospital, and may well have died as a result.

As with terminal illnesses, and without wanting to sound cruel, many of the elderly in care homes would have died at some stage this year. As a result, we may well find that the excess death figure is much less than now by the end of the year.
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So from my perspective, the death rate in England and Wales are dropping like a lead brick. Their first wave of the pandemic is winding down.

So I live in one of the so called hotspot for the virus and I got sick with the virus.. Once I started to feel sick I started taking pseudoephedrine, Mucinex, afrin nose spray and some OTC antivirals zinc
I had body aches low grade fever and cold like respiratory symptoms tried to get started but because took the above mentioned drugs right when I started feeling bad the respiratory symptoms never could really take hold after 3.5 to 4 days I felt fine again it wasn't terrible I have been a lot sicker before.
I have medical family who work in the hospital
Basically most of the people who are getting really sick have a disorder that effects has a effect blood vessels like diabetes high blood pressure and sickle cell disease some younger people do get sick because their immune system over reacts to the virus and they end up having a cytokine storm.
I know many people who have tested positive and never developed symptoms.

I highly recommend taking some strong cold medicine as soon as you start feeling bad to help stop the respiratory symptoms in their tracks don't want till is is bad to start taking them.

Alabama students partied despite knowing they had coronavirus, officials say

I'm just sick of having so much to worry about; the economy collapsing even though stores have reopened. A risk of another spike in COVID cases and deaths. A new swine flu returning. People losing their jobs. Air companies going bust. No cure for COVID.

I just wish I switched on the news tomorrow morning and they said "a reliable vaccine has been found for COVID19!" Wow. I think the day that (might) happen everyone will be acting like they've all won the lottery. I know I will be. First I'll dance around the room, then as soon as the vaccines are in place and global COVID cases start to head towards 0, I will go into a crowded store and not care that people are standing in my space. Then I'll book to go to spas and swimming-pools, and I'll get on buses and trains and I'll go to the most crowded beaches....
What? I can only but dream, can't I?

I read an interesting article about the POST-COVID WORLD.

Are those who claim, then, that life will never go back to normal after the coronavirus correct? Are we condemned to live in a Brave New World, governed by social distancing and disinfection protocols, in which perfect hygiene is the greatest good? Surely not, for three reasons. Humans are social animals. Humans like to be entertained. And humans are inclined to choose the path of least resistance. These three facts will shape the post-COVID world far more than the virus will. Because we like to spend time with others, like to maximize fun and prefer to do whatever is easiest (such as eat out rather than cook at home, provided one can afford it), restaurants and sporting events will return to normal eventually. The only question is when.

What won’t return to normal are the things we don’t really like doing, such as commuting, going to the office or buying supplies at the supermarket. It’s much easier to work from home and to click a button on Amazon, so we should expect a decline in the value of commercial real estate as office space and traditional brick-and-mortar retail are no longer in high demand. But these trends were already occurring prior to the pandemic. The coronavirus simply accelerated them.

Global geopolitics will also be affected. The manufacture of certain products deemed essential to national security, like medicine and personal protective equipment, will be repatriated, at least in part. For the next pandemic, many countries will not want to be so heavily dependent on a single supplier like China. Politicians will have an extra incentive to endorse this policy as it involves repatriating some manufacturing and economic activity.

So yes, things will change. The ultimate long-term legacy of the coronavirus will be a more sanitized world of more self-reliant countries.

Source: Will The Coronavirus Forge A Brave New World?

Hydroxychloroquine

Researchers at the Henry Ford Health System in Southeast Michigan have found that early administration of the drug hydroxychloroquine makes hospitalized patients substantially less likely to die.

The study, published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, determined that hydroxychloroquine provided a "66% hazard ratio reduction," and hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin a 71 percent reduction, compared to neither treatment.

In-hospital mortality was 18.1 percent with both drugs, 13.5 percent with just hydroxychloroquine, 22.4 percent with azithromycin alone, and 26.4 percent with neither drug. "Prospective trials are needed" for further review, the researchers note.

"Our results do differ from some other studies," Dr. Marcus Zervos, who heads the hospital's infectious diseases unit, said at a news conference. "What we think was important in ours ... is that patients were treated early. For hydroxychloroquine to have a benefit, it needs to begin before the patients begin to suffer some of the severe immune reactions that patients can have with COVID."

Source: Hydroxychloroquine helped save coronavirus patients, study shows

So now every high street would become ghost towns? That's really sad. I live in a big town with a wonderful big shopping centre. I've never done shopping online. I hate all the hackers and other risks. I hate all the passwords and everything. And when I'm shopping I like to try clothes and shoes on in the store. But I suppose this new generation thinks that life should all be about sitting in front of a screen.
Maybe this virus was let out on purpose so that all the older generation can die because they don't use computers so much, and the rest of the world can now be f*****g screen slaves.

Shame on all of you internet shoppers (who relied on internet shopping BEFORE pandemic). You've killed retail.

Humans are creatures of habit. Things will go back to just how they were before.

CURRENT CORONAVIRUS HOT SPOTS

At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, one of the first global hot spots were the cruise ships. Now that the pandemic is beginning to wind down, a new infection hot spot has emerged. It is the local bar and pubs.

As of June 27th, 85 people (up from 34 on 6/24) who patronized Harper's Restaurant & Brew in Lansing, MI came down with COVID. Now, all the other drunks guests who visited the establishment between June 12-20 are being asked to self-quarantine. Ingham County Health Officer Linda S. Vail told CNN "Given the number of cases in this outbreak, we consider this a higher risk exposure than a typical visit to a restaurant or bar. There are likely more people infected with Covid-19 not yet identified."



A sobering article in Kaiser Health News entitled "Packed Bars Serve Up New Rounds Of COVID Contagion" takes a depressing look at what is going on in the bars that have opened. None of this should be the least bit surprising.

* Bars in Louisiana, Florida, Wyoming, and Idaho have been identified as outbreak loci.
* Partiers in Houston, Texas seemed to have a different interpretation of the behavior expected of them. A nursing student went into HandleBar Houston but left when she found the place packed and the clientele not exactly following the rules. The student, Adriana Megas said “Nobody was wearing any masks. You would never think COVID happened.” (1) She fared no better in other bars: “The street was insanely busy. Every single bar was filled.”
* In Ada County, Idaho (population 450,000) 303 people became infected during the third week of June; at least 152 of the infections were attributed to people who became infected in bars and those who subsequently caught it from them. Bars and nightclubs in Ada County are now closed.

There are three messages here, one of them obvious:

* Unless your job is recycling used Kleenex from COVID patients there is probably no better way to spread/catch the virus than be in a bar. The Kaiser article mentions loud music forcing people to yell and be closer to each other, the impossibility of drinking and wearing a mask at the same time, and impaired judgment from alcohol consumption.
* You can't have it both ways. If people want bars they can expect to see big spikes infection. Maybe the patrons don't care because, after all, young people don't really get that sick...
* Except this is turning out to be false...

In Houston, Texas 60% of hospitalized patients and 40% of ICU patients are under 50. And last week Dr. Anthony Fauci said “To think young people have no deleterious consequences is not true. We’re seeing more and more complications in young people.”

Source: In Bars, It's COVID Cocktail Hour

HOW THE VIRUS IS SPREAD

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO) there are 3 transmission routes in which this virus is spread through the air. These are large droplet, small droplet and desiccated viral particle. I have been saying this for many months now. In a dry environment, the viral particles from large and small droplets dry out in the air and become airborne and can travel great distances (100 feet). They can become concentrated by air intakes (such as HVAC units). A person can breathe in these dry desiccated viral particles and when the particles contact the moist throat, the viral particles will rehydrate and infect the host. It was quite obvious that this was the primary route of transmission on cruise ships. But all this warnings fell on deaf ears. The WHO originally cited the large droplet threat and then several weeks later modified it to include the small droplet threat. There was an interesting article in the news today.

Hundreds of experts in 32 countries are urging the World Health Organization [WHO] to revise its coronavirus safety recommendations to include airborne transmission via smaller infectious aerosols, according to a report in the New York Times.

The article, published Saturday, reported that 239 experts sent an open letter to the WHO detailing evidence of airborne transmission. Researchers reportedly plan to publish the letter in a scientific journal this week.

If airborne transmission proves to play a significant factor in infection, containment measures could extend to masks in socially distant settings, and updated ventilation systems, according to the report.

The WHO has maintained that the primary route of COVID-19 spread is through large droplets expelled from an infected person after coughing or sneezing. In an update as recent as June 29, the WHO said airborne transmission is “possible” in circumstances generating aerosols smaller than 5 microns, such as during medical procedures. In those settings, the WHO advises proper ventilation and N95 masks.

Source: Nearly 240 experts call for updated coronavirus WHO guidelines

So now we are discussing N95 masks, four months too late. I had a single N95 mask that I wore every time I traveled from home. The spread is an indoor threat not so much an outdoors threat, so I wore it whenever I entered a building. I have done this for 4 months now. The same mask. [They can be reused.] The virus might contaminate the surface of the mask. Therefore I bought a UVC sanitizer that killed any viruses that might contaminate the mask. So after four months the mask is a little ratty, so I will soon burn it in a large bonfire. A symbolic act. And await for more N95 mask to hit the streets.

It’s airborne.
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/26/14857

CORONAVIRUS TIMELINE

Contrary to claims from both Chinese officials and the World Health Organization, China did not report the existence of the coronavirus in late 2019, according to a WHO timeline tracking the spread of the virus. Rather, international health officials discovered the virus through information posted to a U.S. website.

The quiet admission from the international health organization, which posted an "updated" timeline to its website this week, flies in the face of claims from some of its top officials, including WHO director general Tedros Adhanom, who maintained for months that China had informed his organization about the emerging sickness.

China and its allies at the WHO insisted in multiple interviews and press conferences that China came to the health organization with information about the virus. This is now known to be false. The WHO’s backtracking lends credibility to a recent congressional investigation that determined China concealed information about the virus and did not initially inform the WHO, as it was required to do.

The WHO’s updated timeline, posted online this week, now states that officials first learned about the virus on Dec. 31, 2019, through information posted on a U.S. website by doctors working in Wuhan, where the virus first emerged. This contradicts the agency’s initial timeline, which said that China first presented this information at that date.

That initial timeline stated that the "Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, China, reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province" on Dec. 31.

These claims were carried in numerous American media outlets that relied on the WHO’s inaccurate timeline, including CNN and Axios.

Chinese officials and state-controlled media also claimed for months that the communist regime informed the WHO on or around Dec. 31. In recent days, however, Chinese officials have dropped that talking point.

Source: China Never Reported Existence of Coronavirus to World Health Organization