BBC: China pneumonia outbreak: COVID-19 Global Pandemic

[The Evil Genius]

If only all the deaths had been republican there. 

 

 

[China]

China orders 51 million into lockdown as COVID surges

 

China is facing its worst COVID crisis since early 2020, when the world first witnessed an entire population locked down to contain the coronavirus in Wuhan and its surrounding province.

 

Two years on, it's now sending tens of millions of people into lockdown in the entire northeastern province of Jilin, where 24 million people live, and the southern cities of Shenzhen and Dongguan, with 17.5 million and 10 million, respectively.

 

China, the last major country to relentlessly pursue a Covid-zero policy, reported 1,437 cases across dozens of cities on Monday. That’s a fourfold jump in a week.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

What rising Covid-19 infections in the UK and Europe could mean for the US

 

Two weeks after the United Kingdom dropped its last remaining Covid-19 mitigation measure -- a requirement that people who test positive for the virus isolate for five days -- the country is seeing cases and hospitalizations climb once again.

 

Covid-19 cases were up 48% in the UK last week compared with the week before. Hospitalizations were up 17% over the same period.

The country's daily case rate -- about 55,000 a day -- is still less than a third of the Omicron peak, but cases are rising as fast as they were falling just two weeks earlier, when the country removed pandemic-related restrictions.

 

Daily cases are also rising in more than half of the countries in the European Union. They've jumped 48% in the Netherlands and 20% in Germany over the past week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. But daily cases in Germany had yet to drop below pre-Omicron levels, and the Netherlands hadn't seen cases fall as much as they did in the UK.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Meanwhile in China...

 

 

[Cooked Crack]

 

Quote

Researchers testing repurposed drugs against Covid-19 found that ivermectin didn’t reduce hospital admissions, in the largest trial yet of the effect of the antiparasitic on the disease driving the pandemic.

Ivermectin has received a lot of attention as a potential treatment for Covid-19 including from celebrities such as podcast host Joe Rogan. Most evidence has shown it to be ineffective against Covid-19 or has relied on data of poor quality, infectious-disease researchers said. Public-health authorities and researchers have for months said the drug hasn’t shown any benefit in treating the disease. Taking large doses of the drug is dangerous, the Food and Drug Administration has said.

The latest trial, of nearly 1,400 Covid-19 patients at risk of severe disease, is the largest to show that those who received ivermectin as a treatment didn’t fare better than those who received a placebo.

“There was no indication that ivermectin is clinically useful,” said Edward Mills, one of the study’s lead researchers and a professor of health sciences at Canada’s McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Dr. Mills on Friday plans to present the findings, which have been accepted for publication in a major peer-reviewed medical journal, at a public forum sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

 

[China]

New COVID variant is spreading across the US. Here's what you need to know about BA.2

 

A new COVID variant, first detected two months ago, is making its way across the U.S. and spreading more quickly in the Northeast and West, new data released this week shows.

 

The BA.2 variant appears to be on its way to becoming the dominant COVID strain, having roughly doubled each week for the last month, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

 

BA.2 is considered by the World Health Organization as a "sublineage" of the highly transmissible omicron variant. It's a different version of omicron than BA.1, which was responsible for the surge that hit the Northeast late last year.

 

It has a different genetic sequence from BA.1 and was first dubbed the "stealth variant" because it wasn't as easy to detect.

 

Around the world, infections are largely due to the BA.2 version of omicron. In the U.S., BA.2 accounted for about a quarter (23.1%) of the cases for the week ending March 12, the CDC says. That's up from 14.2% the week ending March 5.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Fauci warns COVID-19 infection rates likely to increase

 

White House adviser Anthony Fauci is warning that COVID-19 infection rates are likely to rise in the next few weeks in the United States after their dramatic drop following the omicron variant's rapid spread across the country. 

 

"I would not be surprised if in the next few weeks we see somewhat of either a flattening of our diminution or maybe even an increase," Fauci said on the ABC News podcast “Start Here,” ABC News reported. 

 

"Whether or not that is going to lead to another surge, a mini surge or maybe even a moderate surge, is very unclear because there are a lot of other things that are going on right now," he added.

 

Cases have fallen heavily across the nation over the last two months, with the average number of new cases totaling just over 30,000. 

 

Fauci’s prediction is based on the United Kingdom, where cases have slightly started to go up, although "their intensive care bed usage is not going up, which means they're not seeing a blip up of severe disease,” Fauci added.

 

The increase in cases comes as the BA.2 variant is seeing an uptick in the U.S., with Fauci predicting on the podcast the variant will overtake omicron in the future. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[Ball Security]

1 hour ago, Cooked Crack said:

 

 

I would have stood up for my beliefs but it was raining outside.

[hail2skins]

This is interesting. Only accounts for less than 10 percent of the official Covid death numbers, but still:

 

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2022/03/21/cdc-lets-face-it-we-need-a-data-overhaul-after-overstating-covid-19-deaths-by-over-72000-n456847

[Elessar78]

1 hour ago, hail2skins said:

This is interesting. Only accounts for less than 10 percent of the official Covid death numbers, but still:

 

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2022/03/21/cdc-lets-face-it-we-need-a-data-overhaul-after-overstating-covid-19-deaths-by-over-72000-n456847

Just like everything else today... it's inflated by 7.5%

[The Evil Genius]

I suspect, if anything, covid deaths are extremely underreported. Both here and outside of the US. 

[Larry]

No doubt at all that there are people where it's possible to argue whether they should or shouldn't count as "Covid death". 
 

The guy who got hit by a bus while jogging, after testing positive, probably shouldn't count. 
 

But what about the guy who was scheduled for cardiac bypass surgery, but didn't get it because the hospital was closed for non-emergency procedures, who had a heart attack?  

[tshile]

26 minutes ago, Larry said:

The guy who got hit by a bus while jogging, after testing positive, probably shouldn't count. 
 

But what about the guy who was scheduled for cardiac bypass surgery, but didn't get it because the hospital was closed for non-emergency procedures, who had a heart attack?  

Or if the guy that got by the bus went to t hospital and died of pneumonia, then it should. 
 

And obviously some will be counted that shouldn’t. Some won’t, that should. 
 

but math really tells the story. We got want 700-800 thousand deaths?

 

so what % of mistake has to be made to change anything about the ideas behind mitigating it?

 

if 50% were incorrectly reported and we had 350k deaths, is that not enough to follow the mitigation guidelines?

It is for me. So if they misdiagnosed every other cause of death (intentional or not) I still think the recommendations were correct. 
 

So unless someone is prepared to offer that over 500k covid deaths were falsely reported, then it’s moot to me. 
 

And we still don’t have a firm grasp on the long term effects. We’re just talking about dying within 30 days of getting it. 

Edited March 21, 2022 by tshile

[tshile]

Also. To recall. The original fear, at the beginning, was that if we didn’t come up with those guidelines and follow them, we could potentially lose over 200k people to it. 
 

and the general consensus of the public was “holy ****”

 

so. Yeah. Come at me with revised. Numbers from misreporting. Let me know when you’ve knocked it down to under 100k. Then we’ll talk. 

[Fergasun]

Re: COVID Deaths

People who I trust have been using a metric called "excess deaths".  Precisely because a "COVID death" is imprecise and classificstion prone to political bias. 

 

Re: Current Mask Wearing (WSJ op-ed) 

COVID numbers where I live are in the pre-delta wave and not yet to April 2020.  Our work ditched mask requirements and everyone stopped wearing.  Even a cloth mask reduces transmission risk by 50%... (N95 by 80%).  Reducing the transmission risk from 10% to 5% might seem negligible, but reducing from 60% to 30% is huge.  The major delta is in the vaccination and booster which protects severity risk. 

 

People make this an emotional argument. My wife got sick and was so upset that she might have COVID after 2 vaccines and a booster -- and the booster hurt!  

 

I am actually kind've pissed that rather than fight the emotionals (like the person in the WSJ op-ed) public health officials have just resigned themselves to allowing more waves and likely deaths... AND many people are okay with other people dying.  

 

 

[Die Hard]

1 hour ago, tshile said:

Also. To recall. The original fear, at the beginning, was that if we didn’t come up with those guidelines and follow them, we could potentially lose over 200k people to it.

From what I recall… the worst-case scenario laid out from the very beginning was that if NO measures were put in place, the estimates projected 2 million American deaths.

Edited March 21, 2022 by Die Hard

[TradeTheBeal!]

16 hours ago, hail2skins said:

This is interesting. Only accounts for less than 10 percent of the official Covid death numbers, but still:

 

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2022/03/21/cdc-lets-face-it-we-need-a-data-overhaul-after-overstating-covid-19-deaths-by-over-72000-n456847

It’s total crap and the author is a hack.

 

Next.

Edited March 22, 2022 by TradeTheBeal!

[hail2skins]

One thing I didn't understand was after reading the Hot Air article (which, as TTB says, skews right wing with the possible exception of the excellent Allahpundit), I read the Reuters article from Friday which mentioned the revised statistics, but the CDC still has US Covid deaths at around 970K.  Which is weird, as that's the number consistent with what has been recently reported (going up by around 1000-1500 per day). If there was a revision, wouldn't the revised number be closer to 900K?

 

https://news.yahoo.com/cdc-reports-fewer-covid-19-204027980.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

Edited March 21, 2022 by hail2skins

[hail2skins]

2 hours ago, tshile said:

And we still don’t have a firm grasp on the long term effects. We’re just talking about dying within 30 days of getting it. 

What matters to me is the amount of excess deaths we experienced in 2020 and 2021 combined over what we had in 2019.  I think in 2019, we had a total of 2.85 million US deaths overall. The numbers for 2020 and 2021 are going to be 500K over that for each year.

[Larry]

1 hour ago, Fergasun said:

Re: COVID Deaths

People who I trust have been using a metric called "excess deaths".  Precisely because a "COVID death" is imprecise and classificstion prone to political bias. 

 

It's at least a statistic that's hard to fudge.  

 

How many people died, this year?

How many people died, last year?  

 

It accounts for all the people who died, from any cause, simply due to disruption of services.  Or from economic reasons.  It accounts for people who died, days or weeks after the hurricane or whatever it was.  It accounts for people who commit suicide because they lost everything.  For any increase in substance abuse or things.  

[CousinsCowgirl84]

The excess deaths should be attributed to COVID.

 

 

Also, let’s say that instead of 970k deaths let be generous and say it was only 700k.

 

So what?  
 

 

Edited March 22, 2022 by CousinsCowgirl84

[Larry]

I think you folks are overlooking the actual messaging being used here.  

 

The intended message isn't "It wasn't 970K, it was really only 900K".  

 

It's "Look!  The CDC just admitted that they've been lying all along!  This proves that Ivernectin is better than getting vaccinated, and that wearing a mask is equivalent to the holocaust!"  

[China]

Seattle students walk out of school, demand mask mandates be reinstated

 

More than 100 Seattle Public Schools students walked out of class Monday morning to protest the district’s decision to end the requirement that students and staff wear masks. 

 

Many of those students rallied at district headquarters, the John Stanford Center, to ask Superintendent Brent Jones to reinstate the mask mandate districtwide. Mask requirements for Seattle and most other districts in the state ended a week ago.

 

“It’s absolutely maddening we have to take time away from our education to fight for safety and health,” said Marigold Wong, a sophomore at Franklin High School.

 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[LD0506]

23 hours ago, Larry said:

It accounts for all the people who died, from any cause, simply due to disruption of services.  Or from economic reasons.  It accounts for people who died, days or weeks after the hurricane or whatever it was.  It accounts for people who commit suicide because they lost everything.  For any increase in substance abuse or things.  

 

And the Skins, uh, Football Team, uh, Commanders!

[Larry]

3 hours ago, LD0506 said:

 

And the Skins, uh, Football Team, uh, Commanders!

 

Oh, come on.  

 

Anybody who was going to commit suicide over this team would have done it 20 years ago.