Temporary morgues are in the plan
Montreal public health may have to open temporary morgues if death rates continue to rise. The Journal points out that 400 people have died of covid in Montreal this week and the rate risks overwhelming existing facilities in hospitals and funeral homes.
david000 18:37 on 2020-04-25 Permalink
Here’s an update, so that we can continue to feel more optimistic.
According to antibody testing in Brevard County, Florida, only 1% of the popuation has been found to have antibodies, which is approximately 6020 of their 602,000 population. Covid-19 death stand at 8 in Brevard, which means a mortality rate of ~0.13%, or approximately 1/8 of 1%. For every 1000 people who contract the virus, a little over 1 person on average will die.
https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/2020/04/24/omni-covid-19-immunity-testing-data-brevard-county-florida-antibody/3022571001/
Miami/Dade’s antibody testing found that approximately 6% of the population was estimated to have been infected, which puts their mortality range around ~0.17%, or 1/6 of 1% of those infected. For every thousand people who contract the virus, a little under 2 people will die.
https://www.miamidade.gov/releases/2020-04-24-sample-testing-results.asp
This is in addition to the continuing studies in New York (conducted by the state), and Los Angeles (conducted by USC), a study that’s currently in the field in two Bay Area communities (conducted by UCSF), and a study underway in Indiana (conducted by an association of governments). There are also ongoing studies among health workers in Massachusetts and Washington State.
david000 18:41 on 2020-04-25 Permalink
Of course, notwithstanding the great news described above in terms of just how much less deadly this thing is that we had feared, and what it means for our debate about the merits of a total lockdown, the low exposure rate found in the Florida studies show the need for continued vigilance and protection of the vulnerable.
On a very sad personal note, a former colleague of mine recently died of complications from Covid-19. He was 44, and unfortunately suffered from several health problems, among them obesity and asthma. A very kind and intelligent guy, it’s a real shame.
david000 18:42 on 2020-04-25 Permalink
(above, as in, the comment I posted that is currently awaiting moderation linking the latest data.)
david000 18:56 on 2020-04-25 Permalink
So that while pretty much all the data on mortality is coming in under that critical 1/10-1/5 of 1%, some populations shoulder pretty much all of that:
https://time.com/5825485/coronavirus-risk-factors/
Kate 19:50 on 2020-04-25 Permalink
david000, I see you want to minimize the risk, but at the same time, you’ve lost a friend who was only 44 – my condolences.
I think I’ll let these facts stand for themselves.
David 20:24 on 2020-04-25 Permalink
We need to protect the vulnerable, but – if these data continue to be confirmed – make sure the public realizes that vanishingly few of us are likely to die, and that we have data sufficient (or close) to justify planning for getting back to work. The biggest threat isn’t governments stopping us from going out – they could lift the orders tomorrow and businesses would still be falling like flies. The purpose of my posts on this is to make sure, in my very small way, that we’re aware of what the emerging data are saying about the true risk, now that we’re testing. Public awareness is what I’m hustling about here.
David 20:29 on 2020-04-25 Permalink
If these data are true – and despite what Mr. Received Wisdom will pull off Twitter to convince himself that I don’t know what I’m talking about, when all I’m doing is linking to and/or describing scientists’ actual reporting and asking the most important policy question, possibly of our generation, when that’s literally just job, and mine it to inform everyone about the economic and social consequences of our various laws on housing – then we need a lot more reporting on it in Quebec and in Canada, as the Canadians have such a huge impact on our economy.
David 20:32 on 2020-04-25 Permalink
Autocorrect bungled my last point, which is that spending a couple hours per day on this and telling people of the result of that: not my job.
I look forward to returning to my regularly rescheduled programming of explaining how it’s a sort of slow harikiri we’re performing out ourselves to legislate high housing prices.
David 20:41 on 2020-04-25 Permalink
And as a final one (I promise): Kevin, obviously you grok this already, but as you’re evaluating the discrepancies between how death rates in some areas may be inconsistent with others and you’re looking to explain that by looking at date/reporting on just who the patients are demographically or whatever, and as your further breaking that down by the emerging spread research, two other things to consider:
1) hygiene levels, for which you might consider income, education, food service work, etc. as proxies; and
2) far far more importantly: variations in spread and morbidity that have been convincingly/definitively established in past pandemics.
When you’re writing your series on this, you could sift through the lit and probably get some pretty interesting correlation data – even if there’s none, that’s worth reporting. I know you’re an expert, but this level of reporting doesn’t require regression analyses or whatever – you can simply report, or even just ask our government or some professor who’s not already working on it, and that’ll probably be enough to get them digging/modeling.
Kate 21:05 on 2020-04-25 Permalink
https://twitter.com/aaron_derfel/status/1254170940726022146?s=21
Kate 21:41 on 2020-04-25 Permalink
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/herd-immunity-should-not-be-supported-tam-says-1.5545332
Alison Cummins 09:41 on 2020-04-26 Permalink
David,
“a former colleague of mine recently died of complications from Covid-19. He was 44, and unfortunately suffered from several health problems, among them obesity and asthma.”
“vanishingly few of us are likely to die, and that we have data sufficient (or close) to justify planning for getting back to work.”
If I understand correctly, you believe that the reason you are on lockdown is to prevent you, personally, from dying of covid-19?
That when you say “vanishingly few of us are likely to die,” “us” refers to nice clean young people without any health problems?
That anyone not in the “us” category is “them” and not interesting ?
That you think you should be able to do what you want, where you want, because you are a nice clean young person without obesity or asthma?
Basically, that all those health care workers who say they need PPE to care for patients are just whiners and probably obese?
If this is your understanding of infectious disease, you’re making it very clear indeed that this is not your job.
If this is not what you mean, you might want to think carefully because it’s what you’re saying.
david 22:52 on 2020-04-26 Permalink
Hey Alison, I’m not trying to come off like an expert, believe me, I’m not. But I’m the guy who – under a different handle – wrote that post a couple weeks ago about our office being infected, and I’m fairly certain that, given how we worked together, given how infectious this disease appears to be, and given our symptoms during that time period, I and several of my coworkers were infected. And I totally would have been on board with whatever is being published, aside from the fact that the documented infection rates to death rates at the time were like 2-5%. And my office was zero. And nobody any of us knew at that time had died. So, anecdotally, it was clear to me that this was not a 2-5% death rate type virus.
So I started asking myself: okay, then what are we missing on this? And this questioning had me looking at everything I could about this. Not obsessively, but close. Why is this seemingly far far more deadly than it was for my office?
The info is suggesting that there may be a lot of reasons. First, and mostly importantly, it’s just not as deadly as people first suspected.
When you start here: https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-spreads-one-study-predicts-101552222.html
and end up with the Florida studies linked above, it’s clear that we may have jumped the guy. And that’s fair, because it was the modern western world’s first pandemic.
I’m going to post a whole bunch more on this over the next while, as Kevin will – him being the statistical and medical expert, who, for instance, is intimately familiar with German studies underway asking why children seem not only to be totally immune, even from they pretty much never contract covid 19.
And Kate has asked in those twitter links questions that I’m not qualified to answer. But with my next response, I’ll – like Kevin – have a lot more info to share with you, whether it goes against what I hope to be true (fast return to life) or not.
I’m also going to be the guinea pig, and I’m doing the absolute best antibody test I’ve been able to get to on May 11 – at my own expense, which definitely isn’t negligible – and should have the results a 2-4 days later, and you can bet that either way, I’ll be posting them here, with photos to prove. So that people know what it’s all about, with details on everything they tell me about their sensitivity, etc.
walkerp 13:25 on 2020-04-27 Permalink
Onion headline: “Dude Struggles with Denial about Reality of Coronavirus Pandemic”