"Facts about COVID-19": Swiss Propaganda Research Article

[pamojja]

The Swiss Propaganda Research (SPR, founded in 2016, is an independent nonprofit research group investigating geopolitical propaganda in Swiss and international media) has an article daily updated very detailed, on all the missinformations in the media and everywhere about covid-19. Worth reading if this whole mess just doesn't add up for you.

Facts about Covid-19 (translations in other languages available at site)


I'll add only a few graphics to illustrate here:

 

[andyguitar]

Thanks for posting that @pamojja facts are hard to find at the moment.

 

[ljimbo423]

Facts about Covid-19 (translations in other languages available at site)

Given that the vast majority of people with Covid-19 either have mild symptoms or are asymptomatic (without symptoms).

The number of people infected is most likely much, much, higher than the number of confirmed cases through testing. Which would bring the fatality percent down significantly worldwide......

A new epidemiological study (preprint) concludes that the fatality of Covid19 even in the Chinese city of Wuhan was only 0.04% to 0.12% and thus rather lower than that of seasonal flu, which has a mortality rate of about 0.1%.

As a reason for the overestimated fatality of Covid19, the researchers suspect that initially only a small number of cases were recorded in Wuhan, as the disease was probably asymptomatic or mild in many people.

 

[percyval577]

From the abstract:

Background:

... Recently more evidence suggests that a substantial fraction of the infected individuals with the novel coronavirus show little if any symptoms, which suggest the need to reassess the transmission potential of this emerging disease.

In this study, we derive estimates of the transmissibility and virulence of COVID-19 in Wuhan City, China, by reconstructing the underlying transmission dynamics using multiple data sources.

...


Results: Our posterior estimates of basic reproduction number (R) in Wuhan City, China in 2019-2020 reached values as high as 5.20 (95%CrI: 5.04-5.47)

and the enhanced public health intervention after January 23rd in 2020 was associated with a declined R at 0.58 (95%CrI: 0.51-0.64),

with the total number of infections (i.e. cumulative infections) estimated at 1905526 (95%CrI: 1350283-2655936) in Wuhan City, raising the proportion of infected individuals to 19.1% (95%CrI: 13.5-26.6%).

We also found that most recent crude infection fatality ratio (IFR) and time-delay adjusted IFR is estimated to be 0.04% (95% CrI: 0.03-0.06%) and 0.12% (95%CrI: 0.08-0.17%), which is several orders of magnitude smaller than the crude CFR estimated at 4.19%

Conclusions: We have estimated key epidemiological parameters of the transmissibility and virulence of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China during January-February, 2020 using an ecological modelling approach. The power of our approach lies in the ability to infer epidemiological parameters with quantified uncertainty from partial observations collected by surveillance systems.

 

[Chris]

Thanks for posting--fits in nicely with Naomi Klein's views as expressed in the second of her great trilogy, "The Shock Doctrine", and her recentshort video on Corona Capitalism. Mind you, I write as one who at 87 does have some legit concerns about the whole thing.

 

[pamojja]

Mind you, I write as one who at 87 does have some legit concerns about the whole thing.

That's actually my reason to get to the bottom of this whole hysteria: With 3 diagnoses putting me at highest risk myself - if it all where true as so dramatically painted by media, polititians and scientists - all with immense conflict of interests.


Angelo Borrelli, head of the Italian Civil Protection Service, emphasizing the difference between deaths with and from coronaviruses.

 

[nyanko_the_sane]

Here is a great article outlining the key genetic programming in the coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive...virus-genome-bad-news-wrapped-in-protein.html

 

[percyval577]

We also found that most recent crude infection fatality ratio (IFR) and time-delay adjusted IFR is estimated to be 0.04% (95% CrI: 0.03-0.06%) and 0.12% (95%CrI: 0.08-0.17%), which is several orders of magnitude smaller than the crude CFR estimated at 4.19%

I understood this wrongly.

wikipedia

The term infection fatality rate (IFR) also applies to infectious disease outbreaks, and 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).[8] (Individuals who are infected, but always remain asymptomatic, are said to have "inapparent" — or silent, or subclinical, or occult — infections.) The IFR will always be lower than the CFR.

 

[pamojja]

Situation update for UK:

 

[andyguitar]

The Office For National Statistics (ONS) is independent of the Government. So I would trust the chart you have posted @pamojja .

 

[Bergkamp]

I don’t really understand the focus on backward-looking statistics and charts in this thread. It has spread only to a tiny fraction of the population and countries are taking extreme measures. Still, intensive care departments in hospitals are overcrowded. Imagine what would happen if we just let thing spread around.

In my opinion the ‘hysteria’ is justified, not because of what already has happened, but because of the potential of this virus. I’ve been following this thing closely since it was going around in China (because obviously I have a lot of time) and it’s dead serious if you ask me.

 

[percyval577]

I don’t really understand the focus on backward-looking statistics and charts in this thread. It has spread only to a tiny fraction of the population and countries are taking extreme measures. Still, intensive care departments in hospitals are overcrowded. Imagine what would happen if we just let thing spread around.

In my opinion the ‘hysteria’ is justified, not because of what already has happened, but because of the potential of this virus. I’ve been following this thing closely since it was going around in China (because obviously I have a lot of time) and it’s dead serious if you ask me.

I think the situation is still unclear, it may indeed turn out soon not to be so anymore.

I hope of course that everything stays within halfway normal measures. But completely agree that being cautious and careful was and is needed. Mostly mankind is only able to care for the immediate things. But obviously the danger of a plaque and the possible danger from this virus was and is asking for awareness, now and in the future as well. - And so with many other things.

 

[Hip]

It has spread only to a tiny fraction of the population

The official figures for the number infected are much smaller than the actual number, because they miss all the asymptomatic and many of the mild cases.

Tomas Pueyo provides a clever means to calculate the actual number infected, based on the number of deaths so far. He says to find the actual number infected, just multiply the deaths so far by 800 (or to make it easier calculate, multiply by 1000). See this post for an explanation.

Thus in the UK, where have been 5000 deaths to date, there will be 5 million people infected. That works out to 1 in 13 people infected.



In fact, Pueyo's calculation may be an underestimate of the number infected, as it is based on a doubling time of the number infected of 6.2 days. But in fact the doubling time may be 3 days in Europe and the US (see here).

 

[andyguitar]

I don’t really understand the focus on backward-looking statistics and charts in this thread.

It's to try to determine if the mortality rate from covid is higher than that of other respiritory illnesses.

 

[pattismith]

on 30 of march, excessive mortality in France was only sensitive/significative around Paris and in the East

 

[pattismith]

France, mortality on 30 March

https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeur...ement-depuis-le-1er-mars_6035485_4355770.html

 

[andyguitar]

The BBC has started to describe deaths as 'being linked to covid 19'.

 

[pamojja]

The BBC has started to describe deaths as 'being linked to covid 19'.

The Hamburg health authority now has test-positive deaths examined by forensic medicine in order to count only „real“ corona deaths. As a result, the number of deaths has already been almost halved compared to the official figures of the Robert Koch Institute.

 

[Bergkamp]

The official figures for the number infected are much smaller than the actual number, because they miss all the asymptomatic and many of the mild cases.

Tomas Pueyo provides a clever means to calculate the actual number infected, based on the number of deaths so far. He says to find the actual number infected, just multiply the deaths so far by 800 (or to make it easier calculate, multiply by 1000). See this post for an explanation.

Thus in the UK, where have been 5000 deaths to date, there will be 5 million people infected. That works out to 1 in 13 people infected.



In fact, Pueyo's calculation may be an underestimate of the number infected, as it is based on a doubling time of the number infected of 6.2 days. But in fact the doubling time may be 3 days in Europe and the US (see here).

I’m aware that the number of cases reported is much lower than the real total.

Saying that you can just multiply the number of deaths by 800 seems a bit odd as the entire international scientific community is still trying to figure out what the actual death rate and thus total number of infected is. There are many institutions currently researching this number but thus far they are not even close to coming to an estimate. There are also big differences in death rate by country, depending on literally thousands of factors, such as air pollution, average age of the population, quality of healthcare (and most importantly availability) and cultural factors. Some guy doing basic calculations in a Medium post is not a source I would go by personally.

There are a couple of real life examples that could provide us with a proxy for the death rate, such as the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which had a death rate of .9%. Obviously this is also a specific situation with a set of very specific circumstances. This would yield a totally different number for your UK calculation, especially taking into account that not only # of infected is underreported, but number of deaths as well, according to calculations done in my country most likely by a factor of 2-3x.

 

[Bergkamp]

It's to try to determine if the mortality rate from covid is higher than that of other respiritory illnesses.

I see, I think the death rate is very much impacted by the ability to save people in hospitals through ventilators and assisted breathing.

My country (Netherlands) is currently running at maximum ICU capacity, even after doubling the amount of ICU beds in the country. That means that as the # of infections rises significantly after this moment, the death rate would rise steeply and converge to the number of patients needing a ventilator/assisted breathing divided by the total, which is estimated to be 5-10%.

Therefore, I think any measures taken until now, such as lockdowns, and any significant media attention, which helps by making people adhere to measures, is fully justified, since we and many other countries are running at maximum ICU capacity already.