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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

The home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
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This is the home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
odysseus2000
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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#474724

Postby odysseus2000 » January 20th, 2022, 1:13 pm

There is nothing new in post viral fatigue, it has been known & recognised for many years.

However, what % of long covid patients have life style problems. One long covid victim I know has obesity & lack of exercise issues that are contributing to her troubles. I have finally convinced her to get an Apple Watch so that she has a record & a guide to work from. Some days she is incapable of doing much & wants to give up, but other days she does more & likes the watch feedback. I suspect that if she cut out ciggies, booze & reduced her food input she would cope better with long covid.

Obviously not everyone has these extra issues, but I suspect that a lot of people would do better if they were helped to a better life style which imho is probably as important as medication in being healthy, but does not seem to be something GP focus on.

Giving people with long covid the option to be coached in diet & exercise imho is something the nhs should offer.

Regards,

9873210
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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#474778

Postby 9873210 » January 20th, 2022, 3:27 pm

The co-morbidity net is rather wide. Depending on which list you use there might only be a few million who don't have one.

Perhaps it's a morality play -- all those evil people with hypertension getting what they deserve.
Perhaps people are just scared and looking for a reason it can't happen to them.
Perhaps those are the same thing.

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#474889

Postby scotia » January 20th, 2022, 10:43 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:Assuming the 17,000 is correct that is about 8500 per year, roughly 3x the number killed or seriously injured on the roads each year.

Why would you imagine that it is remotely correct? Go have a look at the excess deaths statistics - i.e. comparisons of the deaths between recent years - and look at the significant spikes. In England and Wales the 2020 peak was around 12,000 per week, and the 2021 peak was around 6,000 per week. The total number of excess deaths (in England and Wales) in 2020 was around 76000. Do you imagine that there was some other killer disease present that none of us know about?

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#474896

Postby odysseus2000 » January 20th, 2022, 11:15 pm

scotia wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:Assuming the 17,000 is correct that is about 8500 per year, roughly 3x the number killed or seriously injured on the roads each year.

Why would you imagine that it is remotely correct? Go have a look at the excess deaths statistics - i.e. comparisons of the deaths between recent years - and look at the significant spikes. In England and Wales the 2020 peak was around 12,000 per week, and the 2021 peak was around 6,000 per week. The total number of excess deaths (in England and Wales) in 2020 was around 76000. Do you imagine that there was some other killer disease present that none of us know about?


The 17,000 number is a national statistics figure for people who died purely from covid without other factors.

I was making a comparison to car deaths & serious injuries assuming that none of these had other factors. This may not be correct for the reason redsturgeon mentioned.

The excess death figure is sensitive to how far you go back to create the point that you compare to, to calculate the excess. One can argue that the few years prior to covid when deaths were lower was unusual & that a better measure would be an average over say a decade.

Still I get your point that if you measure relative to the years just prior to covid you do get death rates that are something like 10% above the expected death rate & with no other obvious killer one has to associate these with covid killing people who had other underlying issues much sooner than they would otherwise have died.

The calculus of what is the best policy has to weigh in a range of issues which include these, the effect on the economy which has to pay for the future health care & missed opportunities to treat other illness due to the huge efforts directed towards covid. Historically we would have rolled over the losses as there was no other option, but the vaccine & anti-virus drugs gave policy makes new untried ways to respond & likely the actions taken & not taken will be debated for a long time, but as ever we are where we are.

The other issue is the thorny one of rights versus responsibilities & whether it is appropriate for a State to use its monopoly of coercive direction to force individuals to do what the State sees as being in the best interests of everyone. It was for many years argued that the the free world was superior to the communist & fascist totalitarian states because of this freedom and one might believe that for a State in the free world to impose mandation it would require obvious & strong data which dies not, as I see it, exist in e.g the danger or not of having nhs staff vaccinated.

Regards,

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#474980

Postby Hallucigenia » January 21st, 2022, 11:03 am

odysseus2000 wrote:There is nothing new in post viral fatigue, it has been known & recognised for many years.


Long Covid seems to be something a bit different though - and things like the not smelling can have economic effects. Whilst I'm not in the same league as this guy, not smelling/tasting has had commercial effects on me. Aside from the smell thing, it's having specific neurological effects - the second paper found β-amyloid deposits which are different to the ones you see in Alzheimer's but may point to a mechanism by which Covid leads to dementia.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm2052
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=4003213

odysseus2000 wrote:However, what % of long covid patients have life style problems


Per that first paper, "Many people who experience neurologic symptoms that linger after acute COVID-19 are less than 50 years old and were healthy and active prior to infection."

But that's missing the point. All sorts of health outcomes would improve if people ate better and moved more, but that's a notoriously difficult problem to solve. The population is what it is - we had a choice, whether to let Covid run rampant in it or not. And when you're totalling up the costs of letting it rip or trying to control it, the costs of managing eg dementia in people like the 37-58 year-olds in that second paper, need to be factored into the sums.

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#474988

Postby servodude » January 21st, 2022, 11:20 am

Hallucigenia wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:There is nothing new in post viral fatigue, it has been known & recognised for many years.


Long Covid seems to be something a bit different though - and things like the not smelling can have economic effects. Whilst I'm not in the same league as this guy, not smelling/tasting has had commercial effects on me. Aside from the smell thing, it's having specific neurological effects - the second paper found β-amyloid deposits which are different to the ones you see in Alzheimer's but may point to a mechanism by which Covid leads to dementia.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm2052
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=4003213

odysseus2000 wrote:However, what % of long covid patients have life style problems


Per that first paper, "Many people who experience neurologic symptoms that linger after acute COVID-19 are less than 50 years old and were healthy and active prior to infection."

But that's missing the point. All sorts of health outcomes would improve if people ate better and moved more, but that's a notoriously difficult problem to solve. The population is what it is - we had a choice, whether to let Covid run rampant in it or not. And when you're totalling up the costs of letting it rip or trying to control it, the costs of managing eg dementia in people like the 37-58 year-olds in that second paper, need to be factored into the sums.


Why not compare apples with apples?
As it seems popular to use ONS data can we look at the deaths from infectious disease in the UK going back a century?
It looks like:
Image
- and lest we forget that's WITH the efforts undertaken
-sd

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#475092

Postby odysseus2000 » January 21st, 2022, 2:48 pm

Super interesting chart.

I was surprised how small the peaks were for the Spanish flu. As shown the deaths from covid as an increase over deaths from similar illness is hugely worse than the Spanish flu, although the population was smaller then & many of the deaths were in young soldiers which would have changed perceptions.

Thank you for sharing the chart.

Regards,

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#475239

Postby Bouleversee » January 21st, 2022, 11:29 pm

Hallucigenia wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:There is nothing new in post viral fatigue, it has been known & recognised for many years.


Long Covid seems to be something a bit different though - and things like the not smelling can have economic effects. Whilst I'm not in the same league as this guy, not smelling/tasting has had commercial effects on me. Aside from the smell thing, it's having specific neurological effects - the second paper found β-amyloid deposits which are different to the ones you see in Alzheimer's but may point to a mechanism by which Covid leads to dementia.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm2052
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=4003213

odysseus2000 wrote:However, what % of long covid patients have life style problems


Per that first paper, "Many people who experience neurologic symptoms that linger after acute COVID-19 are less than 50 years old and were healthy and active prior to infection."

But that's missing the point. All sorts of health outcomes would improve if people ate better and moved more, but that's a notoriously difficult problem to solve. The population is what it is - we had a choice, whether to let Covid run rampant in it or not. And when you're totalling up the costs of letting it rip or trying to control it, the costs of managing eg dementia in people like the 37-58 year-olds in that second paper, need to be factored into the sums.


This is a different slant on the neurological aspects (from MNT newsletter which arrived today):

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articl ... alzheimers

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#475247

Postby Mike4 » January 22nd, 2022, 12:01 am

servodude wrote:Why not compare apples with apples?
As it seems popular to use ONS data can we look at the deaths from infectious disease in the UK going back a century?
It looks like:
Image
- and lest we forget that's WITH the efforts undertaken
-sd



Shame the graph is not calibrated in deaths per 100,000. It would be a bit flatter.

The UK population at the start of the chart was 33m, less than half what it is today.

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#475286

Postby dealtn » January 22nd, 2022, 11:10 am

Mike4 wrote:
servodude wrote:Why not compare apples with apples?
As it seems popular to use ONS data can we look at the deaths from infectious disease in the UK going back a century?
It looks like:
Image
- and lest we forget that's WITH the efforts undertaken
-sd



Shame the graph is not calibrated in deaths per 100,000. It would be a bit flatter.

The UK population at the start of the chart was 33m, less than half what it is today.


That would make it steeper!

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#475302

Postby servodude » January 22nd, 2022, 12:01 pm

dealtn wrote:
Mike4 wrote:
servodude wrote:Why not compare apples with apples?
As it seems popular to use ONS data can we look at the deaths from infectious disease in the UK going back a century?
It looks like:

- and lest we forget that's WITH the efforts undertaken
-sd



Shame the graph is not calibrated in deaths per 100,000. It would be a bit flatter.

The UK population at the start of the chart was 33m, less than half what it is today.


That would make it steeper!


Depends on whether by "it" Mike meant the COVID spike ;)
"That" would look about half as high relatively (as the earlier bit would be higher - and steeper too)
- still a proverbial sore thumb since the dawn of antibiotics

-sd

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#475313

Postby jfgw » January 22nd, 2022, 12:44 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:I was surprised how small the peaks were for the Spanish flu. As shown the deaths from covid as an increase over deaths from similar illness is hugely worse than the Spanish flu, although the population was smaller then & many of the deaths were in young soldiers which would have changed perceptions.

The original chart is here, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronavirusayearlikenoother/2021-03-15:
5. Deaths data in this chart do not include influenza or pneumonia, which are classed as respiratory infections (J09-J18).



Julian F. G. W.

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#475318

Postby servodude » January 22nd, 2022, 1:15 pm

jfgw wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:I was surprised how small the peaks were for the Spanish flu. As shown the deaths from covid as an increase over deaths from similar illness is hugely worse than the Spanish flu, although the population was smaller then & many of the deaths were in young soldiers which would have changed perceptions.

The original chart is here, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronavirusayearlikenoother/2021-03-15:
5. Deaths data in this chart do not include influenza or pneumonia, which are classed as respiratory infections (J09-J18).



Julian F. G. W.


Crikey they've revised the bejesus out of that since I first linked to it when it first appeared; noticeably the big relabeling in October
Sheesh

-sd

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#475419

Postby jfgw » January 22nd, 2022, 7:40 pm

Cases rising rapidly for the 5—14 age groups. Under-5s still rising steadily.
Image
My graph. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. : https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/


Julian F. G. W.

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#475448

Postby odysseus2000 » January 22nd, 2022, 10:16 pm

Bouleversee wrote:
Hallucigenia wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:There is nothing new in post viral fatigue, it has been known & recognised for many years.


Long Covid seems to be something a bit different though - and things like the not smelling can have economic effects. Whilst I'm not in the same league as this guy, not smelling/tasting has had commercial effects on me. Aside from the smell thing, it's having specific neurological effects - the second paper found β-amyloid deposits which are different to the ones you see in Alzheimer's but may point to a mechanism by which Covid leads to dementia.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm2052
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=4003213

odysseus2000 wrote:However, what % of long covid patients have life style problems


Per that first paper, "Many people who experience neurologic symptoms that linger after acute COVID-19 are less than 50 years old and were healthy and active prior to infection."

But that's missing the point. All sorts of health outcomes would improve if people ate better and moved more, but that's a notoriously difficult problem to solve. The population is what it is - we had a choice, whether to let Covid run rampant in it or not. And when you're totalling up the costs of letting it rip or trying to control it, the costs of managing eg dementia in people like the 37-58 year-olds in that second paper, need to be factored into the sums.


This is a different slant on the neurological aspects (from MNT newsletter which arrived today):

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articl ... alzheimers


This kind of paper makes no sense to me.

As far as I understand the paper, it says that if a patients brain is deprived of oxygen it will be damaged. This is not something specific to covid.

If the title of the paper was about the necessity to ensure patients are not deprived of oxygen then it would not have made a paper as that should be obvious to any clinician.

The paper as it is just looks like noise, boosting someone's publication record & telling the rest of the world nothing but frightening people who only read the headline.

I could also go on about the sample size too, but this is enough.

Regards,

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476322

Postby Hallucigenia » January 26th, 2022, 2:23 pm

There's now more cases in babies than in 80+ in Denmark, and hospitalisations are shooting up, now at a higher rate for 0-2 than for 80+ :

Image

Is this just a vaccine effect or is it suggesting that BA.2 is that much worse in kids? There is some precedent for this - SARS1 causes disease in old mice but not young mice, but cycling it through young mice 15 times led to a variant that caused disease in young mice. You can't assume that viruses get "milder", the only guarantee is that the more infections you have, the more opportunity the virus has to mutate and evolve.

https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens ... at.0030005

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476340

Postby odysseus2000 » January 26th, 2022, 3:24 pm

Hallucigenia wrote:There's now more cases in babies than in 80+ in Denmark, and hospitalisations are shooting up, now at a higher rate for 0-2 than for 80+ :

Image

Is this just a vaccine effect or is it suggesting that BA.2 is that much worse in kids? There is some precedent for this - SARS1 causes disease in old mice but not young mice, but cycling it through young mice 15 times led to a variant that caused disease in young mice.
You can't assume that viruses get "milder", the only guarantee is that the more infections you have, the more opportunity the virus has to mutate and evolve.


https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens ... at.0030005


The historical evidence is that very few (none?) virus are 100% lethal to an entire species.

We know this as humans have survived as a species many previous virus. Even rabbits that were practically wiped out by mxymotosis were not completely destroyed and recovered from it before being hit by the current virus that has again wiped out most of them. There have been, as far as I know, no vaccine or anti-virus medicines for wild rabbits and in Australia very heavy penalties for anyone found giving domestic rabbit anti-virals to wild rabbits.

Sure virus can cause mayhem and kill large numbers of a species, but humans have shown remarkable resilience, over coming the Black Death among many other bad virus. The indigenous Indians of North America were badly injured by imported virus but again recovered. There is a line of thought that the people who once occupied the Amazon delta and left behind large ruins were wiped out by small pox, but that seems controversial.

Sure this new virus could be different but humans are remarkably resilient even without 21st century medicine.

Regards,

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476350

Postby Hallucigenia » January 26th, 2022, 4:38 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:We know this as humans have survived as a species many previous virus. Even rabbits that were practically wiped out by mxymotosis were not completely destroyed and recovered from it before being hit by the current virus that has again wiped out most of them. There have been, as far as I know, no vaccine or anti-virus medicines for wild rabbits and in Australia very heavy penalties for anyone found giving domestic rabbit anti-virals to wild rabbits.

Sure virus can cause mayhem and kill large numbers of a species, but humans have shown remarkable resilience, over coming the Black Death among many other bad virus.


I'm not sure "not as bad as myxie and the Black Death" is as reassuring as you think it is....

[as an aside, the Black Death was caused by Yersinia pestis, a bacterium, not a virus]

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476372

Postby jfgw » January 26th, 2022, 6:22 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:The historical evidence is that very few (none?) virus are 100% lethal to an entire species.

We know this as humans have survived as a species many previous virus.

You could pick any extant species and say the same ;)


Julian F. G. W.

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Re: Coronavirus - Numbers and Statistics

#476380

Postby jfgw » January 26th, 2022, 7:13 pm

Hallucigenia wrote:There's now more cases in babies than in 80+ in Denmark, and hospitalisations are shooting up, now at a higher rate for 0-2 than for 80+ :

Image

Is this just a vaccine effect or is it suggesting that BA.2 is that much worse in kids? There is some precedent for this - SARS1 causes disease in old mice but not young mice, but cycling it through young mice 15 times led to a variant that caused disease in young mice. You can't assume that viruses get "milder", the only guarantee is that the more infections you have, the more opportunity the virus has to mutate and evolve.

https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens ... at.0030005


To save others looking it up, "Nyindlagte" means, "Newly Hospitalised".

Natural immunity may be a factor. It would be interesting to know more precisely what ages these children are — today's under-2s weren't around when Covid first started to spread across the world.

Admissions data for England are published only monthly, and the next publication date is not until 10th February. Cases by age data (for England), however, are published daily and, while cases in under-5s were rising, they now appear to have peaked.
Image
My graph. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. : https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/


Julian F. G. W.


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