Reduced by -225% Reduced page load from original size of 7.37 kB to 24 kB. webcache.googleusercontent.com Loss of sense of smell as marker of COVID-19 infection
Post-viral anosmia is one of the leading causes of loss of sense of smell in adults, accounting for up to 40% cases of anosmia. Viruses that give rise to the common cold are well known to cause post-infectious loss, and over 200 different viruses are known to cause upper respiratory tract infections. Previously described coronaviruses are thought to account for 10-15% cases. It is therefore perhaps no surprise that the novel COVID-19 virus would also cause anosmia in infected patients.
There is already good evidence from South Korea, China and Italy that significant numbers of patients with proven COVID-19 infection have developed anosmia/hyposmia. In Germany it is reported that more than 2 in 3 confirmed cases have anosmia. In South Korea, where testing has been more widespread, 30% of patients testing positive have had anosmia as their major presenting symptom in otherwise mild cases.
In addition, there have been a rapidly growing number of reports of a significant increase in the number of patients presenting with anosmia in the absence of other symptoms – this has been widely shared on medical discussion boards by surgeons from all regions managing a high incidence of cases. Iran has reported a sudden increase in cases of isolated anosmia, and many colleagues from the US, France and Northern Italy have the same experience. I have personally seen four patients this week, all under 40, and otherwise asymptomatic except for the recent onset of anosmia – I usually see roughly no more than one a month. I think these patients may be some of the hitherto hidden carriers that have facilitated the rapid spread of COVID-19. Unfortunately, these patients do not meet current criteria for testing or self-isolation.
While there is a chance the apparent increase in incidence could merely reflect the attention COVID-19 has attracted in the media, and that such cases may be caused by typical rhinovirus and coronavirus strains, it could potentially be used as a screening tool to help identify otherwise asymptomatic patients, who could then be better instructed on self-isolation.
Given the potential for COVID-19 to present with anosmia, and the reports that corticosteroid use may increase the severity of infection, we would advise against use of oral steroids in the treatment of new onset anosmia during the pandemic, particularly if it is unrelated to head trauma or nasal pathology (such as nasal polyps).
There is potential that if any adult with anosmia but no other symptoms was asked to self-isolate for seven days, in addition to the current symptom criteria used to trigger quarantine, we might be able to reduce the number of otherwise asymptomatic individuals who continue to act as vectors, not realising the need to self-isolate. It will also be an important trigger for healthcare personnel to employ full PPE and help to counter the higher rates of infection found amongst ENT surgeons compared to other healthcare workers.
Yours sincerely,
Prof Claire Hopkins, BMBCh, MA FRCS(ORLHNS) DM(Oxon)
President of the British Rhinological Society
Professor of Rhinology, King’s College London
Consultant ENT Surgeon, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals
The Department of Justice has secretly asked Congress for the ability to detain arrested people “indefinitely” in addition to other powers that one expert called “terrifying”
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
I live in California, and it's frightening how much has changed from just a few days ago. Doesn't matter if people think its a hoax, trojanhorse, overhype, under-hyped, or the second coming of the bubonic plague/spanish flu...its upending every single aspect of basic life that no "terror attack" ever had. Ive had a steady diet of pandemic/zombie/post apocalyptic movies(I am legend/contagion/pontypool/zombieland/andromeda strain/The Happening/12 Monkeys( and the last week has felt eerily uncomfortable to a sci fi movie. Literally anytime i look at my phone or tv the media saying going outside yourself could literally kill you and loved ones. I was in my 20's when 9/11 happened and other than the anthrax/dirty bomb scare, I dont remember the media and politicians saying you could die just by walking outside your house.
Mass civil unrest, police departments cutting back services, insane gun buying in every city, new depression and financial collapse, world war, collapse of society etc are all being talked about on tv and articles.
Is this just 2016 2.0? Genesis P Orridge and Kenny Rogers of 2020 are what the harbingers of doom David Bowie and Prince's passings signaled in 2016? But seriously....I thought H1N1 2009 had an insane amount of death? I dont remember the most feverish Alex Jones paranoid bullshit now actually almost sort of seeming plausible. My lord...what happens if all of society is locked down but its now the summer, your air condition is fucked and the grid goes down....noone has a fucking job, food is scarce....and medication is in short supply?
"Do you know who I am? I am the arm, and I sound like this..."-man from another place, twin peaks fire walk with me
Searched here for a while and it seems like the "Event 201" report video - published in November 4 - has not been posted on this thread or site yet. [Apparently it was somewhere upthread but watch it or watch it again if you haven't.]
This is fascinating, and it is just as fascinating If you proceed on the assumption that this is NOT connected to some covert plot regarding the origins of COVID-19, but simply a case of lucky timing. It really illustrates a lot. How does power work in a crisis, at a time when states have passed much of their power and planning and executive and day-to-day response functions to finance, private corporations, lobbyists and consultants, plus a sprinkling of token CEOs?
Well, it doesn't, and the people attending this private-sector readiness exercise, representatives of various industries, states and orgs, seem to reach that conclusion. They are prepared for just-in-time delivery of goods when a contractor calls, not for providing an integrated response to a global crisis.
And why should they be?! This is capitalism. It doesn't plan. Individual units plan only for their own profit and growth. Systemic awareness is subordinate to that aim. (See the text by me I'm adding below.) Global planners do exist, and meetings like Davos and in fact this very same "Event 201" crisis exercise are a couple of the outward manifestations. But they are also private entities, looking to shape the overall system or the global order for their own benefit. Where they are not just con-jobs. They are opaque and hierarchical, whatever their ostensible ideologies and affectations to promoting open societies and good things. They are highly influential but also at a remove from direct exercise of power. They are rich men's hobbies.
There are some really weird players at the table, like a representative from the astroturf consulting firm, Edelman, which has advised the Keystone XL pipeline company, Wal-Mart and similar charming entities on crisis response and brand protection when their shit was exposed. This guy, a literal purveyor of disinformation for high-paying clients, is the one recommending social media engage in censorship against fake news during the pandemic crisis, or else do it by "flooding the zone."
Don't mean to single it out - the whole thing is revealing.
The Youtube channel of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins has the entire exercise in five parts.
When the crisis comes, and when the PR fails, as it must, that is when you see the real capitalism. Here are some stories on the workings of Capital under Corona:
Like most big corporations, the airlines used the 2017 tax cut windfall to buy their own stock, to inflate the price so that the managers can make more money in options. They were behaving like ideal rational actors in a free market. Availing yourself of whatever is available for yourself is what capitalist economics teaches them is the right thing to do, for all, or at least for the best possible world in the long run. Now the market crashes, the airlines fail, and the same managers, having exhausted cash reserves in non-productive stock buy-backs, demand public bailouts for their companies. Multi-multi-billionaire and self-made celebrity Richard Branson is currently the most egregious example among the airline owners asking for a bailout, in his case from the UK. He also owns a private health-care provider ("Virgin Health") that has been bleeding the British public health system, and which now seeks to profiteer off the crisis. That needs to be nationalized. Branson needs to be expropriated. These would be generous outcomes.
In the last month or two, two or more US senators engaged in profitable insider trading based on their advance knowledge of the coronavirus impact, at the same time falling silent or lying to the public about what they knew was coming. They were behaving like ideal rational actors in a free market, which capitalist economics teaches us results in the best possible outcomes for all. (Even in once-red China, when it went capitalist, they said: To get rich is glorious.) In truth, the senators' profiteering is only the tail of this story. The real plot is that these people were happy to help burn the world, so that it would not get in the way of their profiteering. They need to be forced to resign, immediately. They need to be investigated and prosecuted. These would be generous outcomes. In the criminal part, they get constitutional rights and due process. But the political verdict needs to be immediate: they resign. They lose power. They go away.
Now comes a report (Lee Fang) on how the Wall Street banks, thinking like ideal capitalist entities, are pressuring health care companies to profiteer off the crisis (insofar as the companies are reluctant, because of appearances amid a declared global and national emergency). These banks are the entities that issue or channel the vast majority of capital allocation, meaning of investment in this society. Their decisions write the future, or at least co-determine which futures are attempted. Under capitalism, they are incapable of missing an opportunity to profiteer off the suffering of others. They must! Anything that reduces my ROI, or makes my ROI fall behind yours, or pushes both of our ROIs into the negative, puts me as an individual player at a potentially fatal disadvantage in the competition for ROI. You may think I'm so rich already, but I, too, have my payments to maintain, or my company does. Systemically, even a brief stagnation in growth can set off a variety of immediate disasters, with collateral damage that materializes in the most wildly unexpected places, and a vicious cycle as contraction reduces demand and sets off debt-dominoes. That is not to justify the Martin Shkreli mentality of the bankers, only to explain its context. It is why the banks, too, need to be forced to resign, and ROI needs to be defined in a measure other than whatever makes money into more money.
Why does the U.S., which has the most expensive health care sector in the world, have fewer general hospital beds per capita than Italy, or China, or most other rich countries, according to the OECD and other statistics? Why does it have fewer hospital beds today than it did in the past? For a long time we have been told that everything public must be privatized and rendered maximally efficient, so as to cut the supposedly unbearable costs, improve delivery of services, and increase profitability. Profitability, to private enterprises, is supposed to be the only thing that can provide incentives to improve a system. In the most extreme version of this belief, profit is the only motivation for anyone to create anything. (I often think this is an ideology that requires self-hatred.) Over the last decades, the thoroughgoing for-profit privatization of health care has seen the closure of many public hospitals. Because of the closures and other changes guided by this ideology, the country has seen the loss of countless hospital beds (20,000 in New York state alone, now the epicenter of the corona crisis), although it should be noted the number of beds in the ICU category (the most expensive) has increased. In other words, surplus beds were deemed excessive and therefore too expensive to maintain. Remember, a surplus bed signifies maintaining additional labor, much of it professional and relatively well-paid, and other resources and spaces, at times when these capacities are not covered by the number of customers (patients who must pay bills, insured or otherwise). The system operated as though we needed only a hospital capacity sufficient to cover what the statistics tell us is the average number of patients at a given time, plus a small cushion. The rest is effectively excess inventory -- except for when the spike in patient numbers comes. But who wants to spend money preparing for things that only happen once every 10 or 20 years, and thus lose profits on quarterly reports? Health care was turned into a version of the "just-in-time" production model used by carmakers. In this case it wasn't anyone's job to plan for the inevitable overload scenario; or, if anyone did have that job, they didn't have any authority. The decision-making powers were concentrated in private entities bound (bound by law, even) to produce short-term returns on shareholder investment. They don't frame overall visions, they plan for enterprise profit. Independently of their moral responsibility, the system for making these decisions also demands change.
What is short term? Capitalism treats a quarter like a pressing, urgent short term. Farts and rumors in the news cycle can cause market swings that within days can enrich or impoverish thousands, often millions, sometimes for no reason other than the price of a few shares swings. In reality, meanwhile, twenty years is a short term. That is not so hard to grasp, really, but I know it is hard to internalize, in human experience generally. We have to breathe every minute and eat every day, minor discomforts can cause an excess of distress, a moment of being in love feels like years, and it takes us twenty calendar years just to grow up or write a dissertation. (Oh, self-burn!) I'm not different, I'm worse than most people: I'm always stuck in the moment, excitable, yearning for stimulation. That's a common characteristic that capitalism exploits, especially among those lucky ones of us found in groups and populations less subject to conditions of forced labor or hunger. Industries employ many of us in efforts to expand and accelerate the daily, monthly, quarterly, hourly treadmills of compulsion and desire, for ourselves and everyone else. Market logic seeks to intensify the multi-layered systems of constant monetary and psychological rewards and punishments that we feel compelled, or are compelled, to pursue. These do not originate as the master plan of lone oligarchs or cabals; they are dynamics that arise out of a system of political economy, and oligarchs and cabals seek to get ahead of the curve. The players plan along the guidelines that the system lays down for them. Larger views are taken only insofar as they are useful in the pursuit of profit, growth, ROI as measured in accounted units of money.
The success of the capitalist system is an illusion and its greatest public relations lie. Capital privatizes knowledge and achievements for profit, then claims only capital authors everything that is good and fixes everything that is wrong. It falsely takes credit for anything that we may perceive as progress, including for things that have been achieved by people-power in direct struggle against organized capitalist interests, such as democracy, workers rights, social welfare and insurance systems, and (where available) a relative material prosperity of the many. The bad times always expose this system. A political economy run by private owners and for-profit investment allocators cannot respond to crisis as a system; the players and their educated managerial and lackey classes are conditioned to ask what financial angle does it offer, what can be grabbed, who can get rich, who will be dispossessed, how can the system be adapted to better protect the interests of the few first of all no matter what the cost to the many, how can resistance to this necessity be pacified, coopted or destroyed. It never has worked, it never could have worked for much longer, and it doesn't work now except to make every crisis worse. Behind the Corona, the Extinction is still underway, and the rule of money has no answer for it.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.
To Justice my maker from on high did incline: I am by virtue of its might divine, The highest Wisdom and the first Love.
Searched here for a while and it seems like the "Event 201" report video - published in November 4 - has not been posted on this thread or site yet
It's been posted and discussed since the first page of this thread, but it bears repeating.
There have been a tremendous amount of questions in the past ten pages that are already answered, I definitely recommend people actually read this thread.
Well, I didn't find it using Event 201 or the youtube ID as search terms. And I have gone through much of this thread, I think it's got a lot of spectacularly informative items. Just, you know, there's still a universe of other things to read and things to do...
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.
To Justice my maker from on high did incline: I am by virtue of its might divine, The highest Wisdom and the first Love.
Back in 2001, it was a smallpox outbreak, set off by terrorists in U.S. shopping malls. This fall, it was a SARS-like virus, germinating quietly among pig farms in Brazil before spreading to every country in the world.
With each fictional pandemic Johns Hopkins experts have designed, the takeaway lesson is the same: We are nowhere near prepared.
"Once you're in the midst of a severe pandemic, your options are very limited," says Eric Toner, a senior scholar at the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University. "The greatest good can happen with pre-planning."
That center's latest pandemic simulation, Event 201, dropped participants right in the midst of an uncontrolled coronavirus outbreak that was spreading like wildfire out of South America to wreak worldwide havoc. As fictional newscasters from "GNN" narrated, the immune-resistant virus (nicknamed CAPS) was crippling trade and travel, sending the global economy into freefall. Social media was rampant with rumors and misinformation, governments were collapsing, and citizens were revolting.
For those participating in New York City on Oct. 18—a heavyweight group of policymakers, business leaders, and health officials—Event 201 was a chance to see how much catch-up work is needed to bolster our disaster response systems. Full videos of the discussion are available online.
"It really does shake up assumptions and change thinking about how we can prepare for a global pandemic," says Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security.
Event 201 is the fourth such exercise hosted by the Johns Hopkins center, which works to prepare communities for biological threats, pandemics, and other disasters. The simulations started with 2001's Dark Winter, which gathered national security experts for its simulated smallpox outbreak. The groundbreaking event turned out to be influential in shaping U.S. efforts around pandemic preparedness—particularly due to its timing, right before 9/11.
So, 'Event 201' marks the 2nd time such an exercise was released just prior to an actual event. What a coincidence.
Interesting paragraph I was just reading in Disease and Security: Natural Plagues and Biological Weapons in East Asia (Christian Enemark, 2007):
An important point of difference is that the dread which attaches to particular infectious diseases, combined with the ghastly notion of a fellow human perpetrator, would arguably generate adverse psychological effects beyond what might be expected during an outbreak event of natural origin. In the event of a BW attack, an early public health challenge would be to deal with uninfected individuals who were misattributing symptoms of fear to biological agents and overwhelming healthcare facilities. One estimate is that, following a chemical or biological incident thought to be deliberately caused, for every one person seeking hospital care for physical injuries, at least six would present with psychological concerns.54 India’s experience of an outbreak event involving plague well illustrates the adverse impact of dread on public health responses. Between 26 August and 5 October 1994, 5,150 suspected cases of pneumonic or bubonic plague were reported in eight Indian states. Around 600,000 people fled the city of Surat in one night, and vital medical personnel were among them. In Delhi, 1,200 kilometres away, hospitals were flooded. Adding to the general panic was an unsubstantiated rumour that neighbouring Pakistan had deliberately introduced genetically-engineered Y. pestis bacteria that it had acquired from the former Soviet Union. Ultimately, there were only 167 confirmed plague cases and 53 deaths.55 But the deep dread of plague, a disease with a dark history, generated damage and disruption vastly disproportionate to the amount of illness and death that resulted from this outbreak event.
(Also this:)
Many of the basic measures needed to protect populations against emerging infectious diseases – for example, syndromic surveillance, diagnostics and medical therapies – are the same as would be required to thwart or mitigate a BW attack. Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong recognized this in 1952 when, amidst the controversy over alleged US involvement in biological warfare during the Korean War, he launched China’s first Patriotic Hygiene Campaign. The slogan for the campaign was: ‘Mobilise to promote hygiene, to reduce disease, to raise the level of the people’s health, and to smash the germ warfare of the American imperialists!
In 2014, the world avoided a horrific global outbreak of Ebola, thanks to thousands of selfless health workers -- plus, frankly, thanks to some very good luck. In hindsight, we know what we should have done better. So, now's the time, Bill Gates suggests, to put all our good ideas into practice, from scenario planning to vaccine research to health worker training. As he says, "There's no need to panic ... but we need to get going."
Just skip that part where he says "There's no need to panic. We don't have to hoard cans of spaghetti or go down into the basement."
You've probably already noticed that it's a bit late to begin hoarding and basements can entrap you, rather than protect you. Panic is a useless helper.
The simulations started with 2001's Dark Winter, which gathered national security experts for its simulated smallpox outbreak. The groundbreaking event turned out to be influential in shaping U.S. efforts around pandemic preparedness—particularly due to its timing, right before 9/11.
So, 'Event 201' marks the 2nd time such an exercise was released just prior to an actual event. What a coincidence.
Agree, it's pretty damning that JHS would have done an exercise like that just before the most notorious smallpox attack in American history on September 11th 2001. Really makes you think.
Smallpox was on a lot of strategic minds in those days. I spent my Thursday with an excellent essay "The Imposition of Martial Law in the United States," by Major Kirk L. Davies. (PDF Link, 3.4mb.) Notably, like so many other internal investigations on the subject, it concludes that such an undertaking will be extremely difficult -- but perhaps that's all a clever ruse. (Based on basic math, though, I tend to doubt it, unless there is an entire other secret military they're ready to deploy. Kudos the warlords, if so.)
Anyways, per the introduction -- the very opening paragraph, no less:
Imagine the following frightening scenario: Members of an American militia group enter a major metropolitan airport and attach small aerosol-like devices in several restrooms throughout the concourse. These devices release deadly amounts of smallpox bacteria into the air, infecting hundreds of Americans travelling through the airport. Within days, citizens around the country begin to display the horrific symptoms of smallpox. Soon public health workers determine the nature of the epidemic and release the information to the press. Widespread panic results. Civilian public health agencies attempt to educate the public on how to control the spread of the disease. But despite police efforts to control the populace by establishing quarantine areas, the civilian infrastructure is quickly overwhelmed. Chaos results. Finally, the President declares martial law in an attempt to restore order in the nation.
On the next page there's a quote from Michael Osterholm, head of the CIDRAP team that has been doing such outstanding work synthesizing daily news on the nCoV outbreak -- and recently talked shop with Joe Rogan, too:
Several of my colleagues and I have tried to walk though these disaster scenarios time and time again. We've looked at them as we would handle any other public health disaster, as we've done in the past. Unfortunately, each and every time, given the resources we have now, given the kinds of authorities we have now, we come down to basically complete chaos and panic. In many instances, the only thing that would probably prevail is martial law. I don't think this country has yet prepared to realize that we may face that in the future.
His conclusions are reasonable. Maybe the man is a closet fascist, squinting towards the Public Health Junta to come, but maybe he's just aware of how hard it is to manage human behavior at scale. Consider the tens of thousands of 20-something infants drunk on the beaches of Florida this past week (and indeed, even now) -- why won't law enforcement intervene? Because they know damn well it would only start a riot.
There has been a lot of talk in recent days about "How Long Americans Can Endure This" -- but, endure what? Mass layoffs, requests to stay home, and half-assed public announcements about washing our fucking hands? The United States has not even begun to take the kind of measures that were necessary to mitigate the exponential curves in other countries with earlier outbreaks. So, martial law is inevitable, still barely adequate, and quite nearly impossible.
Which means we're headed into the single wildest week of The Event so far. This is the first time I've had absolutely no roadmap for what to expect next. US is having a very difficult time responding to the crisis and achieving anything resembling a "lockdown," but John Robb has been very encouraged by the explosive growth in US testing, and he's certainly a brighter man than me. Naturally, more testing means more cases being identified, so numbers in the US will be exploding every day.
And globally, Christ Jesus -- 20-30k new cases every day.
It's hard to believe that anyone in Washington DC had a handle on this in advance, insider trading scandals aside. The US Senate is struggling and failing this weekend to muster a bailout package that amounts to anything but the same old corporate welfare bullshit. If anyone had a plan they did an airtight job keeping it to themselves. US military will be doing cleanup under difficult circumstances, ad hoc, state to state.
The only protocol in place right now is the classic crisis control M.O. of strenuously denying what's next up until the point it happens -- this is why these "Shelter In Place" orders keep coming down as people are commuting home, ~5 pm local time. This is the best representative democracy could do. Your elected leaders have been abdicating their responsibilities since this started.
And this has barely even started.
Last edited by Wombaticus Rex on Sun Mar 22, 2020 5:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Nordic » Thu Mar 19, 2020 9:07 pm wrote: I do t want to sound too paranoid, but several days ago when the SHTF for real here, I was driving all around town and saw something I’d never seen before in the sky — jet contrails where I had never seen them before. And Jets all flying in the same direction as each other, nearly side by side but at very different altitudes, along this same, seemingly new flight path. This was directly over Portland Oregon and heading straight north. For at least a full day or more these contrails piled up and created a veritable woven rope of squished-together contrails that had never been there before.
Someone in a local forum posted this today:
I’ve noticed over the last couple weeks that the visibility out to the mountains or over the ocean is really hazy. I’m not seeing anything in the news about it and was wondering if anyone else has heard about why this is.
I figured with everyone staying home and air traffic down that there would be a significant improvement in air clarity but it seems quite the opposite.
The usual answers are offered in response: buildups of smog, fog, etc. When it's obvious – if you just sit by the ocean and watch for an hour or two – that the previously clear sky becomes completely "hazy" as the contrails behind those mysterious high-flying planes disperse and linger for hours. Whose planes are those? Where do they come from and where are they going? (I actually know the answer, but I'm not saying here.)
If anyone (like the person quoted) even notices the phenomenon, they seem satisfied with the pat answers provided. What a world we live in!
According to the latest European monitoring report, overall mortality in all countries (including Italy) and in all age groups remains within or even below the normal range so far.
According to the latest German statistics, the median age of test-positive deaths is about 83 years, most with pre-existing health conditions that might be a possible cause of death.
A 2006 Canadian study referred to by Stanford Professor John Ioannidis found that common cold coronaviruses may also cause death rates of up to 6% in risk groups such as residents of a care facility, and that virus test kits initially falsely indicated an infection with SARS coronaviruses.
March 21, 2020 (I)
Spain reports only three test-positive deaths under the age of 65 (out of a total of about 1000). Their pre-existing health conditions and actual cause of death are not yet known.
On March 20, Italy reported 627 nationwide test-positive deaths in one day. By comparison, normal overall mortality in Italy is about 1800 deaths per day. Since February 21, Italy has reported about 4000 test-positive deaths. Normal overall mortality during this time frame is up to 50,000 deaths. It is not yet known to what extent normal overall mortality has increased, or to what extent it has simply turned test-positive. Moreover, Italy and Europe have had a very mild flu season in 2019/2020 that has spared many otherwise vulnerable people.
According to Italian news reports, 90% of test-positive deceased in the Lombardy region have died outside of intensive care units, mostly at home or in general care sections. Their cause of death and the possible role of quarantine measures in their deaths remain unclear. Only 260 out of 2168 test-positive persons have died in ICUs.
The Japan Times asks: Japan was expecting a coronavirus explosion. Where is it? Despite being one of the first countries getting positive test results and having imposed no lockdown, Japan is one of the least-affected nations. Quote: „Even if Japan may not be counting all those infected, hospitals aren’t being stretched thin and there has been no spike in pneumonia cases.“
Italian researchers argue that the extreme smog in Northern Italy, the worst in Europe, may be playing a causative role in the current pneumonia outbreak there, as in Wuhan before.
In a new interview, Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, a world renowned expert in medical microbiology, says blaming the new coronavirus alone for deaths is „wrong“ and „dangerously misleading“, as there are other more important factors at play, notably pre-existing health conditions and poor air quality in Chinese and Northern Italian cities. Professor Bhakdi describes the currently discussed or imposed measures as „grotesque“, „useless“, „self-destructive“ and a „collective suicide“ that will shorten the lifespan of the elderly and should not be accepted by society.
March 22, 2020 (I)
Regarding the situation in Italy: Most major media again falsely reported that Italy yesterday had 797 deaths from the coronavirus. In reality, the president of the Italian Civil Protection Service stressed that these are deaths „with the coronavirus and not from the coronavirus“ (minute 03:30 of the press conference). In other words, these persons died while also testing positive.
As world renowned Professors Ioannidis and Bhakdi have shown, countries like South Korea and Japan that introduced no lockdown measures have experienced near-zero excess mortality in connection with Covid-19, while the Diamond Princess cruise ship experienced an extraÂpolated mortality figure in the per mille range, i.e. at or below the level of the seasonal flu.
Current test-positive death figures in Italy are still less than 50% of normal daily overall mortality in Italy, which is around 1800 deaths per day. Thus it is possible, perhaps even likely, that a large part of normal daily mortality now simply counts as „Covid19“ deaths (as they test positive). This is the point stressed by the President of the Italian Civil Protection Service.
However, by now it is clear that certain regions in Northern Italy, i.e. those facing the toughest lockdown measures, are experiencing markedly increased daily mortality figures. It is also known that in the Lombardy region, 90% of test-positive deaths occur not in intensive care units, but instead mostly at home. And more than 99% have serious pre-existing health conditions.
Professor Sucharit Bhakdi has called lockdown measures „useless“, „self-destructive“ and a „collective suicide“. Thus the extremely troubling question arises as to what extent the increased mortality of these elderly, isolated, highly stressed people with multiple pre-existing health conditions may in fact be caused by the weeks-long lockdown measures still in force.
If so, it may be one of those cases where the treatment is worse than the disease.
March 22, 2020 (II)
In Switzerland, there are currently 56 test-positive deaths, all of whom were „high risk patients“ due to their advanced age and/or pre-existing health conditions. Their actual cause of death, i.e. from or simply with the virus, has not been communicated.
The Swiss government claimed that the situation in southern Switzerland (next to Italy) is „dramatic“, yet local doctors denied this and said everything is normal.
According to press reports, oxygen bottles may become scarce. The reason, however, is not a currently higher usage, but rather hoarding due to fear of future shortages.
In many countries, there is already an increasing shortage of doctors and nurses. This is primarily because healthcare workers testing positive have to self-quarantine, even though in many cases they will remain fully or largely symptom-free.
March 22, 2020 (III)
A model from Imperial College London predicted between 250,000 and 500,000 deaths in the UK „from“ Covid-19, but the authors of the study have now conceded that many of these deaths would not be in addition to, but rather part of the normal annual mortality rate, which in the UK is about 600,000 people per year. In other words, excess mortality would remain low.
Dr. David Katz, founding director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, asks in the New York Times: „Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease? There may be more targeted ways to beat the pandemic.“
According to Professor Walter Ricciardi, scientific adviser to the Italian health minister, in Italy „all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus“, although „only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus.“
It seems to be regularly updated, well supported with references and data.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By way of contrast...
(I'll post this in full, both as a shining example of it's genre, and because they have a habit of disappearing)
The look of panic among medics, patients failing to get oxygen in their lungs and dangerous under-dressing of staff: Frontline NHS doctor reveals how coronavirus has unleashed terror in hospital
Doctor with a decade of experience says nothing prepared him for coronavirus Frontline healthcare worker writes the UK is 'grossly unprepared' for the virus Individual has more than a decade of experience and works in London hospital Coronavirus symptoms: what are they and should you see a doctor?
By A Frontline Doctor For The Mail On Sunday
Published: 22:01 GMT, 21 March 2020 | Updated: 08:13 GMT, 22 March 2020
If we thought our health service was prepared for the coronavirus, the past few days have brought a shattering reality.
Here, in a chilling dispatch from the front line, one doctor recounts the moment Covid-19 struck and overwhelmed a major London hospital – and how doctors and nurses watched helplessly as patients died an excruciating death...
Have you ever seen someone gasping for their last breaths? Not many have, but for those who have experienced it, you never forget the horror. I wish I could forget all the faces of the dying I saw last week.
The look of panic across every face, the chugging sound people make as they desperately try, and fail, to get oxygen in their lungs. It doesn't leave you.
I have been a doctor for more than a decade. In that time, I thought I had seen everything there was to see. But nothing could have prepared me for the terror that coronavirus would unleash.
It was just after lunchtime on Saturday when the nightmare began. The siren sounded on my pager to tell me a patient had had a respiratory arrest and I rushed across the hospital to attend a man in his 70s with Covid-19 whose heart had stopped beating.
What I was met with when I arrived was sheer panic. The staff, through no fault of their own, were hesitant in exactly how we should respond.
It was an early indication of how grossly under-prepared as a country we are for treating this virus. The compressions to resuscitate him proved futile.
Along with two nurses, a senior doctor and an anaesthetist, who was managing his airway, we were powerless as Covid-19 cruelly claimed a victim right before us.
He was gasping for breath with every ounce of life that he could muster. I could see the terror in his eyes. He knew.
This was compounded by the terror in the faces of the staff present. They are all brilliant colleagues, respected professionals who have, like me, been doing their jobs for a long time. There shouldn't have been any fear for them. But there was. I could see it. And I felt overcome with it, too.
I am a senior medical doctor covering all wards including high dependency at a busy hospital in London. We're used to being stretched and working long shifts without breaks to deal with any number of emergencies that come through the door every day. But last Saturday was different.
Yes, we knew that the virus was coming but we weren't prepared for this. A few hours before the first Covid-19 death at the hospital, we were suddenly forced to restructure our wards to accommodate the vast numbers of sufferers who were being admitted in critical conditions.
I am a doctor. I am trained to block out the inner voice of panic that comes to all of us in times of extreme stress. But there was no blocking out this time. There it was, bellowing at me continuously: 'Oh my God, what is happening?'
We knew this man was just the first one we would see die in this excruciating manner. The child in me was thinking: 'If only I can save him, perhaps all those people piling up in our wards will be OK, too.' But this, of course, is real life. Not a children's story.
As he cruelly slipped away, my heart sank. There was no time to dwell, though. For we soon had a full ward of sufferers. What's more, despite restructuring the wards to ensure there was room for the coronavirus sufferers and that they would be totally isolated, it soon became apparent that the virus was already rampaging throughout the hospital.
Not long after his death, my pager went off to attend someone on a regular ward who had taken a turn. Lying in an open bay, they were burning up with a serious fever. I could cry thinking about it.
This individual had been admitted to hospital for something totally unrelated and now, here, lying before me, it was clear they had caught the virus in the very place they had every reason to expect would help them get better.
My eyes darted around the ward. He was surrounded by other beds full of patients, as well as nurses and doctors who were not protected – myself included.
At this point I had been working for nine hours straight on an empty stomach, having only taken one toilet break. There would be no let-up. For he was merely the first discovery.
Almost simultaneously sufferers began popping up, as my pager's siren went into overdrive. I rushed between wards, attending to alerts coming from all over the hospital.
With each new discovery, all I could hear was my inner voice screaming louder with each new discovery: 'No, no, no, no. Please God, no.'
For some of the population, I realise that this must be hard to comprehend. According to one graphic I have seen shared on social media, Covid19 is little worse than the winter flu. But let me tell you, it is so very much worse.
Besides the far more aggressive lung disease it has the ability to cause, its ability to spread totally differentiates it from any flu.
Many of you reading this might have assumed that the virus is only serious for those with 'underlying health issues'. It is a clever term, for it works to distance many of us from it. Yet I have seen first-hand how quickly it spreads.
I lost count of the number of times I have found sufferers in different wards. Any hope we'd had of keeping Covid-19 sufferers separate from the rest of our patients became almost totally blurred as the influx just became greater, and greater, and greater. You instinctively know it is the coronavirus. There is no mistaking it.
Patients who come in for totally different reasons do not just suddenly develop high fevers. When we think it's likely that someone is suffering from the virus on a non-isolated ward, we take them to a side room and swab them.
It takes two days to get the results, which provides another logistical challenge.
While we wait for test results the patient can't return to a normal ward in case they have the virus, but they can't be moved in with Covid-19 sufferers in case they don't.
Me? I am asymptomatic, but I have been exposed to it – frequently. I am, therefore, most likely carrying it, as are most medics up and down the country.
Absurdly, I have not been afforded a test – and the NHS's approach for staff is that until you have symptoms you don't self-isolate. Why? Because we simply do not have enough staff for them to be disappearing before symptoms appear, regardless of whether they are likely carrying it or not.
As a doctor you should be saving lives. But for the first time in my career I have to face the fear that as a doctor I could be a silent killer. I have no choice but to block out that fear and just get on with it.
Towards the end of last week, it became apparent that there is very little we can do to halt the spread of this aggressive and unrelenting virus. Many patients simply do not respond to treatment and oxygen masks and we are left with no choice but to make them 'comfortable'.
Even with morphine and the sedative midazolam to help numb pain and ease breathing, the deaths have been excruciating. That is why I wish that I could forget last week, pretend it is some nightmare. But it isn't. It is now our new reality.
The virus has forced doctors to do something we should never have to do: play God.
Within the space of a few hours last Saturday, what I had known my job to be changed irrevocably. For we must now make ethical decisions on who to save and who to let die on a scale that no doctor alive today has ever faced.
I would love to say that those ethical decisions are made with time, patience, and care. But last week? It was as quick as can be. No doctor should be forced to choose between patients. But we now have no other choice.
It is never an easy task to tell someone's loved one their mother, father, wife or husband is not a candidate to go to intensive care because they have serious underlying health issues and, because of their old age, there is nothing we can do.
Italy has already stopped intubating patients over 60. Whenever you call a patient's family to let them know that their loved one is dying, the first response is usually 'How long?' followed by asking if they can see them.
Once a patient is in a critical condition with this virus, there is never more than a couple of hours before it kills. So far, we have been allowing individual visitors dressed in protective gear to say their final goodbyes, but for how much longer will this be the case if the death toll soars and protective equipment becomes in short supply?
Several times this week, families have unfortunately not accepted their loved ones' fate and pleaded with us to keep trying to fight the virus off. Those conversations stay with you.
There are now close to 150 known sufferers in the hospital but I suspect it could be many times more than that. We are at breaking point, with virtually no space to treat those suffering. And this is barely the tip of the iceberg.
Little over a week on from that horrendous Saturday we are already on the cusp of declaring a critical incident, which means we physically have too many critical care patients and no room to take any more.
There is at least one other hospital where this has already happened. As medics, we are all petrified of what we face in the coming weeks and months. Are we prepared? No. We do not even have enough protective clothing.
These fears are compounded by the dangerous under-dressing of our staff because of shortages. And as for personal protective equipment, for some unknown reason Public Health England has said that it is fine for us to be wearing a surgical mask with air gaps rather than a full-protection mask with an air-filter system, a plastic apron and a pair of gloves.
That might sound like enough, but, in reality, we are reduced to flimsy, long-sleeve aprons (some doctors at other hospitals have even complained about wearing sleeveless aprons), and a mask with – effectively – holes in it.
Many saw the frightening scenes coming out of Italy's grossly overcrowded hospitals at the end of last week.
The brutal truth is that we are facing exactly the same immediate future here. The virus is wanton in its destruction.
Make no mistake, we are at breaking point and we are little more than a week in.
It feels like we are trying to play some sort of computer game and with each day we enter a new, harder level. We simply cannot keep up. How much worse will it get?
Now... call me cynical if you like, but I have never in my years known a member of medical staff of any stripe who would write like that. Although I have met a fair few tabloid journalists who would.
We don't know the identity of this 'Doctor' only that they are one (it's pointed out 7 times in the piece), nor do we know the hospital at which they work. But they do tell us that they're relating the events of last Saturday (14th) - up to midnight on Fri 13th there had been a total of 11 deaths in the whole UK attributed to 'coronavirus'.
On Saturday 14th itself, 5 people were reported to have died from coronavirus in London hospitals - all at different London hospitals.
Makes you think, eh?
There are many similar stories popping up in the British (and elsewhere) media at present - perhaps they deserve a thread of their own?
I've been warning for the past few weeks so just take a look at the numbers from the W.H.O. and in an “apples to apples” comparison, the Coronavirus has HALF the mortality rate of the seasonal flu when it comes to "death to confirmed cases" ratio.
The response by the government to COVID-19 will turn America into a third world country in short order. Destroying the economy, throwing millions of people out of work, creating air money and thus inflation, and draconian measures to head off a virus that kills far less than the ordinary flu will have serious and unprecedented ramifications.
The veneer of civilization will dissolve in short order. If practically everyone is ordered by the state to “shelter in place,” there will be few people left to deliver—let alone produce—food and other necessities. Within the first few days of this exaggerated “new plague,” frantic citizens besieged the stores, striping the shelves of toilet paper, canned goods, and bread. This is happening as a result of the corporate media hammering out an apocalyptic message nonstop.
Fast-forward to next month, or the one after. Millions of people, thrown out of work and confronting poverty, will react in the way humanity always reacts when faced with scarcity and hunger—with food riots, looting, and violence.
New York City and Baltimore now have troops on the street. We’re told they are being deployed to establish field hospitals and turn commandeered hotels into ICUs to care for the infected.
Behind this noble effort, however, is a plan to enforce an unnecessary lockdown and confront with deadly force rioters, looters, as well as folks outraged over the systematic dismantling of civilization, many whom see this viral outbreak (natural or manmade) for what it is—a cover for an economic reset and the establishment of an elitist-driven totalitarian global authority.
Posting analysis such as this will likely become a dangerous practice in the months ahead. It is already vividly apparent that the state—and indeed, much of a propagandized population—will not tolerate deviation from the absurd exaggerations and outright lies now foisted upon us.
The state has long planned for this scenario. It realizes the asset bubble and Ponzi scheme economy cannot be sustained and the crash will be catastrophic. The plan is to blame COVID-19 for the crash. This will not only allow the real culprits—central banks, the Federal Reserve, investment firms, and other scam artists and economic criminals—off the hook but flood them with trillions of bailout dollars.
Trump’s impending bailout of the airline industry, for instance, does not take into consideration the industry squandering billions on stock buybacks instead of protecting themselves from predictable economic headwinds.
“The Big Four airlines—Delta Airlines Inc, Southwest Airlines Co., American Airlines Group Inc., and United Airlines Holdings Inc.—together repurchased $39 billion worth of stock over the past five years, according to Seeking Alpha, much of it since passage of massive corporate tax cuts in 2017 pushed through by President Donald Trump and Republicans,” reports Benzinga.
The carriers seek a combination of grants, loans and tax relief totaling $58 billion, but news organizations report the White House appears to prefer $50 billion in loans. Airline CEOs are in Washington this week arguing that a cash infusion is necessary to keep companies, which are hemorrhaging millions of dollars every day, viable until the economy recovers.
Trump the crony capitalist will spend billions in nonexistent money to prop up transnational corporations and banks while sending small checks of a few hundred dollars to citizens as a token gesture. This will only temporarily mollify Americans and will not buy their loyalty in the long run. Two checks for a thousand dollars or less spread over a couple months will not keep the wolves from the door.
The plan to exploit what appears to be an average virus in order to re-engineer economies and impose a global totalitarian super-state will usher in a New Dark Age of subservience and privation. The ruling elite considers us little more than serfs and useless eaters, especially the elderly and the underclass.
Yeah, Mac has a good thread for those. There are definitely ongoing multipolar psyops going around this, because psyops rule the world.
That there The Mail jawn is copywritten trash, I agree. Pure hype. Boris and Dominic really, really fucked up badly and now they have to pivot hard to containment. They need to scare the shit out of people, all day every day. UK media will be saturated with staged & fake horror stories just like Florida will, and just like "vaping deaths" and "popcorn lung" became big, human interest news last year.
This is an ideal time to kill / disappear / extract people and blame it on a pandemic, too. Lots of opportunities afoot.
If you think all that means there's no actual epidemic, right on. I can only respect it.
Wombaticus Rex wrote:This is an ideal time to kill / disappear / extract people and blame it on a pandemic
In March 2020, while incarcerated in Wende Correctional Facility in western New York during the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, Weinstein tested positive for COVID-19 and was placed in isolation.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
