puzzled

[gsgs]

I'm totally puzzled, what's going on.
It's obvious since ~Feb09 that cases in China are going down
and it becomes clearer every day.
Still flubies and experts and health officials and most reporters are ignoring this
and talk as if the pandemic thread were the same as in early Feb.
Why should Singapore or Japan or UK be a problem with just a few cases
when China could handle it with thousands of cases ?

 

[sharon sanders]

Because no one believes China's numbers.

We will see what happens in Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, etc.

 

[curiosity]

I'm totally puzzled, what's going on.
It's obvious since ~Feb09 that cases in China are going down
and it becomes clearer every day.
Still flubies and experts and health officials and most reporters are ignoring this
and talk as if the pandemic thread were the same as in early Feb.
Why should Singapore or Japan or UK be a problem with just a few cases
when China could handle it with thousands of cases ?

Also, UK, Japan and Singapore are picking up the non-pneumonia, mild disease transmission cases - where China is not reporting on those. Fortunately, China's pneumonia cases are less, but at what cost and to what measure? The disease is not contained, only curtailed. I understand why they are worried. When business as usual returns to China, without stopping the disease, cases will increase again.

I agree with Sharon, too, no one believes China's numbers.

 

[gsgs]

there are lots of papers that estimate the Chinese underreporting. Outside Hubei it
was a factor of 1.4 afair in a recent paper.
But it doesn't matter, we just observe the trend, not the total numbers.
Why should the underreporting have changed ? And in a way to produce
a stable downtrend ?
And no, you can't produce this deliberately. In all the provinces.
And the reporters are especially WHO do trust the numbers, reproduce them.
And those who talk about it do acknowledge that they are going down,
just that it's commonly ignored/avoided.

Well, some reporters say they are still going up, but they mean the cumulative
numbers which of course are increasing.

 

[Treyfish]

:magnify:China threatens 10 yrs sentences up to death for concealing cases, which means to me there are plenty of cases to be found.

 

[gsgs]

there are reasonable estimates of the factor of underreporting.

China ex Hubei ~1.5
Hubei ex Wuhan ~1.9
Wuhan~19 (Jan.29)

I read recently.

for the trend underreporting doesn't matter, unless they systematically change the level of underreporting over time


Statistical Inference for Coronavirus Infected Patients in Wuhan
Yong-Dao Zhou1, Jianghu (James) Dong2, *1
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.10.20021774v1.full.pdf

 

[gsgs]

I agree with Sharon, too, no one believes China's numbers.

see some of the "noones" here : : http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-02/16/c_138789227.htm
and what about WHO ? DG, can't remember the name

 

[Laidback Al]

The case numbers from the past few days in China seem to suggest that the number of infections are declining. If we are worried about a pandemic, we don’t have to rely on numbers from China.

To date, about 25 countries have reported COVID-19 infections to WHO. The graph below depicts the distribution of more than 660 cases from around the world, excluding China, Macau, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. About 53% of these cases are reported from the quarantined cruise ship in Japan. The cruise ship data clearly shows that this coronavirus is very contagious. All of the cases from the ship have been reported in the past 11 days.

As depicted in the chart, among all of the 25 countries there is no evidence that new cases outside of China are increasing at exponential rates. So far, the rest of the world has done a good job of containing and isolating infected individuals.

 

[curiosity]

see some of the "noones" here : : http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-02/16/c_138789227.htm
and what about WHO ? DG, can't remember the name

I agree - I used an inappropriate term to depict distrust in the numbers. The WHO and Xinhua News are good examples of contradiction to the claim.

Given the willingness to bring their country to a screaming halt and if even 1 percent of the video available is true - then we are not getting the whole picture and thus not the truth.

 

[curiosity]

The case numbers from the past few days in China seem to suggest that the number of infections are declining. If we are worried about a pandemic, we don’t have to rely on numbers from China.

To date, about 25 countries have reported COVID-19 infections to WHO. The graph below depicts the distribution of more than 660 cases from around the world, excluding China, Macau, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. About 53% of these cases are reported from the quarantined cruise ship in Japan. The cruise ship data clearly shows that this coronavirus is very contagious. All of the cases from the ship have been reported in the past 11 days.

As depicted in the chart, among all of the 25 countries there is no evidence that new cases outside of China are increasing at exponential rates. So far, the rest of the world has done a good job of containing and isolating infected individuals.

Consider all cases prior to last three days ex cruise ship are a result of testing for the virus in travelers from China or contacts to cases. Numbers tested would fall with corresponding decrease in travelers due to quarantine.

True growth will not present in confirmed, asymptomatic or mild cases during contact tracing but in the presentation of the epidemic in Wuhan - multiple severe pneumonia cases unrelated to influenza - or population surveillance testing.

 

[bertrand789]

Dans la zone ou la mortalit? est hors norme , les morts avaient une infection ou ? Vous aviez indiqu? ceci :

La m?tag?nomique virale a r?v?l? l'infection par le virus de Sendai et le coronavirus des pangolins malais
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/31652964/#

donc de ceci :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murine_respirovirus

c'est un virus connu de certains :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybridoma_technology


donc ?

 

[gsgs]

you may remember Helen Branswell from our H5N1 discussions,
she writes (good) COVID articles now :
https://www.statnews.com/staff/helen-branswell/
Now I found that at twitter on Feb/09 she drew the chart of daily new cases in China and wrote:
> Chart of daily increases. Don't read too much into the decline; not sure what it means.

Well, it means no pandemic (yet).
On the same day I wrote in the German forum here :
let's get on our knees to praise this rare luck. While the wording was from a German
comedian, I was serious about it and it did express my feeling at that time.
The days after Jan.24 it had looked very bad to me .
So, why was Branswell so relaxed, indifferent ? She did seem to trust the Chinese numbers,
lists them frequently, discusses Chinese studies, saw many other epidemic charts before.
The numbers continued to go down but she didn't comment (afaics)
In her articles,tweets after Feb.9 she still sounded concerned, didn't mention the decline.

I'm puzzled.

 

[gsgs]

yesterday Zhong Nanshang estimates that the epidemic may stabilize by the end of April
He expects the peak in China by the end of February.
But that won't necessarily be the trend reversal.

He had earlier said on Feb02
I haven't looked at the data this morning
The number is rising now and the rising trend will continue for some time, but I'm sure it won't be long

On Jan.28 he said:
The novel coronavirus outbreak may reach its peak in the next 10 to 14 days,

and we didn't believe it. But the numbers now show it.

said on Sunday, amending his previous prediction on Jan 28 that the epidemic would
peak in seven or 10 days.

Prolonging the Spring Festival holidays, controlling traffic, temperature checks and education
as well as other government measures have effectively cut off the source of infection and
greatly reduced the spread of the virus,

------------------------------
so, why does he now say it peaks end Feb, when it had already peaked ?
As he had predicted.
It would go up for a second peak ?
Maybe due to people returning to work ? No, he said that would probably have little impact.
So what is it ?

And then it will peak and not go down after that until late April ???

I'm puzzled

 

[gsgs]

I found this :


Feb18, Human-to-human transmission has not been stopped in Wuhan: Zhong Nanshan
Zhong Nanshan on Tuesday warned the public to keep their waste pipes unobstructed as the novel coronavirus may spread through drainage systems.

Xinhua, Feb.12 , Zhong Nanshan said the epidemic peak should appear in mid-to-late February,
but the inflection point is still undetermined.

Zhong Nanshan on Feb.12
http://www.ecns.cn/news/society/2020...h6522839.shtml
they show the same picture as in the Feb.17 article , so did he say this
already on Feb.12 and just recalled it on Feb17 without looking at the new data
in all his traveling stress ?
Maybe just only adding the April-forecast after speaking with the modeler
[see below]

> The much-anticipated turning point of the novel coronavirus outbreak cannot be prediced

5 days later on Feb17 he could predict it

> There is a mathematics model, which is continuously being rectified according to the real
> situation, and climate factors are being considered.

aha, some secret Chinese math. modeling software program
which includes climate factors. Something that Western researchers claim
to be impossible

> Currently the new confirmed cases show a decreasing trend, and the mathematics
> model predicted that the turning point will arrive in mid- or late-February in southern China,

## at that time it had already peaked in Southern China.
## but only a few datapoints available, so with statistical uncertainety, "errorbar"
## they may have required the common 95% statistical errorbar

## and the April national prediction may be because it includes Wuhan,
## which "Southern China" does not

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...hina_map-1.png

[ 3 sentences quoted, and his exact words (hardly owned by ecns.cn , IMO , also quoted at Xinhua etc.)

 

[gsgs]

I'm puzzled again. For the 3rd time in this pandemic.
First was everyone ignoring the Chinese cases going down in mid Feb.
Second was everyone ignoring WHO's "push it back" in early Mar.
Now everyone ignoring that lockdowns are useless, they don't match
the timeline of cases going down. There must be some other
unknown reason why the cases were/are going down.

Still lockdowns are being maintained and people are not asking what it is
that brings the cases down

-------------------edit-----------
There were several articles in newspapers about the German R[t]-curve which peaked
before the measures were taken and wasn't visibly changed be the measures
https://gitlab.com/simm/covid19/secir/raw/master/img/dynamic/median_Rt_states_2.png

here the latest study, Univ.East Anglia, 30 European countries :
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...260v1.full.pdf

 

[kiwibird]

Someone stated that "the virus doesn't travel on it's own" and there will be all manner of things stopping it moving around the population. With that in mind - if people stay at home and don't meet other people the lockdowns should work. Two cycles of infection and it should have been eliminated - in an ideal world. You would only have fomite transmission then.

Not sure you can factor in every different causative factor to either the escalation or reduction in case numbers - lockdown, fines, fear, PPE, forced quarantine, panic attendances at hospitals (causing massive spread), immunity of the recovered, air travel, stigma.. There are so many moving parts to this. It is a much more complicated model than last century....