Coronavirus

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Originally Posted by broncofan

It doesn't make me suspicious because it's easy to explain why. Measures that are only somewhat effective for covid completely suppress flu. Flu has an r0 of about 1.3 while delta variant is estimated to be between 5 and 8.

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You can safely forget about the R0. The R0 for influenza is determined by the number of people with symptoms and for Corona by the number of people with positive Corona PCR tests (regardless of symptoms). If you were to use PCRs for influenza as well, then the R0 would be significantly higher.

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Further, Germany did have excess mortality according to the table. It had 68,000 deaths more than usual but it was in the minority in that its excess deaths were less than its recorded covid deaths. Germany is not the only country in the world. Russia had 650,000 excess deaths, which was 500,000 more than its recorded covid deaths. Look at the numbers for Mexico and U.S. Between these three countries you had more than 800,000 more excess deaths than recorded covid cases.

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I refer to Germany because I know the data here and understand the evaluations. Reports and sources in Russian, Hebrew, Arabic... make the analysis extremely tedious.
I have attached a table in which you can see a normalized evaluation (and a link). But you do not want to take note of them and accuse me of ignoring data?

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Your trick is to ignore 90% of what is out there, to then make broad characterizations that are not true, and to emphasize the one or two data points that you think sow confusion. You are not the first person to do this.

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I see very well that even I do not have a clear picture yet! I see that with the European countries with approx. 50% an excess mortality is recognizable (sometimes more sometimes less) and with approx. 50% not. I would like to have an explanation to this but from official side this fact is more or less ignored.
An explanation would be this, or do you have one?
https://www.rubikon.news/artikel/die...enten-tragodie
One could compare the treatment methods in the individual countries with the excess mortalities.

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You're called a conspiracy theorist because that is what you are. You believe doctors are fabricating cause of death or that you know better than they do and that governments somehow benefit from people wearing masks. Yet many right-wing authoritarian figures like Bolsonaro have been singing the same tune you're singing. If you add up the excess deaths in the chart I provided you there is not only enormous excess death on average, but greater excess death than recorded covid cases. This means that the 4.5 million recorded deaths is likely an underestimate.

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There is no deliberate falsification here. The symptoms of Corona are almost identical to those of influenza and other diseases. Since we in Germany (again for the reasons mentioned above) have no excess mortality, it can be assumed that many deaths were/are falsely declared as Corona deaths. Even a positive test within the last 5 weeks is enough for these people to be included in the statistics.


And one more thing, I'm trying to stay with Germany in 2020. I'm always tempted to jump back and forth, but I try to avoid it. In science, one example is enough to disprove a theory. But since we don't even manage to agree on one single metric (excess mortality) in one single country (Germany), we don't need to jump back and forth over different countries and different metrics!

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Originally Posted by binneu

You can safely forget about the R0. The R0 for influenza is determined by the number of people with symptoms and for Corona by the number of people with positive Corona PCR tests (regardless of symptoms). If you were to use PCRs for influenza as well, then the R0 would be significantly higher.



I refer to Germany because I know the data here and understand the evaluations. Reports and sources in Russian, Hebrew, Arabic... make the analysis extremely tedious.
I have attached a table in which you can see a normalized evaluation (and a link). But you do not want to take note of them and accuse me of ignoring data?



I see very well that even I do not have a clear picture yet! I see that with the European countries with approx. 50% an excess mortality is recognizable (sometimes more sometimes less) and with approx. 50% not. I would like to have an explanation to this but from official side this fact is more or less ignored.
An explanation would be this, or do you have one?
https://www.rubikon.news/artikel/die...enten-tragodie
One could compare the treatment methods in the individual countries with the excess mortalities.



There is no deliberate falsification here. The symptoms of Corona are almost identical to those of influenza and other diseases. Since we in Germany (again for the reasons mentioned above) have no excess mortality, it can be assumed that many deaths were/are falsely declared as Corona deaths. Even a positive test within the last 5 weeks is enough for these people to be included in the statistics.


And one more thing, I'm trying to stay with Germany in 2020. I'm always tempted to jump back and forth, but I try to avoid it. In science, one example is enough to disprove a theory. But since we don't even manage to agree on one single metric (excess mortality) in one single country (Germany), we don't need to jump back and forth over different countries and different metrics!

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R0-When covid first emerged most countries did not have the testing capacity to routinely test people without symptoms. Only people sequestered on cruise ships or prime ministers were tested based on contacts. In the U.S. even people with symptoms could not get tested and many people died while waiting for test results. It was at this point that the R0 for the original strain of sars-cov-2 was estimated as being about double the R0 of influenza. By the way there are serology studies that estimate the rate of asymptomatic influenza infection so it's not like virologists are only aware of case numbers for either virus. What is it you think they do all day?

Second, you asked why flu was suppressed when covid wasn't. You were provided a reason that is completely consistent with observed transmission patterns for both viruses. Namely that influenza spreads in droplets and has a low basic reproduction number and that the original strain of sars-cov-2 also spreads in droplets but at times appears to infect people across greater distances. There's been a lot of discussion about delta spreading through aerosols and studies have been done showing it can linger in the air longer than influenza.

You say "in science one example is enough to disprove a theory." Your problem is you don't actually articulate the theory you think you're falsifying. My claim wasn't that every single country has large excess death numbers, only that most do, and most also have excess death numbers that are greater than recorded covid cases. Showing Germany's numbers would not falsify that statement. It's an example of cherry-picking data to fit a conclusion you want to believe.

Just as scientists acknowledge that sometimes excess deaths are greater than recorded cases for reasons other than underreporting (an indirect toll of the pandemic), there is the possibility that case numbers are greater than excess deaths for indirect reasons as well (such as people being more cautious, fewer deaths from other respiratory diseases, etc). It is the outliers like the U.S., Mexico, and Russia that strongly indicate underestimates of death from covid because the disparity is so great.

You say that covid and flu are almost identical in symptoms. Most respiratory diseases can cause fever, cough, headache, sore throat. Why is this surprising? Some of these symptoms are caused directly by infection but some are also caused by your innate immune response to an infection. On the other hand Covid causes loss of smell and taste, severe lung damage, kidney failure, blood clotting. It's also more than ten times as deadly. But then you don't trust pcr tests that look for viral rna, you don't trust doctors, you don't trust health agencies.

Just to clarify you don't think doctors can be trusted to determine cause of death most of the time. You don't think virologists know how to estimate R0 of viruses because they didn't consider something as basic as testing capacity. You think health agencies of most countries are falsifying data. You think there is a conspiracy to label influenza cases as covid cases or that there aren't useful tests to tell the difference (what do you think a pcr test is?). I really don't know how you get out of bed in the morning with all these people coming together to deceive you with no obvious motive.

I think you want to look at only one country so you can regurgitate propaganda from that crackpot rubikon site you linked here.

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Originally Posted by broncofan

Further, Germany did have excess mortality according to the table. It had 68,000 deaths more than usual but it was in the minority in that its excess deaths were less than its recorded covid deaths. Germany is not the only country in the world.

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It's also worth noting that nearly two-thirds of the Covid deaths in Germany so far have occurred in 2021. https://virusncov.com/covid-statistics/germany This guy not only wants to focus on only one country but also the one year that is more favourable.

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Originally Posted by binneu

In science, one example is enough to disprove a theory.

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Whatever mathematical skills you might have, you don't seem to have much understanding of probability. Would you also claim that examples of life-time smokers who never get lung cancer disprove any link between smoking and lung cancer? One example only disproves a theory if it's a theory about universal laws. Scientific method requires theories to be tested against a good range of data.

The lung cancer analogy is not accidental because you are using the same techniques that have always been used by science denialists, from the tobacco industry in the past to the climate change denialists now. I'm willing to bet you are also one of those.

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Originally Posted by binneu

You can safely forget about the R0. The R0 for influenza is determined by the number of people with symptoms and for Corona by the number of people with positive Corona PCR tests (regardless of symptoms). If you were to use PCRs for influenza as well, then the R0 would be significantly higher.

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If the R0 for influenza was really much higher we should have seen much higher flu deaths. Or do you think the same conspiracy to exaggerate Covid deaths has also been understating flu deaths all these years?

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Originally Posted by binneu

Who is Matt Gaetz?


And in my eyes Fauci is, sorry, moron!

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Don’t be sorry, be sensible. Have a nice day.

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Originally Posted by binneu

I see very well that even I do not have a clear picture yet! I see that with the European countries with approx. 50% an excess mortality is recognizable (sometimes more sometimes less) and with approx. 50% not. I would like to have an explanation to this but from official side this fact is more or less ignored.

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For a person with science-related training your approach is very unscientific. There are obviously a number of reasons why death rates could be expected to vary between countries, including:
- age structure of the population (more elderly means more deaths)
- geographical proximity to countries initially worst-affected
- effectiveness of measures to control the virus
- population density and household size
- quality of medical system

Which of these possibilities seems more plausible:
(a) death rates were reduced in many countries by some combination of these factors; or
(b) the virus wasn't dangerous in the first place?

If it's (b) then what would explain the higher death rates in many countries?

I'm not sure what branch of engineering you are in, but would you argue that cases of failures in some piece of construction were not a problem because there were also cases where it did not fail?

You also seem to misunderstand the excess mortality data. It's a calculation based on the average number of deaths, which obviously vary from year to year even in normal times. A such, it is only general guide. We know that some other sources of death have been lower than normal due to Covid - eg flu deaths have been low because people are not mixing and road deaths have been low because they are not driving so much.

It's also pretty funny that you made an excuse not to look at other countries because of language differences, even though you keep posting links that are in German.

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Originally Posted by broncofan

R0-When covid first emerged most countries did not have the testing capacity to routinely test people without symptoms. Only people sequestered on cruise ships or prime ministers were tested based on contacts. In the U.S. even people with symptoms could not get tested and many people died while waiting for test results. It was at this point that the R0 for the original strain of sars-cov-2 was estimated as being about double the R0 of influenza. By the way there are serology studies that estimate the rate of asymptomatic influenza infection so it's not like virologists are only aware of case numbers for either virus. What is it you think they do all day?

Second, you asked why flu was suppressed when covid wasn't. You were provided a reason that is completely consistent with observed transmission patterns for both viruses. Namely that influenza spreads in droplets and has a low basic reproduction number and that the original strain of sars-cov-2 also spreads in droplets but at times appears to infect people across greater distances. There's been a lot of discussion about delta spreading through aerosols and studies have been done showing it can linger in the air longer than influenza.

You say "in science one example is enough to disprove a theory." Your problem is you don't actually articulate the theory you think you're falsifying. My claim wasn't that every single country has large excess death numbers, only that most do, and most also have excess death numbers that are greater than recorded covid cases. Showing Germany's numbers would not falsify that statement. It's an example of cherry-picking data to fit a conclusion you want to believe.

Just as scientists acknowledge that sometimes excess deaths are greater than recorded cases for reasons other than underreporting (an indirect toll of the pandemic), there is the possibility that case numbers are greater than excess deaths for indirect reasons as well (such as people being more cautious, fewer deaths from other respiratory diseases, etc). It is the outliers like the U.S., Mexico, and Russia that strongly indicate underestimates of death from covid because the disparity is so great.

You say that covid and flu are almost identical in symptoms. Most respiratory diseases can cause fever, cough, headache, sore throat. Why is this surprising? Some of these symptoms are caused directly by infection but some are also caused by your innate immune response to an infection. On the other hand Covid causes loss of smell and taste, severe lung damage, kidney failure, blood clotting. It's also more than ten times as deadly. But then you don't trust pcr tests that look for viral rna, you don't trust doctors, you don't trust health agencies.

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Just to make something clear! Your side of the Corona-believers wants to turn the whole world upside down (constant tests, vaccinations, lockdowns, green-passes...)! You have to prove meticulously that this is necessary and there are no other possibilities, NOT ME!

Show me the evidence for the R0 (influenza/corona) survey.
Show me what is wrong with my table on excess mortality in Germany 2020.
(the absolute values are refuted, you do not need to post them again and again).

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Originally Posted by filghy2

For a person with science-related training your approach is very unscientific. There are obviously a number of reasons why death rates could be expected to vary between countries, including:
- age structure of the population (more elderly means more deaths)
- geographical proximity to countries initially worst-affected
- effectiveness of measures to control the virus
- population density and household size
- quality of medical system

Which of these possibilities seems more plausible:
(a) death rates were reduced in many countries by some combination of these factors; or
(b) the virus wasn't dangerous in the first place?

If it's (b) then what would explain the higher death rates in many countries?

I'm not sure what branch of engineering you are in, but would you argue that cases of failures in some piece of construction were not a problem because there were also cases where it did not fail?

You also seem to misunderstand the excess mortality data. It's a calculation based on the average number of deaths, which obviously vary from year to year even in normal times. A such, it is only general guide. We know that some other sources of death have been lower than normal due to Covid - eg flu deaths have been low because people are not mixing and road deaths have been low because they are not driving so much.

It's also pretty funny that you made an excuse not to look at other countries because of language differences, even though you keep posting links that are in German.

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- Germany is a country with a relatively high average age
- Germany is located in the middle of Europe (in contrast to England, for example).
- The measures were almost everywhere in Europe the same (in Germany rather mild)
- Which medical measures were there in 2020 then go Corona? (artificial respiration helps little and is partly counterproductive, medicines there was/are not, otherwise we would need neither lockdowns nor vaccinations)

Why are there only a) and b)?
In your world this may be so, but I can also imagine c), d), etc!