If true, this is huge. It means that the virus will indeed go away…as President Trump predicted (he just got the timing wrong). But it seems illogical that a virus would weaken as it mutates. Then again, I’m no epidemiologist. Maybe it is logical.
But check this out! From the article...
Alberto Zangrillo, who heads Milan's San Raffaele Hospital, told Italian TV on Sunday that "in reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy.”
"The swabs that were performed over the last 10 days showed a viral load in quantitative terms that was absolutely infinitesimal compared to the ones carried out a month or two months ago," Zangrillo said.
Wow! That's awesome news, no?
But of course, the Italian government, the CDC and the World Health Organization are crying foul…or at least urging caution and saying, of course, that there have been no official studies on this and so we must be careful not to give Italians (or anyone else) any false hope. Okay, you knew they were going to say that.
But for some complete and utter bullshit, we must turn to two people from the World Health Organization. First is a guy named Michael Ryan. He is the Director of the Health Emergencies Program at WHO. Next is Maria van Kerkhove. She is a “technical lead” at WHO, whatever that is. Ryan and van Kerkhove seem to disagree with the Italian doctors.
According to the Business Insider article, Ryan stated,
"It may not be that the virus itself is becoming less potent. It may be that we are — as community and as a global community — successfully reducing the number, intensity, and frequency of exposure to the virus, which, on the face of it, the virus then looks weaker."
On the “Stupid Things To Say” scale, that rates about a 10. Because what Ryan is really saying is, “We don’t know what those Italian doctors are seeing, but in any case we don’t believe it and here's our cockamamie theory.”
Then, van Kerkhove chimes in. Again, quoting the article:
Van Kerkhove added that measures that reduce and suppress transmission, including contact tracing and quarantining suspected cases, "reduce the potency and power of the virus."
What? I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make any sense. How does contact-tracing and quarantining reduce the potency and power of a virus in a person? What kind of bullshit is that?
Before we pass judgment on what the doctors in Italy are seeing, let’s look at their actual statistics. And then let’s look at statistics from other countries – like, ohhhh, Sweden? Because if the coronavirus is not weakening in other countries, then we have to question the claims of the Italians.
First, here are two charts showing the number of new cases and the number of deaths that Italy has seen since the last week in February.
Now, for a comparison, let's look at Sweden.
Okaaaaay, that's certainly a pretty flat curve, but they're still seeing between 300 and 600 new cases every day.
Here's the United States...
A steady decline of new cases in the U.S. But we are not seeing the kind of drastic dropoff that Italy is seeing.
And finally, here's Spain.
Hmm. Seems that Italy, Spain and Portugal are all seeing the same trend in new cases and deaths. (I didn't show Portugal, but their graph is almost identical to that of Spain.)
To be honest, I don't know what to think. It sure does seem that there are factions of society that would have us in a constant state of paranoia and panic over this virus.
The computer models of the disease were wrong from the beginning. The actual numbers of people getting infected and dying from COVID19 are nowhere near even the updated numbers that some "experts" predicted. And if what the Italians, Spanish and Portugese are seeing is true, then perhaps the coronavirus really will begin to disappear.
Fascinating stuff!
3 comments:
I think the simple explanation for the graphs looking the way they do is because Italy and Spain had total lockdowns for over two months. The U.S. did it haphazardly and varied across the country with states like mine never locking down so we ended up looking more like Sweden but with a slow reduction since at least we were doing something.
I hope you those Italian scientists are correct about the virus no longer as contagious. I certainly believe it is changing. When it started, it was definitely a problem only to our oldest adults. By the time it hit us hard, it was a problem for all adults. Now there are kids that are having problems. But I take all that with a grain of salt since it is hard to separate fact from media just hyping on something different to keep us tuned in.
For the longest time, I was watching the evening news hoping for something else to come along to take our minds off the coronavirus. Now our news coverage has very little about Covid-19 and already I wish it was back to worrying about it again. Seems much more manageable than dealing with all these riots. I guess to your point, maybe the coronavirus AND the riots will burn themselves out sooner than we hoped.
I don't know, Ed - it's all a big puzzle. The Italian doctors have stated pretty unequivocally that the virus weakens as it is transmitted, and that now the level of infection is basically infinitesimal. But various health officials have been falling all over themselves, saying, "THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS!" and either denying the Italians claims or coming up with (sometimes wacky) alternative explanations for them. It's got me scratching my head. But the results in Italy (and Spain, and Portugal, and France) are undeniable. In fact, today I heard that France finally got to a point where they did not have a *single* death from COVID19!
So the questions become: What the hell are the Europeans doing right? And what the hell are we doing wrong? Is it something as simple as the more complete lockdowns that the Europeans put in place? And if so, would such lockdowns have worked in a nation as spread out as the U.S., with 330,000,000 people? (I think we both know the answer to that one.)
From the beginning, the so-called "experts" have gotten so much wrong about the coronavirus. Those infamous early computer models from the Imperial College London were simply inaccurate, and nobody should have been listening to that Ferguson guy in the first place. We were told that the virus was carried on heavier-than-air droplets from a cough or sneeze; then we were told that it could be airborne as well! Then we were told that the virus could be transmitted from solid surfaces like a shopping cart handle. Then it couldn't. Masks were not important...then they were...then they weren't. It's all been very inconsistent and confusing for the general public who don't follow this shit as closely as you and I do. The media has been responsible for spreading needless coronavirus panic and hysteria. Why? I do not know, but they are doing a damn fine job of it.
As for the age range that is affected by COVID19... The overwhelming evidence still shows that the most vulnerable people are males over the age of 45. The number of people who die from COVID19 who are under age 18 is really, really tiny...and half of them have other medical complications. This virus is simply not a threat to healthy young people - never was. And healthy young people seem to understand that.
If the Italian doctors are being truthful and are correct in their observations that the virus weakens as it goes, then this is huge news that will benefit everyone eventually. But the statistics here in the U.S. do not bear that out...yet. Maybe they will? Who knows. But the media has turned the club they've been using to beat up on the president from coronavirus to race riots. And as you wisely note, will these protests/demonstrations cause the rate of new COVID19 cases to spike?
June is going to be a very interesting month in more ways than one!
Not sure if you read my blog regularly or not but my wife is a physician and I got to talking to her the other night about your post. She said that due to the type of virus it is (RNA), it is constantly mutating and so it shouldn't be surprising to anyone that it might mutate into something that doesn't replicate as easily in our blood and thus the "viral loads" found in those recently affected are much less than those earlier. But she said it wouldn't surprise her if it later mutates into something much more contagious and deadly as well. To me this is very much like "rodeo poker". We are all just sitting at the table holding our cards and wondering which way the bull is going to go, hoping it isn't towards me.
To ponder on your question of why the U.S. is different than Europe, do you suppose we can blame mutations and a nearly shut down airline situation for that? Perhaps we should open our borders back up so we can get some of the weaker virus spread around over here. Although to your earlier arguments, perhaps we have the weaker virus already and thus why our death rates were nearly that of countries as the front of the pandemic.
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