New coronavirus in/from China

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Little John

Re: New coronavirus in/from China

Post by Little John »

The online medical journal The Lancet has apologized to readers after retracting a study that said the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine did not help to curb COVID-19 and might cause death in patients.

Ask yourself why this drug needed to be sidelined as an effective treatment for covid, ignoring many doctors testimony that it was working.

Of course, you wont.

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/2020060 ... 7ZQ4yTHU4I
Little John

Re: New coronavirus in/from China

Post by Little John »

clv101 wrote: 17 Jan 2021, 23:20
clv101 wrote: 17 Jan 2021, 22:23
Little John wrote: 17 Jan 2021, 22:07 ... and I would lay even more confident bets bets that people whose average age is 82.4 have got a significantly higher than 50% chance of dying of anything within any 12 month period.
In the US (first table I found, UK will be a little longer), the life expectancy at 82 is +7.32 years male and +8.58 years female. They certainly don't have a 50% chance of dying in any 12 month period.
This is a really important point LJ.

If you believe, "lay even more confident bets" that someone aged 82.4 has a significantly higher than 50% chance of dying of anything within 12 months, then pretty much all your covid nonsense these past months makes perfect sense! Absolutely the public heath response would have been dramatically disproportionate, and we certainly shouldn't have bothered with lockdowns. I'd agree! Unfortunately you are very mistaken. To have a 50% chance of dying in 12 months you need to be 113!! You're basing your covid analysis on the nonsense than an 82 year old has the same prospects as an 113 year old.
Ok, I am clearly going to need to spell this out for you.

If you are 80, you have approximately a 45% chance of making to, say 90. In other words, approximately 55% of 80 year olds will NOT make it to 90. Which really is not surprising. Would you like to guess why? Go on, you know you can if you try.

Okay, I'll spell that out as well. It's because 80+ year olds will, progressively, have more things break down on them because.... you know... they are 80.

Now consider what the Covid19 CFR is for 80+ year olds. It was around 14% last time I looked. Which, of course, means 86% of 80+ year old DON'T die of Covid19.

So, given those two sets of facts:

1) 55% of 80 year olds will NOT make it to 90.

2) 14% of 80+ year olds WILL die of Covid19

Do you think you might be able to stretch that somewhat limited intellect of yours and take a wild guess as to which percentage group the ones who die of Covid19 will be overwhelmingly likely to be in?

Indeed, not only will they be overwhelmingly likely to be in the 55% group, they will also be overwhelmingly likely to be the ones who are going to die the very soonest within that group, all other things being equal and irrespective of Covid19.

Which is precisely why it is statistically moronic to state that 80+ year olds who have died "of" or "with" Covid19 have "lost" 10 years of life or anything even approaching that.
Last edited by Little John on 18 Jan 2021, 19:58, edited 7 times in total.
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Catweazle
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Re: New coronavirus in/from China

Post by Catweazle »

Little John wrote: 18 Jan 2021, 15:53
Ok, I am clearly going to need to spell this out for you.

If you are 80, you have a one in 2 chance of making to, say 90. In other words, 50% of 80 year olds will not make it to 90. Which really is not surprising. Would you like to guess why? Go on you know you can if you try.

Okay, I'll spell that out as well. It;s becasue 80 year olds will, progressively,. have more things break down on them becasue....you know... they are 80.

Now consider what the Covid19 CFR is for 80+ year olds. It is around 14% last time I looked. Which, of course, means 86% of 80+ year old don't die of Covid19.

So, given those two sets of facts:

1) 50% of 80 year olds will NOT make it to 90.

2) 14% of 80+ year olds WILL die of Covid19

Do you think you might be able to stretch that intellect of yours and take a wild guess as to which 50% the ones who die of Covid19 will be overwhelmingly likely to be in?
Smokescreens won't help you, you have demonstrated your inability to grasp even simple statistics very clearly, several times.
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Re: New coronavirus in/from China

Post by Catweazle »

Long Covid is looking worrying:

https://metro.co.uk/2021/01/18/one-in-e ... -13920415/
New research has shown the devastating long term impact of the virus with one in eight people dying within five months of diagnosis. The University of Leicester and the Office for National Statistics found that out of 47,780 people discharged from hospital in the first wave, 29.4% were back in hospital within 140 days and 12.3% died. Covid survivors were three and half times more likely to be readmitted to hospital and die compared to other conditions.
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Re: New coronavirus in/from China

Post by Catweazle »

There are a lot of deletions going on, but I'd already typed a reply, so I'll post it anyway. There are no insults in it.
Little John wrote: 18 Jan 2021, 19:56 It's not my fault you are too thick too follow Catweazle
I've never claimed to be the sharpest tool in the box, but you'd have to be Einstein to visualise a universe where these two statements can both be correct:
Little John wrote: 17 Jan 2021, 22:07 I would lay even more confident bets bets that people whose average age is 82.4 have got a significantly higher than 50% chance of dying of anything within any 12 month period.
Little John wrote: 18 Jan 2021, 15:53 If you are 80, you have approximately a 45% chance of making to, say 90. In other words, approximately 55% of 80 year olds will NOT make it to 90. Which really is not surprising. Would you like to guess why? Go on, you know you can if you try.
Perhaps you can explain it to me.
Little John

Re: New coronavirus in/from China

Post by Little John »

Right.

Jesus wept. It's almost easier if I thought you were just wantonly not understanding......

It is true that a certain number of people who are 80 are going to make it to 89.

Obviously.

But,it is equally true that a certain number of people who are 80 and not going to make it to 89.

As it turns out, these particular numbers are well known. The AVERAGE life expectancy for someone who is 80 is 89.

I repeat, that is the AVERAGE.

So, 50% of people will, in fact, make it to 89 and BEYOND

But, equally, 50% of people who are 80 will NOT make it to 89 and, for some of that 50%, they will get NOWHERE NEAR 89.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... 2019-06-07

Of the 50% that do not make it to 89, about half of those (25% of all 80 year olds) won't make it to 85. But, the graph on the ONS link I have just provided is not fine grain enough to say much more specifically than that. Suffice to say, there is a percentage of 80% year olds who are not going to make it to, say 82. We might assume this is probably going to be somewhere between 10% and 20%. We might also assume this to be true irrespective of Covid19.

Covid19 has a CFR for the 80+ age range of 14% last time I looked. That means that 86% of 80+ year olds do NOT die of Covid19. My Auntie Hilda, at 96 years old who has just recovered from it, being a case in point. The point being, the extent to which Covid19 is a significant mortality risk is due to frailty. Frailty just happens to be a concomitant of age for many but not all old people. Though, the older they get, the more likely it is to be so.

It is entirely reasonable to assume, therefore, that the 80+ year olds who have succumbed to Covid19 are, in fact, those 80+ year olds who were the frailest and were, as a consequence, at highest risk of dying soon of something anyway. Indeed, it is not merely reasonable to assume that. It is the only logical assumption.

Which is why, to either state or imply that the 80+ year olds who have died of or "with" Covid19 have "lost" up to 10 years of further life is statistically moronic.

Does that mean I am suggesting that Covid19 has not taken anyone earlier than they might otherwise have gone?

No.

But, I am suggesting that is is entirely reasonable to assume that:

(a) the number of people who have died earlier than they might have done is nowhere near what is being fearmongered on the MSM and by Downing street

(b) of those that have been taken early, it is mostly in terms of a matter of months or, perhaps, a year or two at most.

-----------------------------------------

Edit to add:

Okay, so I will plead guilty to hyperbole on the one point, namely that people who are 82.5 will have a 50% chance of dying of anything in the next 12 months. Or, at least, of being less clear than I should have.

The "82.5" I was referring to was the average age of death of Covid19. Being so, I was referring to the chance of dying of something else in that particular cohort who have died. And, on that qualification, I more or less stick to my guns. That is to say, the very fact they died of Covid19, as compared to the 86% of their fellow octogenarians who did not, is in itself indicative of the fact that they were amongst the already frailest representatives of that cohort and so would, indeed, have had a much higher than usual probability of dying of something else sometime soon in any event.

This virus does not strike down randomly. It strikes down a relatively small portion of the very frailest among us.
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Re: New coronavirus in/from China

Post by Catweazle »

Little John wrote: 18 Jan 2021, 20:57 So, 50% of people will, in fact, make it to 89 and BEYOND
At last. So now you've grasped the "life expectancy" thing, how do you feel about this:
Little John wrote: 07 Dec 2020, 12:05 Since when did people get so entitled thinking they have a God given right to live past 82, and that everyone should suffer for that right?

Reality check - you're 82 and should have come to terms with dying long ago
Little John

Re: New coronavirus in/from China

Post by Little John »

So, you really are either thick or dishonest.

My guess is a bit of both. But, mostly the latter and I think a fair speculation is that you were thick enough to be taken in at the beginning. Which is nothing to be ashamed of in itself. Lots of people were thick enough to be taken in at the beginning, including me. However, you have a sufficiently fragile ego that does not allow you to acknowledge the above and so you must dishonestly persist, I suspect to yourself as well as others, with this bullshit to protect that ego.

Which, frankly, I could not care less about except for the fact that your actions and those like you will shorten the lives of my grandchildren as well as your own
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Re: New coronavirus in/from China

Post by clv101 »

I'm glad to see you've welcomed the reality of actuarial tables into your life, LJ. :)

While you're in the business of "pleading guilty to hyperbole" are you now able to row back in your earlier claim that 2020 was "just an average year"? :D

Your substantive point above is that the 14% case fatality rate in the 80+ can be explained by them being frail and falling in the cohort of those who would have died soon anyway - so while the average 80 year old can expect to reach close to 90, the 80 year olds dying of Covid couldn't expect to do so. They haven't lost the extra years they might have expected. This is more reasonable than what you've been saying of late.

If, for sake of argument an 80 year old has a 50% of reaching 89, and it's a linear distribution as your graph shows, then 5.6% of the 80 year olds can expect to die each year - if they don't catch Covid. But 94.4% won't die. You say the case fatality rate is 14% though, which is a lot higher than 5.6%. You can't explain away Covid deaths, even in the elderly (much less so in younger people), by saying they were about to die anyway. If that were the case, they wouldn't show up as excess deaths (would have died anyway). Maybe deaths have just been brought forward by a couple of years? We can test this hypothesis by looking at excess deaths over the next couple of years, will there be an equal and opposite negative excursion - that ONLY lasts a couple of years? The longer the negative excursion lasts, the more years were lost by the Covid fatalities.

While there is certainly a correlation between being very frail and close to death and Covid being fatal for you, we CANNOT assume the correlation is 100% as you are doing, maybe it's 80% or 50% or 20%? I expect some very frail people survive Covid, only to die as expected of their general frailties a few months later - additionally, some perfectly healthy people with many years left in them, decades even, do die from Covid.

Also, remember, Covid kills in a few weeks. Catching Covid, even for the very frail 80 year olds cuts their left expectancy from a few years to a few weeks (in the hospital). Yes everyone has to die one day, and that day is closer for some than others but that shouldn't be used to diminish the impact of a virus that'll call time, before your time.
Little John

Re: New coronavirus in/from China

Post by Little John »

More obfuscatory bullshit

Nowhere have I said that:

(a) Covid19 is not dangerous to the very frail and elderly
(b) that Covid19 has not taken some people somewhat earlier than they might have gone

What I have said, consistently, is that:

(a) virtually the only people dying of Covid19 are the extremely elderly/frail
(b) of those that have died, all the evidence points to them being closest to the end of their natural lives irrespective of Covid19 and, in being so, Covid19 has not shortened their lives from the "average life expectancy" for their age since their particular life expectancy was almost certainly significantly BELOW that average, ranging anywhere from a few months to a year or two and so, to the extent that lives have been shortened, it is by a few months to a year or two.
(c) all of the above being the case, there is and never was any justification in stripping away everyone's civil liberties, reducing our economy to rubble and shortening the lives of untold millions of our descendants on the back of the poverty that the lockdown driven destruction of our economy will produce.
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Re: New coronavirus in/from China

Post by PS_RalphW »

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... 2020-03-26

Look at the image 'all deaths by age group' (I dont know how to embed the image directly )

For all age groups above 45 your chances of dying in 2020 increased above the 5 year average by about 10% as a direct result of covid.
However, only about 20% of people have been infected with covid in the UK. So, catching Covid above the age of 45 increased your chance of dying in 2020 by about 50% About 80% of covid infections are mild or asymptomatic, and do not (directly) kill you, so developing serious covid increased your chance of dying in 2020 by about 250%

Above the age of 45, covid does not discriminate by age.

I am not sure that the numbers hold up, by my guess is that a serious bout of covid reduces your life expectancy by about 3 years, not including long term damage to lungs and other organs.

(There are other possible factors - fewer young people dying in accidents, lower influenza deaths etc., so this is only an approximation)

If we had not locked down and we reached herd immunity at 80% of the population infected, then an additional 400,000 deaths would have occurred in 2020 directly from covid, and probably many more from the resulting collapse of the health service and society in general when up to 10% of the population was sick at the same time.
Little John

Re: New coronavirus in/from China

Post by Little John »

PS_RalphW wrote: 19 Jan 2021, 04:51 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... 2020-03-26

.....Above the age of 45, covid does not discriminate by age.....

.....a serious bout of covid reduces your life expectancy by about 3 years, not including long term damage to lungs and other organs.....

...If we had not locked down and we reached herd immunity at 80% of the population infected, then an additional 400,000 deaths would have occurred in 2020 directly from covid, and probably many more from the resulting collapse of the health service and society in general when up to 10% of the population was sick at the same time....
You are literally just making scaremongering shit up as you go along aren't you
Little John

Re: New coronavirus in/from China

Post by Little John »

Half the NHS beds we had in the 1980s
Longstanding shortages of doctors and nurses
Larger UK population
People living longer and developing multiple health problems
Net immigration now exceeding 250K per year

What could possibly go wrong when a [slightly] nastier than usual new seasonal virus presents?

And the answer to the above, apparently, is turning our society into a police state and beggaring our descendants.

Those alive today will deserve to be despised by those that follow.
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Re: New coronavirus in/from China

Post by kenneal - lagger »

The reduction is hospital beds has been driven by improvements in treatments which mean that people spend less time in treatment and therefore go home earlier resulting in far fewer beds being required. The same has been true of covid patients: as the pandemic has dragged on new and better treatments have resulted in far fewer patients requiring ventilation for instance.

If we had had deeper pockets and had known for certain that a "slightly deadlier" pandemic was on the way the country might have been able to keep all those unused hospital beds with enough staff to care for them for twenty years. As it was we didn't so have to live with what we have now. Maybe it would have been cheaper in the long run to have kept open the beds but we might have seen increased mortality as NHS staff died of boredom. Who knows!!
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Re: New coronavirus in/from China

Post by adam2 »

In my view, this country needs a PROPER civil defence organisation, possibly run as a branch of the armed forces.
Such an organisation could hold substantial stocks of emergency supplies, including but not limited to.

Tents, for emergency housing, field hospitals, and morgues.
Camp beds, blankets.
Sand bags.
Heavy duty vehicles. Boats. Fire engines. Earth moving plant (flood defences, mass graves)
Portable lighting and heating equipment, generators.
Hand tools, power tools.
Water purification supplies and equipment.
Basic but large scale cooking and catering equipment.
Non perishable foods, grain, sugar, MREs
Basic medical equipment, including PPE.
Etc.
"Installers and owners of emergency diesels must assume that they will have to run for a week or more"
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