Tag: healthcare

Now that it is apparent that containment efforts, to the extent they were even made, have failed, it is perhaps worthwhile pointing out what the experts believe can improve your chances of making it through the next few months without excessive excitement:

• Try to get ahead on medical prescriptions when you can, in case of very predictable supply chain disruptions, and so you won’t have to go out to the pharmacy at a time when there may be long lines of sick people. 
• Start to stock up on enough non-perishable food to last your household through several weeks of social distancing at home during an intense wave of transmission in the community.
• Take your kids out of school and activities. There is no need to freak anyone out; what kid doesn’t enjoy a snow day? Handle it right and they’ll be happily saying “thank you, Corona-chan!”
• Cancel all unnecessary social engagements. As one friend said, it’s a good time to spend the evenings kicking back and having margaritas with your wife.
• Get permission to work from home. Most businesses will embrace this and those who are most proactive about it will get permission first.

I’d already reached the same conclusion about the legitimacy of the statistics after keeping track of the official Corona-chan numbers for a few days. The spread of the disease was far too smooth to be genuine. So, as usual, the one thing we can be certain isn’t true is the official story:

In terms of the virus data, the number of cumulative deaths reported is described by a simple mathematical formula to a very high accuracy, according to a quantitative-finance specialist who ran a regression of the data for Barron’s. A near-perfect 99.99{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} of variance is explained by the equation, this person said.

Put in an investing context, that variance, or so-called r-squared value, would mean that an investor could predict tomorrow’s stock price with almost perfect accuracy. In this case, the high r-squared means there is essentially zero unexpected variability in reported cases day after day.

Barron’s re-created the regression analysis of total deaths caused by the virus, which first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of last year, and found similarly high variance. We ran it by Melody Goodman, associate professor of biostatistics at New York University’s School of Global Public Health.

“I have never in my years seen an r-squared of 0.99,” Goodman says. “As a statistician, it makes me question the data.”

Real human data are never perfectly predictive when it comes to something like an epidemic, Goodman says, since there are countless ways that a person could come into contact with the virus.

For context, Goodman says a “really good” r-squared, in terms of public health data, would be a 0.7. “Anything like 0.99,” she said, “would make me think that someone is simulating data. It would mean you already know what is going to happen.”

About the only thing we know at this point is that non-Chinese victims are not dying at anywhere near the same rate as Chinese victims. And Occam’s Razor strongly suggests that the manufactured numbers underestimate the actual ones.

Corona-chan at Johns Hopkins

02/15—67091—1527
02/14—64447—1384
02/13—60347—1369
02/12—45214—1116
02/11—43129—1018
02/10—40573—-910
02/09—37590—-814
02/08—34944—-725
02/07—31523—-638
02/06—28276—-565
02/05—24554—-492
02/04—20679—-427
02/03—17046—-362
02/02—14628—-305
01/02—11374—-259
31/01—-9821—-213
30/01—-8235—-171
29/01—-7783—-170
28/01—-6057—-132
27/01—-4231—-103
26/01—-2808—–80
25/01—-2117—–56
24/01—-1126—–41
23/01—–901—–26
22/01—–651—–25
21/01—–317——6
20/01—–219——4
19/01—–204——3

Spreadsheet image courtesy of Anonymous Conservative. There may actually be some good news here, as the current numbers out of Johns Hopkins, as of end of day 28/01/20, are 6,057 and 132, which, while still ahead of the predicted model, may indicate that the transmission rate is slowing down a little, from 22 percent over to 18 percent over, while the death rate has declined from 45 percent over to 25 percent over. However, it’s still too soon to reach any meaningful conclusion.

It’s important not to overreact to these statistical models, as you may recall that the Ebola outbreak of 2014 doubled every 4.4 weeks, but the infection rate finally declined and broke the curve in the 9th doubling cycle. So, to know when the coronavirus outbreak is beginning to burn itself out, look for the doubling rate to slow down from its current rate of just over two days.

Alternatively, if it picks up, you may do well to start paying attention to the possibility Corona-chan will be making an appearance closer to you than you might like.

There is a possibility that the actual numbers for Corona-chan are considerably larger than the reported numbers:

As many experts question the veracity of China’s statistics for the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, Tencent over the weekend seems to have inadvertently released what is potentially the actual number of infections and deaths, which were astronomically higher than official figures, but are eerily in line with predictions from a respected scientific journal.

As early as Jan. 26, netizens were reporting that Tencent, on its webpage titled “Epidemic Situation Tracker” was briefly showing data on the novel coronavirus (2019nCoV) in China that was much higher than official estimates, before suddenly switching to lower numbers. Taiwanese netizen Hiroki Lo that day reported that Tencent and NetEase were both posting “unmodified statistics,” before switching to official numbers in short order.

On late Saturday evening (Feb. 1), the Tencent webpage showed confirmed cases of the Wuhan virus in China as standing at 154,023, 10 times the official figure at the time. It listed the number of suspected cases as 79,808, four times the official figure.

The number of cured cases was only 269, well below the official number that day of 300. Most ominously, the death toll listed was 24,589, vastly higher than the 300 officially listed that day.

I do find it unlikely that the death rate is 16 percent instead of 2 percent, though. If that were the case, more people outside of China would have died already.

Corona-chan shuts down China travel:

The Trump administration on Friday declared the coronavirus a public health emergency, effectively banning foreign nationals who have been to China in the past two weeks from entering the United States

American Airlines cancelled all of its US flights to China, and said it was not to resume scheduled service until March 27. Delta Airlines said it will stop all US flights to China by next Wednesday, and keep the ban going till at least April 30. United will cancel all flights to China, except one from San Francisco to Hong Kong, starting Thursday, and will keep the ban until March 28.

It’s mordantly amusing to see foreigners in China complaining that they can’t return to potentially infect their homelands. What part of “quarantine” is hard for them to understand? Anyhow, they wanted to experience China and now they’re experiencing it.

It would be wiser, of course, to shut down all passenger air travel, in the unlikely event that the virus’s curve hasn’t already been broken. Fortunately, it appears that non-Asians are considerably less susceptible to Corona-chan’s effects.

I would have thought it would be in Economics, perhaps even Literature, but it appears my first Nobel Prize will be in Physiology or Medicine. You see, everyone is understandably concerned about Corona-chan, but then it occurred to me, as we all know, race is just a social construct:

To further understand the special population of ACE2-expressing AT2, we performed gene ontology enrichment analysis to study which biological processes are involved with this cell population by comparing them with the AT2 cells not expressing ACE2. Surprisingly, we found that multiple viral process-related GO are significantly over-presented, including “positive regulation of viral process” (P value=0.001), “viral life cycle” (P value=0.005), “virion assembly” (P value=0.03) and “positive regulation of viral genome replication” (P value=0.04). These highly expressed viral process-related genes in ACE2-expressing AT2 include: SLC1A5, CXADR, CAV2, NUP98, CTBP2, GSN,HSPA1B,STOM, RAB1B, HACD3, ITGB6, IST1,NUCKS1,TRIM27, APOE, SMARCB1,UBP1,CHMP1A,NUP160,HSPA8,DAG1,STAU1,ICAM1,CHMP5,D EK, VPS37B, EGFR, CCNK, PPIA, IFITM3, PPIB, TMPRSS2, UBC, LAMP1 and CHMP3. Therefore, it seems that the 2019-nCov has cleverly evolved to hijack this population of AT2 cells for its reproduction and transmission.

We further compared the characteristics of the donors and their ACE2 expressing patterns. No association was detected between the ACE2-expressing cell number and the age or smoking status of donors. Of note, the 2 male donors have a higher ACE2-expressing cell ratio than all other 6 female donors (1.66{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} vs. 0.41{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} of all cells, P value=0.07, Mann Whitney Test). In addition, the distribution of ACE2 is also more widespread in male donors than females: at least 5 different types of cells in male lung express this receptor, while only 2~4 types of cells in female lung express the receptor. This result is highly consistent with the epidemic investigation showing that most of the confirmed 2019-nCov infected patients were men (30 vs. 11, by Jan 2, 2020).

We also noticed that the only Asian donor (male) has a much higher ACE2-expressing cell ratio than white and African American donors (2.50{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} vs. 0.47{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} of all cells). This might explain the observation that the new Coronavirus pandemic and previous SARS-Cov pandemic are concentrated in the Asian area.

Therefore, to significantly improve the resistance of the population to Corona-chan and end the risk of a global pandemic, all that is necessary is for the Asian men in the areas at risk of infection to begin identifying as African-American women.

I shall await my Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with serene confidence.

Anonymous Conservative is, as is his wont, deeply suspicious of the coronavirus, but he is not alone in this:

Harvard epidemiologist says he is not saying the Corona virus was bioengineered as a bioweapon, but a new study analyzing the full genome says it does have a center segment in its genome encoding a special protein to get it into human cells, and that center section does not appear to have indices of having gotten there through normal natural random mechanisms:

BOTTOMLINE: 1) Seafood market not the source. 2) This RNA #coronavirus mutates really fast. 3) has unusual middle segment never seen before in any coronavirus. 4) Not from recent mixing. 5) That mystery middle segment encodes protein responsible for entry into host cells.

The thing that concerns me is that I knew the impeachment was the result of desperation on the part of the hunted. If we consider the possibility that a) the coronavirus is a bioweapon and b) the release of the coronavirus was intentional, that would tend to indicate considerably more desperation on the part of the same people.

Corona-chan offers yet another powerful argument against globalization, open borders, and the free movement of peoples. Plus, a guide to ensure the good favor of Corona-chan:

• Don’t worry much if you’re not a boomer – for now.
• Once it lands in your region, try to minimize contacts with other people. Brush up on your hikikomori skills, they’ll finally come in handy.
• Obviously no idiot-tier things, like going to restaurants, cafes, concerts. Minimize public transport usage.
• Try to get a work-from-home arrangement.
• Be aware that face masks offer minimal protection (and this Corona can spread through the eyes).
• Keep hands away from face.
• Do the usual prepper things: Get supplies of grains, meat in bulk for the freezer, water, coffee, etc. Even better, get to an isolated rural retreat, if it’s a realistic option.
• Make sure any entertainment is strictly thematic:
• Stephen King’s classic, The Stand.
• Richard Preston on Corona-chan’s more bloodthirsty but stupider sister, The Hot Zone.
• Russian cult classic video games Pathologic and the more recent Pathologic 2.
• Plague Inc. video game.
• Zombie movies
• Maintain positive outlook. At least we’ll get a temporary reprieve from cheap Chinese tour groups.

Of course the medical and scientific communities lied about unborn children not feeling pain:

Unborn babies may be able to feel pain before reaching 24 weeks, say scientists – meaning they could suffer as they are being aborted. Until now, the consensus of medical opinion has been that foetuses cannot feel pain before 24 weeks’ gestation, after which abortion is illegal in Britain except in special cases.

But two medical researchers, including a ‘pro-choice’ British pain expert who used to think there was no chance foetuses could feel pain that early, say recent studies strongly suggest the assumption is incorrect.

The studies indicate unborn babies might be able to feel ‘something like pain’ as early as 13 weeks, they say.

Reason dictated that no abortions be permitted until it was possible to conclusively determine when life began. But there has never been anything reasonable about the Promethean agenda to destabilize Western civilization and normalize child sacrifice.

And wishing that reality were different than it has been reliably observed to be is no basis for science. For technology, yes, but science, no.

What were the chances the “food pyramid” and the scientists who told you to eat sugar and white bread all day to lose weight were going to be correct about the dangers of red meat?

New research that claims red and processed meat is probably not harmful to our health has caused controversy among experts who maintain people should cut down.

The World Health Organization has classified red and processed meats as cancer-causing. Public health bodies worldwide urge people to limit their intake of red and processed meat to reduce their cancer risk. The NHS advises that people who eat 90g of meat a day – equivalent to three thin slices of roast meat – should cut down to 70g.

Aside from public health, calls are multiplying for people to cut back on meat consumption because of the climate emergency and the greenhouse gas emissions that come from animal farming.

But the 14-member international team led by Bradley Johnston an associate professor of community health at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, concluded that those who like meat should not stop on health grounds. “Based on the research, we cannot say with any certainty that eating red or processed meat causes cancer, diabetes or heart disease,” he said.

If you have any doubts about the legitimacy of the study, keep in mind that the critics are whining about the way the study was “wrong to exclude environmental concerns about damage to the planet.”

What does that have to do with personal health?