Covid-19, the Territory Anomaly

[EHocking]

Originally Posted by Darat

This is of course entirely speculation but I think we may find that there are two contributory factors, one the density of population when an infection starts (so in London especially bad because of public transport) and two the long term damage to health of living with terrible pollution.

I remember the first time we came to the UK, when we got off the GatwickExpress at Victoria, you could taste the air.
Over the subsequent 20 years the air improved markedly.

[novaphile]

Originally Posted by rjh01

Trouble is that the Australian numbers are not very good. We have a lockdown and have reduced our new cases to only about 30% of the previous rate. These numbers are since two weeks after the lockdown began. I would want those numbers to be close to zero. I only hope these people are the ones that were slow in getting tested and still got the virus before the lockdown began.

The main problem in Australia was continuing to receive ship-loads of infected people from the plague ships.

In my State we've had about 50 locally transmitted cases, all the rest are imports. So the number of "new infections" is slightly difficult to read.

For example, the most recent spike for us was 85 infected passengers from the Ruby Princess.

The last time I updated our State by State numbers was Sunday 5 April.

Here's a quick comparison to the figures I see today:

	Confirmed	Deaths	Recovered	Active
South Australia 5 April	367	0	6	361
South Australia 11 April	428	3	179	246
Change	+67	3	+173	-115

This should be a clear indication of why I think current measures are working.

Note: Australia is currently discovering, through testing and contact tracing, approximately 100 new cases per day across the last five days.

[Samson]

Pollution 5 years on in the North East America

https://phys.org/news/2020-04-percen...northeast.html

Is there correlation?

[Darat]

Originally Posted by EHocking

I remember the first time we came to the UK, when we got off the GatwickExpress at Victoria, you could taste the air.

Over the subsequent 20 years the air improved markedly.

And been going backwards for quite some time, austerity don't you know....

[The Atheist]

Originally Posted by Samson

Pollution 5 years on in the North East America

https://phys.org/news/2020-04-percen...northeast.html

Is there correlation?

I'm surprised it's only 30%. China's & Italy's fell off completely.

[dann]

Why Greece is coping with Covid-19 better than Italy (CNN, April 13, 2020)

It appears to have been a question of early and strict lockdown.

Infected: 2,114
Dead: 98 (9 per million)
Recovered: 269

[dann]

Greenland seems to be free from coronavirus again and will begin to open up, cautiously:
Der arbejdes på at åbne Nuuk (Swermitsiaq.ag, April 13, 2020)

They were very late to the game and went on lockdown when they had the first few cases:
Infected: 11
Dead: 0
Recovered: 11
Population: 56,000

The Faroe Islands haven't had any new cases recently:
Infected: 184
Dead: 0
Recovered: 157
Population: 51,000

[The Atheist]

Originally Posted by dann

Why Greece is coping with Covid-19 better than Italy (CNN, April 13, 2020)

It appears to have been a question of early and strict lockdown.

Infected: 2,114
Dead: 98 (9 per million)
Recovered: 269

No question that works and is responsible for some countries' much better stats than others.

[dann]

Since you've been preoccupied with the question of vitamin D: In the winter, they get no sunlight at all, but: Narwhal Blubber and 9 Other Must-Try Foods in Greenland (Fodor's Travel, Aug. 3, 2018)

[Ulf Nereng]

Originally Posted by dann

Since you've been preoccupied with the question of vitamin D: In the winter, they get no sunlight at all, but: Narwhal Blubber and 9 Other Must-Try Foods in Greenland (Fodor's Travel, Aug. 3, 2018)

It's time to open up for international whaling again so that all can experience the wonders of whale blubber!

[The Atheist]

Originally Posted by dann

Since you've been preoccupied with the question of vitamin D: In the winter, they get no sunlight at all, but: Narwhal Blubber and 9 Other Must-Try Foods in Greenland (Fodor's Travel, Aug. 3, 2018)

Cheers for that!

I'm not yet convinced on vitamin D, but I am becoming completely convinced weather/warmth/sun plays a big part.

Of all the parts of USA that have taken weak action, Hawaii seems to top the list, but Florida & Georgia didn't seem to be trying too hard from what I've seen and read, yet their daily increase is down to under New York's, despite the vast measures NY took a lot earlier than those two.

The test of the weather will be NZ, because we're having exactly the kind of early winter cold snap that always starts the cold & 'flu season, so if our numbers go up a week from now, it will be a good sign that weather is a huge factor.

Keep watching!

[JeanTate]

Originally Posted by Ulf Nereng

It's time to open up for international whaling again so that all can experience the wonders of whale blubber!

No way!

The fave food of the Aussies - Vegemite^WP - surely has far more Vitamin D in it*?

Go on, be brave, admit that you prefer whale blubber to Vegemite!

*B, D, they're all the same, aren't they?

[pipelineaudio]

Far be it from us in hawaii to ever criticize anyone else's food....YUK

If they sold vegemite here, we'd be putting it on spam or raw fish, or worse ,tripe stew

[Ulf Nereng]

Comparing countries by death per million may not give such a good picture. Here is USA by states:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Notice New York with 513/M and compare to California, Texas, and Utah.

[pipelineaudio]

I know we can't tell from any of these numbers, but I am past nailbiting on dying to know if different places have different death rates per number of infected. and aside from comorbidities, why??? It really seems like there are differences, big ones, but its so hard to know with so much unknown

[zooterkin]

Originally Posted by The Atheist

No, the other way round. Staff are delivering drinks and getting fairly close to guests.



I'm told it was a buffet, but I haven't seen that confirmed in the press. That would be fairly standard for a NZ wedding.



I'm not sure how one guest would hug or kiss half the guests, either, but bar staff would have been busy and the bar isn't very wide, coupled with people leaning over ordering drinks when the music's on. I would have thought that would be the most likely place of all to get an airborne virus.

Don't know how you do it there, but here the newlyweds would be hugging or kissing just about all the guests, as well as many of the guests doing the same to each other.

[dann]

Originally Posted by pipelineaudio

I know we can't tell from any of these numbers, but I am past nailbiting on dying to know if different places have different death rates per number of infected. and aside from comorbidities, why??? It really seems like there are differences, big ones, but its so hard to know with so much unknown

The problem is that the big differences seem to be due mainly to the difference between the actual number of infected (more or less unknown) and the registered (i.e. tested positive) infected. This difference makes the comparison that you would like to make impossible.
In Denmark, for instance, the experts assume that the actual number of infected is 30 to 80 times higher than the number of people who have been tested positive with the infection.

Maybe the Faroe Islands got it right, but I'm not sure that they tested everybody, and they would have to do so to know the number of people who actually are (or have been) infected.

The number of deaths is probably more reliable, but in Denmark the first patient to be registered as having died from (or rather with) Covid-19 was only tested post-mortem, and I'm not sure that all countries follow the same procedure.

[The Atheist]

Originally Posted by zooterkin

Don't know how you do it there, but here the newlyweds would be hugging or kissing just about all the guests, as well as many of the guests doing the same to each other.

The once-happy couple would have given a few hugs, but hugging and touching each other isn't much of a thing in NZ, along with kissing, which is quite prevalent elsewhere.

Some people hug their kids every now and then, so I hear.

[The Atheist]

Originally Posted by pipelineaudio

I know we can't tell from any of these numbers, but I am past nailbiting on dying to know if different places have different death rates per number of infected. and aside from comorbidities, why??? It really seems like there are differences, big ones, but its so hard to know with so much unknown

That's the whole point of the thread - to see if there is an answer. It could be there isn't an anomaly at all and it's just reporting/testing/stage of epidemic.

Those things will be known in time, but while I'm waiting for the world to re-open it's nice to speculate and see if we can come up with the right answer on ridiculously thin evidence.

[Samson]

Originally Posted by The Atheist

Cheers for that!

I'm not yet convinced on vitamin D, but I am becoming completely convinced weather/warmth/sun plays a big part.

Of all the parts of USA that have taken weak action, Hawaii seems to top the list, but Florida & Georgia didn't seem to be trying too hard from what I've seen and read, yet their daily increase is down to under New York's, despite the vast measures NY took a lot earlier than those two.

The test of the weather will be NZ, because we're having exactly the kind of early winter cold snap that always starts the cold & 'flu season, so if our numbers go up a week from now, it will be a good sign that weather is a huge factor.

Keep watching!

Clearly a hardline strategy of elimination here has the pending winter firmly in sight.
Factors in favour will be the rapidfire insulating of the wooden shells of houses we all grew up in (and survived). Many of these are now rentals where power bills are avoided in favour of keeping the investors up to date with their 6 monthly rent increases.
A tick for the coalition.
Private functions, dementia homes, a handicapped children's home, and a cruise ship that claimed impeccable weather in Napier was bad enough to compel them to dock, so far account for about half the cases in New Zealand.

[The Atheist]

Originally Posted by Samson

Private functions, dementia homes, a handicapped children's home, and a cruise ship that claimed impeccable weather in Napier was bad enough to compel them to dock, so far account for about half the cases in New Zealand.

It's a sneaky bastard, so I'm in waiting mode right now. I do like the timing of Ardern's big announcement - by the 20th we should know pretty solidly whether we can take the foot off the brake.

17 today is good news.

[Cheetah]

Originally Posted by The Atheist

I'm not yet convinced on vitamin D, but I am becoming completely convinced weather/warmth/sun plays a big part.

Also pretty convinced the season plays a big role, similar to colds and flu.
It’s already getting noticeably cooler here, had our first frost a few days ago.

[pipelineaudio]

5 for us today
https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2020/0...atewide-total/

[The Atheist]

Originally Posted by Cheetah

Also pretty convinced the season plays a big role, similar to colds and flu.
It’s already getting noticeably cooler here, had our first frost a few days ago.

South Island had snow to low levels today, with a solid winter storm over the next few days. It's already the part of the country with the most cases, so I'll be keeping a very close over the next 7-10 days.

Originally Posted by pipelineaudio

5 for us today
https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2020/0...atewide-total/

That's amazing, given the way Hawaii approached it, but bloody good news!

[rjh01]

Originally Posted by Ulf Nereng

Comparing countries by death per million may not give such a good picture. Here is USA by states:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Notice New York with 513/M and compare to California, Texas, and Utah.

Can I suggest that the population density play a factor? There are only 8 states that are above average in deaths per million and 47 below average? 6 below average have a 5 digit number of cases cf 7 above average.

I note that New York has 33.32% of all cases.

[The Atheist]

Originally Posted by rjh01

Can I suggest that the population density play a factor?

Hong Kong & Tokyo are pretty densely populated, but I agree it's going to make diseases easier to catch if you have more people squashed together.

[pipelineaudio]

Looks like they moved us later again after that Maui fiasco. Likely we still have no idea on the numbers that caused. https://covid19.healthdata.org/unite...america/hawaii

[Ulf Nereng]

Originally Posted by rjh01

Can I suggest that the population density play a factor? There are only 8 states that are above average in deaths per million and 47 below average? 6 below average have a 5 digit number of cases cf 7 above average.

I note that New York has 33.32% of all cases.

Yes, but California also has a couple of very high population cities. At this stage it looks like the places with highest death toll per million are those that were too slow to react. Other factors come into play if the shutdown comes too late; State of the healthcare system, compliance of the population, share of the population that is poor, and so on.

[Darat]

I think we will in a year or two find out that whilst there were contributing factors to why some areas appeared to do much better or worse than others in the end it was also down to a big dollop of chance.

We can at one level produced good statistical models for modelling infections and their overall spread but in the real world the smallest change to starting conditions can mean hugely different outcomes.

It could be that one single “superspreader” running late one morning and instead of walking jumped a tube was enough to mean London ended up being a hot spot, whilst over in Hawaii a superspreader got a call from their parent as they were leaving for work, making them miss their usual bus and they thought “I’m late any way I’ll walk to work today”

[pipelineaudio]

I bet you are right. And in our case the number is so low that little changes could have huge apparent impacts in the trends and graphs. We could sky is falling double our cases and still appear to be very lucky, or miracle halve our cases and on balance be doing just as bad.

[Sherkeu]

Originally Posted by Ulf Nereng

Yes, but California also has a couple of very high population cities. At this stage it looks like the places with highest death toll per million are those that were too slow to react. Other factors come into play if the shutdown comes too late; State of the healthcare system, compliance of the population, share of the population that is poor, and so on.

California was one of the first states (if not the very first) to get an influx of infected persons. If I go back and read news reports on the 'flu' I see that California had a high rate of "B" flu which affects a disproportionate amount of persons under 18 (still, most affected are over 65- as with most flu). This was through the end of December.

However, by the second week of January, the news changed to reporting a very high amount of serious flu illness, many outpatient, that was affecting the over 65 crowd more. No more mention of young people affected.

It was spreading, just much slower. It wasn't until the cruise line leaving from San Francisco infected many persons that people were tested and the alarm went off that it was here, more than the small number of China travelers.
It spread freely for 11 weeks before anything was shut down.

California wasn't early to do anything about it ...just lucky to have nicer sunnier weather, more spread out living, and much less public transport. Our traffic today looks like any average weekend day. Lots of people are out and about!

[rjh01]

Here is one opinion as to why New York got it far worse than California.
But California also acted more quickly than New York once it became clear that coronavirus

Quote:

was starting to spread in the US. The San Francisco Bay Area issued America’s first shelter-in-place order on March 16, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a statewide stay-at-home order three days later.
New York, meanwhile, didn’t issue a statewide stay-at-home order until March 22.
And there’s evidence that social distancing was taken more seriously in some parts of California even before it was government-mandated.

https://www.vox.com/2020/4/7/2120589...ork-california

Lots more in the link.

[Sherkeu]

Originally Posted by rjh01

Here is one opinion as to why New York got it far worse than California.
But California also acted more quickly than New York once it became clear that coronavirus

https://www.vox.com/2020/4/7/2120589...ork-california

Lots more in the link.

6 days doesn't mean much when it was in California from early to mid January.
Of course it will spread faster in NYC when it gets there. MUCH faster. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see why.

NY, IMO had less time to prepare. They are so much more prone to infections spreading. Way higher R0 than anything in California. The two places are just not comparable.

In fact, the only places in CA that this virus is spreading recently in significant numbers are 'institutions'. Care homes, jails, shelters, etc... It's not out in the population very much at all anymore.

[bruto]

Hard to remember all the stuff one sees on line these days, but somewhere I saw a picture of a NY subway. Many of the people looked to be wearing masks, but otherwise it was just about as crowded as always. If that's a reasonably true depiction, it's no mystery why NYC is in such trouble. There aren't that many options for getting around in NY if you have to - more so if you're relatively poor. You can't maintain social distance on the subway.

So far in my extended family only one person has come down with the virus. She's a nurse who works in NYC.

[jimbob]

Originally Posted by The Atheist

I figured that quoting the answer would mean the question was OT as well, but anyway, thanks.



Not yet, no.

There are only a couple of other states with a 1% mortality rate, and they were at least several weeks later getting started than Hawaii.

It still could go south very quickly.



They had a couple of huge advantages:

Not a popular choice for Chinese tourists.
Experience with SARS.
A largely compliant and sensible population.

I understood that Taiwan and Mainland China have had lots of trade and tourism in both directions over the last few years.

[Sherkeu]

Originally Posted by jimbob

I understood that Taiwan and Mainland China have had lots of trade and tourism in both directions over the last few years.

That was true until last summer...

July, 2019 China Bans Citizens From Traveling to Taiwan as Individual Tourists

Quote:

In its latest effort to increase pressure on Taiwan, Beijing said it will suspend a program that allowed individual tourists from 47 Chinese cities to travel to Taiwan, citing the current state of relations between the two sides.

The ministry’s statement didn’t provide any further details as to the reason for the ban. The unexpected move comes as China attempts to isolate Taiwan and Tsai Ing-wen, it’s independence-leaning president. The move may also be aimed at hurting her re-election chances in January’s presidential election.

“This is a shock to all of us. We are all very worried about it,” Benny Wu, chairman of the Taipei Association of Travel Agents, said by phone. “This will have a huge impact on Taiwan’s tourism and economy. Hotels, restaurants will all be affected.”

China was the largest single source of people visiting Taiwan and accounted for almost one third of total visitors to the island in May 2019.

[The Atheist]

Thanks - I was about to point that out. Thankfully for Taiwan, they've picked the perfect time to be at arm's length from the mainland.

[JeanTate]

Originally Posted by Sherkeu

That was true until last summer...

July, 2019 China Bans Citizens From Traveling to Taiwan as Individual Tourists

Trade, however, was not similarly banned.

Nor were tour groups, people travelling for business, sports, etc.

And if the measure was aimed at trying to achieve a certain result in the elections, it didn't work the way intended, did it?

[Cheetah]

At the beginning of the outbreak our cases increased with a similar trend to the UK. Our government used this to project what would happen here and we all heard the figures on TV when the lockdown was announced.
Here is a graph starting at 100 cases.

03CC23FF-7566-4B4A-8D4D-0D199111394E.jpeg

The lockdown appears to have had a dramatic effect.
It might be a testing artifact but testing has really been rammed up in the last two weeks and the trend continues.
So far so good.

[dann]

As governments fumbled their coronavirus response, these four got it right. Here's how. (CNN, April 16, 2020)