Coronavirus (Covid-19) in Other Countries (not Philippines or UK)

It's comparable to the UK on October 7th, one sixth the population and about 4 weeks behind us, Sweden was almost shutdown over the summer because that's normal for them they started up school and returns to the office later than we did, and they have been doing what is effectively a voluntary quarantine for most of the duration for the pandemic.

Let's see where they are at the end of November and where we are by then.

I've been storing every day's figures i.e. these graphs below for about a month now and will continue doing so.

I've been watching John Campbell again and catching up on some older broadcasts.

I am open to evidence at all times, in a Japanese study from late May to August seroprevalence of Covid antibodies reached a peak in the high 40% range, that's fascinating and Japan a hugely populated country has had a tiny number of deaths.

There was also a rapid decline in antibodies later also interesting, this one is worth watching.

He is suggesting that the spread is sufficient and the data is sufficient to say temporary community herd immunity might be very likely, and backed by data and cultural practice, and he also speculates about reasons for why the very low death rate and the high virus penetration into the population might have come about.

A better explained example than Sweden regards herd immunity in my opinion as there is more data about the actual virus penetration statistics in the community.

The second wave, at the moment, is devastating Italy.
Our, non elected, PM, in all his incompetence keeps inventing Decrees, without having them approved by our Parliament and Senate, practically dictatorial.
The Italian populace at large and opposition leaders are of the strong opinion, more like a certainty, that the Government is using the virus as an excuse to keep them in check and thus prolonging their unlawful rule, as the coalition is not, and has not been in the popular majority since the end of last year.

Sad times.

Indeed it won't be one factor.

On seasonality it's not the same kind of seasonality as Influenza though, I do agree that there are signs of seasonality and I think that could be the vitamin D.

Did you watch the John Campbell vid about Japan, he thinks the high seroprevalence of anitbodies is because lots of people have been getting very low does exposure to SARS-CoV-2 i.e. very low viral load and because they are a much more metabolically healthy country than most of the west they have been handling it well.

Random antibody testing in Tokyo of people commuting large distances was showing 40% positive test results that's impressive when there are so few deaths.

If it turns out to be like other coronaviruses, the memory B cell response will generally wane and herd immunity will not last long and will indeed be more difficult to reach depending on the duration of the immune response.

There is still a chance that due to the slow mutation rate that it might be possible to generate a much longer immune memory from a vaccine but time will also tell for that, this winter season the really important thing will be to track the reinfection rates.

One of our staff came down positive last week, so did her husband, she's feeling better now thank god, she is in her early to mid 50's but it looks like her elderly mum might have it as well.

I got her and her husband convinced on vitamin D supplements a few months ago I don't know if it will have helped her but I hope it did.

Given how contagious it is you are left with the question where are the deaths that would signal the presence of deadly virus at the start of a winter season, in April we in the UK had a doubling rate of of every 3 days, at that rate given no knowledge of the virus the transmission rate would have been similar in Italy and in the three months to the end of 2019 the entire population of Italy would have been infected, this is just maths and observation it would have burned right through Italy and they would have had maybe half a million dead and would have achieved come kind of herd immunity for a time.

It would have been beyond obvious.

I have 4 tabs permanently open, BBC News, Next Strain, Worldometer and the UK Gov Covid statistics page, the image below is from Next Strain.

Genomic epidemiology is a computational genomics problem, it takes into account the genetic sequencing of samples of virus RNA and DNA and reverse calculates the origin of each, if you have one sample you can tell what it's parent must have been you can reverse calculate where it came from the rate of random mutations in the sequence can be calculated and you can work backwards to the date of a common ancestor, that common ancestor date has remained stubbornly in the range of October to Dec 2019 and the history all points back to Chinese samples.

If people want to believe in magic that is their prerogative but there is no clear evidence of any sampled genome in humans that converges on a date earlier than October 2019 and you have to remember that is at the lower least likely end of the bell curve, mid November is far more likely.

https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?label=clade:19A




Covid symptoms are very similar to pneumonia and without testable samples from the guy who knows what he had, but you are in the territory of having to believe six impossible things before breakfast in order to believe that the guy had Covid.

I know there are very recently published studies in Italy suggesting it was present back then but those studies have been heavily criticised in terms of the specificity of the antibody tests.

It's Occam's Razor Mike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor

To explain someone in Europe getting SARS-CoV-2 in September of 2019 you have to multiply the assumptions and preconditions in order to explain the observed later facts, namely that it began to spread exponentially across the world in January 2020 after being found in Wuhan.

Whenever you find yourself having to make lots of complicated explanations to get round observed facts you are probably building a false hypothesis, it is simpler to attribute this guy's illness to some kind of pneumonia than it is to invent dozens of reasons as to why SARS-CoV-2 was not exponentially spreading through the population at that earlier time.

The preference should always be for the simple explanation that does not mean that the simple explanation is always correct but until evidence corroborating a more complex explanation is found and detailed the simpler explanation is more likely to be right.

Separate topic but this is also the best way to identify conspiracy theories, the hallmark signature of conspiracy theories is their complexity, genuine conspiracies do exist but they are rarely anywhere near as complex as the wild viral conspiracy theories that people love to believe in.

Yes I remember the post and the case.

And as I said back then there was anecdotal evidence of the Express story from medical staff in the hospital I was in back in June, several nurses and at least one Doctor told me of suspicious events they had personally been involved with back in December.

However I am still not sure the weight of evidence is there to project a significantly earlier arrival of the virus, whether we ever get conclusive evidence of earlier circulation will be debatable for a long time, is it possible yes, but it is hard to reconcile with observation and trends through December, January and February.

Meanwhile deaths in America are close to 2000 a day with a similar strategy.

Also Sweden don't appear to be reporting very regularly.

Yes you did, I have mentioned other Italian studies backing up that view but they have been questioned specifically in terms of the tests that were used and the specificity of those tests.