Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19) and Tinnitus

[FGG]

Hydrogen peroxide is a disinfectant, right?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/me...eatment-for-coronavirus-infection/ar-BB12qktc

LOL!

Trump was specifically referring to isopropyl alcohol.

 

[FGG]

He was describing the latest research (see my post above) which was the point of the conference.

There is zero evidence he was doing that and in fact now says it was all sarcasm to make fun of reporters.

 

[Lane]

Content Alert -- Short description & video on successfully treating COVID-19 tatients using holistically oriented unconventional and controversial modalities

I've been watching a few of Dr. David Brownstein's interesting videos recently, which he's been posting on YouTube, and on his own website. He's the same guy who wrote the book, "Iodine : Why You Need It, Why You Can't Live Without It ... The following story and video is fairly typical of others I've seen, and describes how he's treating COVID-19 patients in the parking lot of his office, primarily with ozone, Vitamin C, and nebulizing a H2O2 & Iodine solution.

It's interesting toward the end of the video where Anne Marie describes how her brain function improved to better than normal as her COVID-19 symptoms improved. Dr. Brownstein attributes that to the reduction in inflammation, and mentions many people report vision improvements as well. -- I found this to be an insightful 5 1/2 minute video on one holistic practitioner's use of natural methods to achieve consistent and remarkable success in treating (many) COVID-19 infections.

There Is Still Hope Out There-Anne Marie: "Nebulizing was amazing. It opened up my chest & my breathing."

Meet Anne Marie, long time patient of my partner Dr Jeffrey Nusbaum. Anne Marie experienced flu-like symptoms including sinus congestion, chills and pain throughout her body, as well as difficulty breathing. She received a Vitamin C IV & ozone shot at our office.

She then followed Dr Nusbaum's protocol of immune support supplements (vitamins A,C,D) and nebulized with our proprietary H202 solution with Lugol's 5% iodine. Anne Marie had great results from these natural therapies and is doing well. This is her testimony. (The therapies discussed on this video should be supervised under the guidance of a physician or healthcare practitioner).

 

[linearb]

They must have read the recent "MATHEMATICAL MODELING FOR TRANSMISSIBILITY OF COVID-19 VIA MOTORCYCLES" paper.

It's deeply amusing to me that someone has attempted to study this specifically.

I am well aware of how spinal injuries work, know people who were permanently maimed from bikes, etc. It's a personal calculus, but, these days -- I ride on dirt roads away from cars at relatively low speeds, and I'm pretty convinced this is less hazardous than it was to commute to work on a bicycle when I lived in a major urban zone, because in both cases, 95% of the time the thing that gets you is a car or truck that didn't see you. In two years of (urban) bicycle commuting, both my wife and I had significant, not-at-fault accidents that led to hospitalization. I've been riding bikes around up here for 3 years now and the worst thing that's happened is stalling out in mud way the fuck back in the woods and having to get some friends to come bail me out.

I certainly wouldn't encourage motorcycles for longevity based reasons, though. Or autos, for that matter, but of course autos put a ton of armor around you. (The overall accident rates per mile for motorcycles and cars are pretty similar, but bikes are ~5x as lethal to the operator).

edit: @Bill Bauer I started to read that bike paper thinking "how can this possibly be an issue when any reasonable motorcycle rider wears a helmet and other gear over their face", and, predictably, found this ~4 pages in:

Despite their usefulness, motorcycles contributes immensely to the spread of COVID-19 because the operators do not follow the traffic rules. For instance, they don't put masks and helmets, they carry excess passengers, they don't wash their hands as required.

I do wear a mask and helmet, I don't carry excessive passengers (or any, usually), and I do wash my hands. Pretty sure my risks here are more spinal injury oriented than COVID....


...and the way I look at it is, every day has some risk of my body becoming uninhabitable, no matter what I do. The actions I take just move the needle one way or the other. Motorcycles move it in the wrong direction, so, it's a risk:reward calculus. I have often said that any given motorcycle operator is, on some level, mathematically challenged

 

[Bill Bauer]

Is it fair for news reporters to report or infer that he's encouraging people to do this if he didn't?

Have you began noticing this Just Now?

Even adjusting for population size Denmark has had less than half Sweden's deaths as a percentage of population.

That Possible (remember there's always noise) 1000 extra deaths is the cost of having no lockdown. Now look at the benefits. We could eliminate most flu deaths if we were to have a lockdown every winter. In 2017 about 3,500 people in Sweden died of the flu: https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/sweden-influenza-pneumonia, and yet it hasn't occurred to anyone to save those 3,500 people by having a lockdown.

Are you suggesting that it would have been a reasonable response to a disease which ultimately killed two people?

Hopefully we learned our lesson and from now on whenever any country reports an outbreak of any serious infectious disease, no country will let anyone from that country in, unless that person spends the required number of days staying in a quarantine. RIGHT?

I disagree for many reasons: disease modeling is hard under the best of circumstances

In that case we ought to learn our lesson and never base any policy decisions on disease modelling which basically amounts to a random guess. It's as if they were estimating a variable that is a percentage, and the width of their confidence interval were to be +-50 percentage points.

It's not "fishy", it reflects the uncertainties of the situation.

It's fishy that they haven't warned the decision makers that their model is BS because

the difference between the best and worse case scenarios in very complex multivar models to have a huge spread between the ceiling and floor

All the evidence is that those countries which went into lockdown early and combined this with mass testing and contact tracing programmes have done much better during this crisis

That's if you only look at the benefit of the lockdown, and ignore the costs.

Does the coronavirus make tinnitus worse?

No reports of it making it worse permanently.

There is zero evidence he was doing that

What was the purpose of that press conference?

Trump was specifically referring to isopropyl alcohol.

He was referring to a disinfectant.

I just re-watched that part of his speech, and I see that he wasn't making a statement, he was asking a question "could the disinfectant be used" not just to kill the viruses on surfaces but to actually treat the patients. When I first heard it, I thought that it betrayed his lack of knowledge of biology. Turns out
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/me...eatment-for-coronavirus-infection/ar-BB12qktc
that it wasn't an unreasonable question to ask. So what's the problem again?

It is extremely dangerous to make predictions about who is at risk - many, many individuals with no underlying health conditions have died from this virus.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/...ions-that-make-coronavirus-more-deadly-2020-3

99% of COVID-19 patients who have died in the country had at least one preexisting condition.

That 1% does represent hundreds or even thousands of people. We haven't been placing our country on lockdown to save hundreds of thousands of lives (flu and traffic accidents) (ignoring the indirect lives lost due to the lockdown), so why start now?

I ride on dirt roads away from cars at relatively low speeds, and I'm pretty convinced this is less hazardous than it was to commute to work on a bicycle when I lived in a major urban zone, because in both cases, 95% of the time the thing that gets you is a car or truck that didn't see you.

Makes sense. If not for the noise, I would be ok with the risk of driving on deserted dirt roads at moderate speeds.

A distant relative of mine quit riding motorcycles following getting multiple bones broken in an accident that took place a couple of months after he got his motorcycle license.

Clearly the economic costs are huge but this requires economic solutions.

The economic solution is to end the lockdown.

Although the UK has been very slow in taking the necessary lockdown measures and not doing enough tests it has at least shown some understanding of the economic measures necessary, introducing schemes for companies to furlough employees and covering the majority of their wages.

If we could get wealth and money out of thin air, then the above would make sense. Who is going to pay for covering the majority of the wages?

This virus is a doozy, not just taking the old and the sick,

That's right 1% of the victims aren't old and sick.

Ultimately the key factor has to be that lost livelihoods can be recreated, but lost lives can't.

So why not ban cars that account for 1% of ALL deaths?

But I think to assume that the US will get away with 60,000 deaths in total is highly unlikely given that over 50,000 have already died and we are far from over the crisis.

Makes sense.

It seems to me that the number of fatalities would have been lower if not for government's response like the one below
https://www.businessinsider.com/nur...hen-they-accepted-coronavirus-patients-2020-4

When a New York City nursing home was forced to admit coronavirus patients late last month, public health officials also gave them a box of body bags, in a concerning incident reported by the New York Post on Thursday.

 

[Bill Bauer]

I guess only Canadians are going to get this

 

[Ed209]

The below linked article touches on conventional medicine's avoidance of using IV Vit. C to treat sepsis (which many with the COVID-19 die from), even though it's well documented to save lives.

Modern Medicine's Aversion to Vitamin C Therapy Results in a Half-Million Needless Deaths From Sepsis in U.S. Hospitals Every Year - LewRockwell LewRockwell.com

While modern medicine casts a blind eye towards vitamin therapy and even exhibits open disdain for health practitioners and patients who incorporate vitamins into daily health regimens, it now appears a half-million Americans are losing their lives to a mortal bloodstream infection called sepsis that is induced by a deficiency of vitamin C.

After three decades, and more than one-hundred failed clinical trials of synthetic drugs to quell the most common cause of death in American hospitals, modern medicine is dragging its feet over what has now been demonstrated to be obvious — intravenous vitamin C demonstrably reduces death from sepsis. Sepsis patients are being brought back from the precipice of death, enough to make ICU nurses cry tears of joy. But medical overseers have attempted to obscure this fact.

Here is what modern medicine did to quash the compelling though preliminary data showing vitamin C saves lives of sepsis patients...​

There was a study conducted on this involving 10 intensive care units in Australia, New Zealand and Brazil. It was published in January 2020 and provided strong evidence that vitamin C had no effect on the outcome in sepsis cases.

Prior to this, there was a study published in 2017 by Dr Paul Marik which involved 47 cases. He believed that vitamin C had a positive effect in treating sepsis which led to something known as the Marik protocol. It could even have been Dr Klenner's paper that inspired him to try it. I read that there was scepticism about his data which is what led to the latest study.

Take from that what you will.

I'll add more information below including the latest study:

Conclusions and relevance: In patients with septic shock, treatment with intravenous vitamin C, hydrocortisone, and thiamine, compared with intravenous hydrocortisone alone, did not significantly improve the duration of time alive and free of vasopressor administration over 7 days. The finding suggests that treatment with intravenous vitamin C, hydrocortisone, and thiamine does not lead to a more rapid resolution of septic shock compared with intravenous hydrocortisone alone.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03333278.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31950979/?from_term=Effect+of+vitamin+c,+hydrocortisone+

 

[Ed209]

My mom rang today and said she'd just found out that one of the ladies she got to know in the hospital had died from Covid-19. It's really upset her.

My city is a hotpot, though, so it's inevitable that I'd be aware of many people dying with it. I'm still perplexed by those on social media comparing it to the flu. It's absurd. As far as I'm aware, there have been no deaths amongst my family members or friends that were caused by the flu, in my lifetime. Yet, with this new coronavirus I already know of nearly 10 people who have succumbed to it, who were of various ages. This may be a selective bias since it's being widely discussed in the media and the flu isn't, but my experience of this has been vastly different from that of the flu.

 

[Ed209]

Your initial response was the correct one. All the evidence is that those countries which went into lockdown early and combined this with mass testing and contact tracing programmes have done much better during this crisis, countries such as Germany and South Korea. The big mistake of the UK and USA was not going into lockdown but going into lockdown too late and not carrying out enough testing and contact tracing.

I agree with this. We didn't go into lockdown soon enough and there's been nowhere near enough testing. In fact, the testing has been woefully inadequate, IMHO.

I find it bad that all those with status like politicians, royalty, celebrities and sportsmen were all tested immediately, and yet when frontline Drs and nurses were crying out for tests they were declined, just like the rest of us were including my family and friends.

If they had tested everyone properly, early on, instead of relying on whether people had been to China or Italy I think we'd be in a much better position now. An example of this would be my family. If my wife and I had been tested my mom would never have caught it and the same would be true for so many others across the country. We all know that this thing spreads exponentially, so isolating known cases early doors would have made a clear and obvious difference.

 

[linearb]

Well, if there's one unexpectedly great thing to come out of this it's the reboot of the funeral dance meme

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...326d88-8421-11ea-81a3-9690c9881111_story.html





The last one is great/ terrible because it's the actual Columbian police mimicking the coffin dance as a "stay home!" very recently in response to COVID...

 

[linearb]

I'm still perplexed by those on social media comparing it to the flu. It's absurd... mye of this has been vastly different from that of the flu.

Yep, doesn't make sense especially when most of the data I've seen still points to roughly 1:250 mortality for the 40-49 demographic; that's two orders of magnitude deadlier for that group compared to seasonal influenza. Add to that the small number of random 20 year olds stroking out to vascular problems we still don't understand, and this is a somewhat scary virus. I likewise have a family member who passed to COVID, I'm not aware of any flu deaths in my family in many years.

I agree with my disease studying relative, though: this is a "relatively mild" pandemic because this disease is very spreadable but not actually that deadly. That tells me that something this transmissible and ten times as deadly would just absolutely obliterate global society at a foundational level.

That's a fun thing to think about as we spend the next couple years at least dealing with this one.

 

[linearb]

 

[SugarMagnolia]

@FGG -- I'm at quite a loss, and perhaps you can help me out. I've seen numerous references in news stories of Trump encouraging people to drink bleach. I watched the above video, which I've assumed was the gist of his comments. Nowhere did I hear him say anything about bleach.

Did I miss something? Did he really say that, or did he not? Is it fair for news reporters to report or infer that he's encouraging people to do this if he didn't? I honestly don't know what to make of this whole thing, but my impression is that news outlets are using the word "bleach" to sensationalize things, and are being way too misleading in reporting what Trump was apparently supposed to have said. -- Thanks.

What I heard was: He said disinfectant (general), not bleach (specific). He said inject, not ingest.

I suspect that the reason for saying "drink bleach" instead of "inject disinfectant" is so viewers will understand the danger of what he said.

I am often shocked to find people not knowing very basic words. It's likely that there a lot of people who don't really know what the word disinfectant means, so using a specific example of a well-known disinfectant will better communicate the danger.

Saying "drink" rather and "inject" would also serve the same purpose. Everyone knows drinking bleach would be deadly, but there are certainly going to be people who don't realize that injecting it would also be deadly. Plus, people who don't have syringes are likely to try drinking it as an alternative.

 

[SugarMagnolia]

There is zero evidence he was doing that and in fact now says it was all sarcasm to make fun of reporters.

He should try to make up better lies than this, because if this was true, it would have been equally irresponsible. Imagine a president saying something sarcastic to reporters, but that is still broadcasted to a nation of people who are looking for guidance.

Claiming sarcasm doesn't make his statement any better. What he is claiming is that he was willing to give Americans deadly advice in order to be sarcastic to reports. How is that any better?

 

[Ed209]

 

[Ed209]

I agree with my disease studying relative, though: this is a "relatively mild" pandemic because this disease is very spreadable but not actually that deadly. That tells me that something this transmissible and ten times as deadly would just absolutely obliterate global society at a foundational level.

If this was more lethal humanity would be screwed. If anything, this only proves how underprepared the world is for such an event.

I've learned that people become incredibly fond of toilet roll at such times and that many others immediately become epidemiologists/virologists. And whilst leading scientific experts try to understand what we're dealing with and help stop the spread, Facebook experts uncover the real truth behind the pandemic and encourage everyone to go out and fight for their collective freedom like Braveheart.

 

[aot]

Claiming sarcasm doesn't make his statement any better. What he is claiming is that he was willing to give Americans deadly advice in order to be sarcastic to reports. How is that any better?

Given the gravity of the situation, sarcasm, which I doubt this was, is completely inappropriate.

 

[Ed209]

 

[FGG]

View attachment 38413

 

[linearb]

If this was more lethal humanity would be screwed. If anything, this only proves how underprepared the world is for such an event.

*shrug* such an event is more or less inevitable given enough time

 

[Bill Bauer]

most of the data I've seen still points to roughly 1:250 mortality for the 40-49 demographic

Isn't this figure the mortality for the people aged 40-49 who have at least one serious health condition (e.g., morbidly obese, a weak heart, etc.)?

 

[Bill Bauer]

go out and fight for their collective freedom like Braveheart

So what do you make of Sweden not having anything devastating happen despite following common sense precautions without a complete lockdown?

Also, freedom is something worth defending.

View attachment 38413

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/me...eatment-for-coronavirus-infection/ar-BB12qktc

 

[FGG]

So what do you make of Sweden not having anything devastating happen despite following common sense precautions without a complete lockdown?

Also, freedom is something worth defending.


https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/me...eatment-for-coronavirus-infection/ar-BB12qktc

Why do you keep pushing the "Trump must have meant Healight" narrative when he said it was all sarcasm meant to make fun of reporters. If he meant "Healight" he would have said that.

 

[Ed209]

So what do you make of Sweden not having anything devastating happen despite following common sense precautions without a complete lockdown?

Also, freedom is something worth defending.

Comparing the UK to Sweden on a number by number basis makes no sense.

I had a discussion with my wife about this as it's her area of expertise and she said you should expect Sweden to have a lower number. It's twice as big as the UK and has a population that is 7 times lower. That is circa 10 million people on land measuring 450,295 sq km as opposed to around 70 million people on land measuring 243,610 sq km. London is also an international and financial hub meaning the UK has a significantly higher footfall.

Also, the reported numbers are just broad strokes rather than precise datasets. If we take the total case to death ratio then we arrive at circa 11% for Sweden and about 13% for the UK. The difference isn't statistically significant. These numbers, of course, do not reflect reality as we don't know how many have actually recovered in a given period of time against how many died. Many cases are still ongoing, and we know that both the total cases and death rates are underreported.

A snapshot of closed cases isn't exactly great reading for Sweden.

One of the best countries in this regard is Germany.

 

[linearb]

Isn't this figure the mortality for the people aged 40-49 who have at least one serious health condition (e.g., morbidly obese, a weak heart, etc.)?

no, not from what I've seen

also, some of the studies including "comorbidities" include basically any ICD-9 code you might have at admission so be careful with that, since basically anyone is likely to have some other condition(s) at onset.

So what do you make of Sweden not having anything devastating happen despite following common sense precautions without a complete lockdown?

I disagree that they "don't have anything devastating"; they're nowhere near through their outbreak or containment or even plateauing as far as I can tell.

This article highlights some of the difficulties in trying to make comparisons, because of totally inconsistent testing data and paradigms different places.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/new...cases-infection-fatality-test-number-12673260

I also think it's important to continue to remember that the purpose of slowing things down with isolation measures, was, and remains, to keep medical systems and body disposal conduits from becoming overwhelmed. Nothing more, nothing less.

Containment has failed, so, if this is going to have a catastrophic effect on some populations, it's going to happen and it's just a matter of controlling the burn until actual treatments exist (if ever).

Even during the unusually bad flu year 3 years ago, we did not have issues with ICU capacity etc, because it was spread over a much longer period of time. If we got a monster flu, sure, this same thing or much worse could happen; that's exactly what Crimson Contagion concluded. "Lol we'd be so boned in a pandemic". Welp.

Just gonna paste this here:

Key findings

• Federal government lacks sufficient funding to respond to a severe influenza pandemic.

• Exercise participants lacked clarity on the roles of different federal agencies, and what information was important to pass on to federal partners.

• HHS had issues providing accurate and relevant information to hospitals and other public health organizations.

• Confusion between HHS, FEMA, and the Department of Homeland Security on which federal agency would take the lead in the crisis.

• The United States lacks the production capacity to meet the demands for protective equipment and medical devices such as masks and ventilators imposed by a pandemic.

• States were unable to efficiently request resources due to the lack of a standardized request process.[4]

boy, that sounds pretty familiar, huh! They did a simulation 6 months before all this which highlighted exactly all the ways the federal apparatus would collapse, and then did nothing with it. Cool.

 

[Ed209]

I also think it's important to continue to remember that the purpose of slowing things down with isolation measures, was, and remains, to keep medical systems and body disposal conduits from becoming overwhelmed. Nothing more, nothing less.

Exactly this.

 

[Ed209]

@Bill Bauer, Sweden isn't exactly a model example, imo. I'd argue that Germany could be spoken of in this way, though.

Take this article, for example, that was written on April 13th:

I've never written so many death certificates. I've never worked this many hours," says an exhausted Issa Yacoub, a doctor working in Sodersjukhuset, one of Stockholm's largest public hospitals.

He and his colleagues are becoming increasingly overwhelmed with the number of patients passing through their doors.

Primary schools, shops, restaurants and bars remain open and people are allowed to go out and exercise.

But Sweden's cases are rising. The country of some 10 million now has more than 10,000 cases and 887 deaths. Its total death toll is higher than that of all the other Nordic countries put together.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...octor-death-certificates-latest-a9462796.html

Their current reported figures aren't exactly great reading, either:

(Total cases to the far left and total deaths to the far right)

Interestingly, if you combine Denmark (5.8m population) with Finland (5.5m) you get a slighter larger population than that of Sweden at 11.3m, but they have a death rate of circa 1.5% and 2% giving a combined total of 3.5% (or 612 deaths instead of 2,194). If you throw in Norway and Iceland as well, then the total number of deaths is 823.

This is likely a fairer comparison. Sweden's 2,194 deaths doesn't look as favourable in this context.

 

[Bill Bauer]

Sweden isn't exactly a model example, imo.

Why is that? Yes, they didn't do as well as Denmark, but you would think that we are going along with the lockdowns to prevent a huge disaster, and it has clearly not materialized in Sweden. Shouldn't we learn from their experience and do something about our mistakes?!

Why do you keep pushing the "Trump must have meant Healight" narrative when he said it was all sarcasm meant to make fun of reporters. If he meant "Healight" he would have said that.

When I first heard Trump's comments, I thought that they were ridiculous Because they were evidence that he has little understanding of the impact UV and disinfectants on the human body. The fact that there Are actual treatments involving UV irradiation of the lungs and breathing in hydrogen peroxide shows that his comments weren't ridiculous (independently of whether or not he was aware of those treatments when he asked his questions).

Now why he hasn't brought up Healight and that hydrogen peroxide treatment in his later interviews is in fact a mystery. If he hasn't been aware of those therapies before that conference where he made his remarks, those therapies must have been brought to his attention afterwards.

Why he hasn't attempted to defend himself is an important question (the answer to which is probably horrifying), but it has nothing to do with the actual incident in question.

 

[Bill Bauer]

Comparing the UK to Sweden on a number by number basis makes no sense.

I had a discussion with my wife about this as it's her area of expertise and she said you should expect Sweden to have a lower number. It's twice as big as the UK and has a population that is 7 times lower. That is circa 10 million people on land measuring 450,295 sq km as opposed to around 70 million people on land measuring 243,610 sq km. London is also an international and financial hub

The bottom line is that Sweden hasn't had a "disaster of biblical proportion" despite not having a lockdown.

A snapshot of closed cases isn't exactly great reading for Sweden.

Since both Sweden and Germany have similar healthcare systems we would expect the fatality ratio = total dying/total infected to be similar for the two countries. Could the difference between Germany's number of dead and Sweden's number of dead that you pointed out in your post be explained by more people in Sweden actually being infected? This is plausible, as they haven't had a lockdown, but also means that the fatality rate of this virus might be very low (i.e., lower than we would guess if we just look at the ratio of the dead to the total number who got tested positive).

not from what I've seen

How can that be if between 95% and 99% of everyone who dies have one serious preexisting condition?

some of the studies including "comorbidities" include basically any ICD-9 code you might have at admission so be careful with that, since basically anyone is likely to have some other condition(s) at onset.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32267833

Hypertension, diabetes, COPD, cardiovascular disease, and cerebrovascular disease are major risk factors for patients with COVID-19.

All of the diseases above (with the possibly exception of hypertension) sound to be very serious to me.

they're nowhere near through their outbreak or containment or even plateauing as far as I can tell.

I also think it's important to continue to remember that the purpose of slowing things down with isolation measures, was, and remains, to keep medical systems and body disposal conduits from becoming overwhelmed. Nothing more, nothing less.

The reason for lockdowns is avoiding Exponential growth and avoiding the medical system being overwhelmed. You will agree that Sweden hasn't been experiencing exponential growth in the number of people feeling bad enough to get tested and receive a positive result. Their medical system hasn't been overwhelmed.

Even during the unusually bad flu year 3 years ago, we did not have issues with ICU capacity etc, because it was spread over a much longer period of time.

US has experienced that only in the state of New York, which might have something to do with nursing homes being forced to take in covid-19 patients.

But Sweden's cases are rising. The country of some 10 million now has more than 10,000 cases and 887 deaths.

Cases are slowly rising everywhere. When the growth is exponential, they rise at an increasing rate (and the rate of the increase keeps increasing too). That has clearly not been happening in Sweden.

Interestingly, if you combine Denmark (5.8m population) with Finland (5.5m) you get a slighter larger population than that of Sweden at 11.3m, but they have a death rate of circa 1.5% and 2% giving a combined total of 3.5% (or 612 deaths instead of 2,194).

Thank you for pointing this out. This is indeed a more "apples to apples" comparison. I don't think we should be adding the rates, though. I think we should be using the average of those two rates: 1.75%.
[If there are two countries with a population of 1000 each, and rates of 1.5% and 2%, that means that there are 15 sick in one country and 2 sick in the other country, for a combined number of the sick of 35, and a rate of 35/2000 = 1.75%]

If the difference between the number of the dead in those two countries and Sweden increases at an increasing rate, then of course Sweden made a mistake. If it remains at Sweden having a couple of thousand more deaths, then they have to look at things like the total number of years lost as a result other causes of death (e.g., car crashes) and make sure that the policy is consistent with those other policies (i.e., if Sweden isn't banning cars to save X years of life, they shouldn't be having a lockdown to save Y years of life, as long as Y < X).

 

[linearb]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/hea...s-spreading-the-fastest-right-now/ss-BB1377Nw

In the study, "Social Distancing to Slow the U.S. COVID-19 Epidemic: Interrupted Time-Series Analysis," a preprint of a non-peer reviewed study published by Harvard infectious disease experts on April 8, statewide social distancing measures were associated with a decrease in U.S. COVID-19 growth.

"Based on the size of the epidemic at the time of implementation in each state, social distancing measures were associated with a decrease of 3,090 cases at 7 days, and 68,255 cases at 14 days, after implementation," wrote the study's researchers.

Of the eight states with no statewide stay-at-home orders, five are among the 10 states where the virus spread the fastest over the last seven days. (Here are every state's rules for staying at home and social distancing.)

According to Seidner, how well a state is testing for the virus and how effectively it is interrupting transmission of the virus by implementing social distancing are the two major factors determining the size and spread of a state's COVID-19 outbreak. These two aspects of the response also heavily depend on one another. "Social distancing relies on testing to be effective because if you don't know the rate at which the epidemic is growing or hopefully slowing, [then] you don't know when to relax it [and] you don't know when to institute it."

The states testing larger shares of their populations are reporting higher confirmed cases per resident. All five of the states with the most COVID-19 cases per capita have testing rates considerably higher than the nationwide average of 989 tests per 100,000 people.

Seidner noted that high testing rates and high confirmed cases feed one another. "The more testing you do the more cases you're going to find, but you're also much more likely to expand testing in areas you think are hot spots." (These are the states with the highest number of COVID cases.)

Seidner explained that while U.S. preparedness for the outbreak could have been much better, the wide-scale testing that is so critical to a proper epidemic response is a massive undertaking. From escalating production of testing supplies (swabs, tubes, and fluid to preserve the virus, and platforms to run the tests) to hiring extra medical staff needed to administer and process the tests to managing the retesting required in contact tracing, "you're really asking the diagnostic community to go from zero to millions in a week or two."