Actually, I’m saying that those who hold that Covid is overplayed and the people who died would have died anyway are dead wrong, at least for 6%.
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In case you haven’t noticed, the virus is spreading just fine. The immune system clears nearly all viral infections, so many viruses adopt strategies that allow for its spread before they are killed off by the immune system. That’s the case for COVID-19 where there is a period without symptoms and increases in viral load that allow the virus to be spread to hosts who have no immune defenses against it.
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That does not increase my respect for you nor your grasp of science.
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Yep. Viruses don’t last long if they are immediately cleared by the innate immune system. Obviously, SARS-CoV-2 has no problem evading the innate immune system long enough to set up an infection and spread to other people.
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So how do we discriminate then for covid 19 as against any other flu where healthy people die?
The problem as I see it is that we are taking a person’s physiological health and calling them healthy and thus should not have died of the flu or covid or whatever. But their psychological status is very important. I will tell you what happened to me back 50 years ago when I was at uni to make the point.
I had at the time got an infection in my left leg. Someone’s saliva fell on my leg and as they had a golden staph infection in their throat and as I just wiped it off and didn’t wash it, it got infected. I went to the doctor and he gave me an antibiotic. It did no good and after another three types of antibiotics and my leg very swollen and red and painful, my doctor was concerned. He told me he would consult with his colleague and went into the corridor. I crept behind the door to listen and I heard them saying that they may have to take off my leg. I was shocked. He gave me another antibiotic recommended by his mate and I left.
I couldn’t get the antibiotics on the way home so I went home and went to bed. I slept through to the next morning about 12 hours sleep. When I woke up and went into the kitchen my flat mates noted that I wasn’t limping. We all looked at my leg and were amazed. It was about 80% better. How come?
A year later I was talking to one of my lecturers and we talked about fear. And he explained what I should have gotten from my lecture notes. In fear reaction, digestion, reproduction and immunity are declined, but only if the danger is external. Then I realized what happened.
I worked to put myself through university. And my job was on a grant. And I was frightened of losing my job because there were funding cuts going on at the university. So my immunity was declined enough to not be able to fight the infection adequately. Then when I heard the two doctors talking about removing my leg I realized the real danger was in my leg and not the job. This must have brought about changes that helped bring my immune system back to working to full capacity. Within 2 days my leg was back to normal and without any antibiotics. I didn’t bother to get them.
I was in excellent health, young (about 22 yo) and based on this I should not have had any trouble fighting infection. However the psychological condition made the difference.
So if a person is young and in good health we think they shouldn’t die of covid 19 or suffer cytokine storms etc. But we need to look further and see the whole picture. Only then we can say if “they would have died anyway” or not. And they could have been saved only by considering how and why they are reacting.
You are assuming that a healthy person with a fully functioning immune system should be able to defeat every single virus. This is a false assumption.
Most likely it was a combination of the antibiotics and development of antibodies against the bacteria and the toxins they were releasing. I would suggest learning about the differences between the innate and adaptive immune systems. The reason vaccines work is they allow your adaptive immune system to create antibodies and memory B-cells that can prevent infection if the bug every appears in your system.
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They have freely admitted in the research paper that they don’t know what causes the cytokiine storms.
The cases that you find are not where the person is asymptomatic. The cases are where the person is sick for between a two or three days to at most a fortnight. Then suddenly they get worse. This does not tally up with the virus being the cause of cytokine storms.
And the last point you make is wrong. No one has any pre-existing or so called “natural” defense against coronavirus or anything else. So “no immune defenses” is the starting position of everyone expect a person who has had a previous infection, be it a vaccination or infection.
Their defense comes when their immune system recognizes the invader and builds antibodies and other strategies to fight it. We build the defenses. The cytokine storms are not about simple defenses.
The cytokine storms are massive inflammation that is seen in many instances, with and without pathogens present. The virus does not cause any cytokine storms. A high viral load is not going to cause a massive attack on normal healthy cells.
I am not looking for your respect. I understand the science.
You are forgetting that 80% are asymptomatic, which means their immune system innate and/or adaptive has done the job thank you very much.
Of the rest the 14% get over it eventually.
It is only the 6% that die of the disease. So the question is why?
Where are these numbers coming from? Are you just making them up as you go? Can you help me understand what you are saying, otherwise this thread should just go bye-bye.
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They don’t know the specifics of why COVID-19 causes cytokine storms. There is no doubt that COVID-19 is the cause.
The people who are sick were asymptomatic earlier in the infection and they were able to spread the virus during that time period.
Do your homework:
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That’s the question for almost every single infectious disease, and there are tons of possible mechanisms.
If you understood the science then you wouldn’t be questioning how a virus can cause a cytokine storm.
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Do a little reading on bradykinin.
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If you take the case of the cruise ship and a scientific paper on it here: https://thorax.bmj.com/content/75/8/693 claim 81% on cruise ship tested positive, but were asymptomatic
In Australia we have had less than half a percent of the 71/4 million tested positive but that doesn’t say that some of the others were not infected and the virus cleared and the antibodies in memory, so no sign of virus or antibodies.
I don’t trust the media but if we look at government sites here for Australia (lax attitude of many) 97% of those who got sick recovered and only a tiny percentage died relatively speaking i.e., 3%. There are still a few percent not recovered… https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alert/coronavirus-covid-19-current-situation-and-case-numbers
Global cases
Confirmed 30,241,377
Deaths 947,266
Recovered 20,575,416
So really similar picture.
How many have had the virus? No one knows because there has not been worldwide testing. The number could be a billion or more. We don’t know. But if this virus spreads fast then how can we say it has not spread to a large number of people and they have not got sick or even had any symptoms? We can’t.
EDIT MSN
That is a good data point to include, but there are many other studies that would be good for you to include as well - which after including those, an estimate of those asymptomatic is a bit closer to 40%. For example, this CDC report describes:
The percent of cases that are asymptomatic, i.e. never experience symptoms, remains uncertain. Longitudinal testing of individuals is required to accurately detect the absence of symptoms for the full period of infectiousness. Current peer-reviewed and preprint studies vary widely in follow-up times for re-testing, or do not include re-testing of cases. Additionally, studies vary in the definition of a symptomatic case, which makes it difficult to make direct comparisons between estimates. Furthermore, the percent of cases that are asymptomatic may vary by age, and the age groups reported in studies vary. Given these limitations, the range of estimates for Scenarios 1-4 is wide. The lower bound estimate approximates the lower 95% confidence interval bound estimated from: Byambasuren, O., Cardona, M., Bell, K., Clark, J., McLaws, M. L., & Glasziou, P. (2020). Estimating the extent of true asymptomatic COVID-19 and its potential for community transmission: systematic review and meta-analysis. Available at SSRN 3586675 . The upper bound estimate approximates the upper 95% confidence interval bound estimated from: Poletti, P., Tirani, M., Cereda, D., Trentini, F., Guzzetta, G., Sabatino, G., Marziano, V., Castrofino, A., Grosso, F., Del Castillo, G. and Piccarreta, R. (2020). Probability of symptoms and critical disease after SARS-CoV-2 infection. arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.08471 . The best estimate is the midpoint of this range and aligns with estimates from: Oran DP, Topol EJ. Prevalence of Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infection: A Narrative Review [published online ahead of print, 2020 Jun 3]. Ann Intern Med . 2020; M20-3012.
So let’s put the number closer to 40% or so.
I’m not sure how this is relevant to anything or what your point is here.
Okay, so you are talking about the CFR, or the case fatality ratio. This is out of people with a positive diagnosis of COVID-19, what percentage of those people die. Worldwide, this number as you’ve pointed out is somewhere around 3%.
You can try to do randomized seroprevalence studies, looking to see what fraction of people when chosen at random test positive for COVID-19 antibodies. You cannot just assume this number “could be 30x what we have confirmed” without evidence.
Also, where did your “6%” die come from? You still didn’t tell me that. Would you be willing to at least adjust the percentage of people who are asymptomatic when you post down to about 40%?
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The six percent came from the original post on this thread
https://www.newsbreak.com/news/2050479264318/new-updated-data-from-cdc-shows-that-only-6-of-the-161392-reported-us-coronavirus-deaths-are-related-to-covid-19
The argument is made that 94% died due to underlying causes so the remainder, who were healthy (physically healthy) died of covid 19
I don’t know what we should see as “died of covid 19”. As I answered earlier to jpm giving my case of an infection when I was in my early 20s, one has to take psychological factors, namely stress into account too.
What I am seeing is that while last year a person who died of the flu but who had terminal lung cancer got put down to a death from lung cancer, this year they did of covid 19. Okay they had an underlying problem that was too serious and they didn’t cope. However a healthy person, who has a serious psychological problem that is stressing them is really in a similar position.
Thus the 6%, which is being quoted is people that are seen to be physically healthy but without any consideration of their mental states.
As I found out a psychological problem also translates to a physical health problem too. If a person’s immune system is partly declined they are physically not up to scratch. On the other hand if they are reacting to an idea of “OMG got a dangerous virus it is doing damage”, then IMO this ideas can also cause physical problems such as excessive inflammation.
If they would otherwise be alive today except for the viral infection then the viral infection was the cause of death. The only exceptions would probably be for a pathologically compromised immune system.
That’s like AIDS patients dying from an otherwise rare infection or cancer. I think there are exceptions made for severely compromised immune systems. Things like heart disease are not considered to be exceptions.
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No, that’s not the “argument.” That’s the blatant lie.
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I’m not saying that. I said “the argument is made”. That is what one hears. Anyway, it depends on what reasoning is used as to what percentages mean.
It’s not a matter of reasoning at all. It’s a matter of understanding how death certificates are filled out.
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