chessman

15 minutes ago, mauGR1 said:

Nice try, but that's just totally unfounded speculation.

It’s a bit more than that. It’s looking at initial data on excess deaths... in most places where they are available they show a lot more extra deaths, more than can be accounted for by reported COvid deaths.

and also looking historically at how virus deaths are counted. They are always adjusted up after mortality data is analysed.

I would actually go further and say this is one of the few things we can be absolutely certain about. 

3 hours ago, SMEinBangkok said:

My lifestyle will not be dictated by frightened people like you.  Decide what is best for yourself and your family and move forward with that.  Leave the rest of us alone.  If tomorrow you decide to become afraid of cars and the fact that some people who drive cars kill others, then I should park my car to make you feel less afraid of walking around?

 

Your personal fear and phobias should never have a say over anyone else's personal freedom. 

 Nice try but you don’t get the choice. Most polls are showing general support for the measures in most countries. 
 

it seems the average person understands the situation a little better than you.

5 minutes ago, mauGR1 said:

Just look at Thailand, 50 (?) covid deaths, and a whole country shut down, if that makes sense to you, i've got nothing more to say

It makes sense to me, even if I think the measures went too far. 

27 minutes ago, NoBrainer said:

Actually in a lot of States in the USA, and some European countries, all of the missing deaths you are talking about (with the exception of Auto accidents0 are still occurring. They are just being reported as Covid 19 deaths. Some intentionally in order to receive more government funds, (same as putting people on ventilators, knowing it will not help them, & most likely even kill them sooner) as well as, many where people were in fact infected with Covid 19, but it was not the actual cause of death.

So taking that into account, the numbers, if skewed at all, it is by a very small margin.

If this was true then deaths in March and April 2020 would be similar to previous years. But they aren’t.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html

4 minutes ago, mauGR1 said:

Nah, sorry, i'm no scientist, but i tend to believe those who say this is just a flu.

It’s a very short informative article. A shame if you don’t want answers to the questions you ask. 

9 minutes ago, mauGR1 said:

Good question,

A good question to which there is a good answer.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/comparing-covid-19-deaths-to-flu-deaths-is-like-comparing-apples-to-oranges/

6 minutes ago, Max69xl said:

You haven't asked yourself why suddenly no one is talking about the common flu which kills >300k worldwide every year? 

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/comparing-covid-19-deaths-to-flu-deaths-is-like-comparing-apples-to-oranges/
 

read this. Short and informative

1 hour ago, Mama Noodle said:

Thats shifting the goalposts. Again, the whole point of the thread which you breathlessly shifted to without question. 

so you would prefer for politicians to open things up, even if they believe that is the wrong thing to do?
 

to be honest, I’m amazed by what is happening in the USA at the moment. Trump, whose every instinct must be to open up, somehow isn’t doing it. 

1 hour ago, CygnusX1 said:

Very interesting article, but on reading it I don’t think it quite supports your position as strongly as you think. For instance, some of the increase in life expectancy was because of fewer car accidents and less cigarette smoking, due to poverty. There was also an increase in the suicide rate, supporting one of my posts above.

If you google “life expectancy vs income”, you’ll find innumerable articles showing there’s a strong link.

Yes, suicides went up but most other causes of death went down. I have seen many posts in this forum making the assumption that economic depressions kill a lot of people. I offered this article as food for thought. My position is right in the middle I think. We have to open the economy but we must be incredibly cautious. Most countries are now taking steps to open up.

43 minutes ago, Mama Noodle said:

am simply showing and providing statistical facts on basic flu deaths for the purposes of bringing into perspective how many people die with no one giving a <deleted>. 

Did you read the article I linked to?
 

the running total of flu deaths is really much much lower every year. 

6 minutes ago, Mama Noodle said:

Some places yes, and others (like the USA) have some people absolutely freaking out. USA for example it was sold as "Flattening the Curve" and has now transitioned by some to "Testing and Tracing" before restrictions can be lifted - which is absurd. 

It makes sense to me that things don’t open up until there is a clear downward trend in numbers and there is enough testing capability to contact trace effectively.
 

Unfortunately, a lot of people would have followed what their politicians told them to do, stayed at home, shut their businesses and this helped reduce numbers of new cases and deaths. They carried out their side of the deal but now the leaders haven’t organised that increase in testing that was needed. It’s a horrible situation. 

1 minute ago, Mama Noodle said:

I'm simply comparing statistics and deaths

Yes but you are comparing statistics that are compiled in different ways. Please read the article I posted. It is very short and informative.

For those who argue that the economy crashing will cost a lot more lives it is interesting to note that during the Great Depression life expectancy actually increased in the USA. 
 

https://www.history.com/news/great-depression-economy-life-expectancy

this is not to say that the consequences will not be terrible for many people but there is no clear link between times of financial hardship and increased mortality.

3 minutes ago, Mayhem11 said:

Compare global stats for Covid 19 and the swine flu epidemic of 2009. No lockdowns or quarantining in 2009.

The running total for swine flu after a whole year was 18,000. The high numbers you may read about for Swine flu was after analysis of death data. The total for Covid 19 will also increase a lot when mortality data is analysed.

10 hours ago, yuyiinthesky said:

The younger ones are asymptotic, most of them don't really notice the infection.

It’s amazing that after a few months, nobody is sure about the number of asymptomatic cases.

found this on an Oxford University page that illustrates the issue

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-what-proportion-are-asymptomatic/

5 minutes ago, Ventenio said:

Why do we want to think we had it?  BECAUSE that means we are strong and covid didn't kill us.  ALSO it terrifies us that if we DIDN"T have it before, wow, that means covid will probably kill us because we got sooo sick on something not as strong.  it's scary. 

I also think it is psychological, it's in the news every day and you start by wondering if you had it and then trying to justify those thoughts. Natural thought process.

I get a cold every year in November/December in Thailand when the weather becomes cooler. I got one this year. I've also had a really mild cold for about two months... Can't remember ever having something that went on for so long. I also have that doubt in my mind.

23 minutes ago, ThailandRyan said:

Ergo, the Covid-19 mutation began to have its new affect and more asymptomatic folks were starting to transmit it during this timeframe, is that the point trying to be made with the new information.  If so then was it because someone played around with the virus and enhanced the abilities....we may never know now will we.....

My point is only that you have to make several large jumps to make this theory work. There doesn't seem to be any solid evidence (yet) there has been a mutation to a more deadly strain.

The fact that there is a generally recognized time frame for how the virus has spread and this matches with overall death data from multiple countries is pretty good evidence to me.

8 hours ago, Monomial said:

The hypothesis can be tested if anyone can get a hold of raw, monthly mortality figures for Thailand including late 2019 and January 2020. The pattern of deaths should be noticeably skewed from earlier years where no virus was present if the speculation is correct.

As far as I know, Thailand don't make this data available. We do have it for other countries though and the The New York Times and Financial Times have been publishing stories about it.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html

https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac846c
 

The fact that overall deaths are spiking in March/April in almost all of the chosen countries and that coincides with officially reported COVID 19 deaths suggests that there weren't a significant amount of community transmission/severe cases before then.

Percentage of people 65 or over in the population.

Cambodia 3.8%

Thailand   9.9%

The UK.    18%

Italy.        21.7%

Number of elderly people is probably a very big factor

22 minutes ago, innosiem said:

and the flu..........?

the (high) flu death numbers that are usually given are the ones where death data has been analyzed and an estimated number is reached. Most of these deaths were never diagnosed with the flu.

A similar thing will happen with Covid 19. When death data is analyzed it will be a lot higher than the current death toll.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/comparing-covid-19-deaths-to-flu-deaths-is-like-comparing-apples-to-oranges/

14 minutes ago, yuyiinthesky said:

There was no early death spike noticed because in the countries around Thailand not many have a combination of the risk factors diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity. Whatever deaths there were did not get noticed, there are enough pneumonia deaths to make it look normal. 

Northern Italy, New York, UK, there was a lot of panic, a lot of misdeclaration of deaths (e.g. saying "from Corona" instead of "with Corona"), a lot of infection of sick people when they came to the hospitals, in the hospitals, and most of all, a very much higher percentage of older people with the risk factors diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.

You have to get away from the assumption that in and around Thailand the same death rate should have happened as it was claimed for Italy and UK at the beginning, and then it fits perfectly.

You're making a lot of assumptions based on one (and only one) case they found in France.

If I understand you correctly, you're explaining excess deaths on people visiting hospitals and then dying because they visited those hospitals. That's pretty far out, isn't it more likely that there were a few outlier early cases but significant community transmission didn't happen until later?

11 minutes ago, tlock said:

I think excess deaths in Sweden vs. excess deaths in places that imposed stricter lockdown is a reasonable indicator of the effectiveness of social distancing and sheltering (not sure where to find those statistics?)

The New York Times and Financial Times have been publishing a lot of data on this.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html

https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac846c
 

it seems the data is limited to what countries make available, we have figures for many European countries but I haven’t seen anything for Thailand, for example.

1 minute ago, CGW said:

Do you ever read what you write? you don't make assumptions, you leap onto them!

You do like to tell people what to think don't you, go on - be wild - reread your posts, even you would have to agree

Haha, and you insult people instead of taking them on with evidence or logic.