Deaths in the EU are on the wane, and more slowly in the US as well. But Brazil is another matter.
In addition to being the new epicenter, Brazil’s Indigenous People are Dying at an Alarming Rate.
Far from hospitals and often lacking basic infrastructure, Brazil’s indigenous people are dying at an alarming rate from Covid-19 with little help in sight.
The mortality rate is double that of the rest of Brazil’s population, according to advocacy group Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) which tracks the number of cases and deaths among the country’s 900,000 indigenous people.
APIB has recorded more than 980 officially confirmed cases of coronavirus and at least 125 deaths, which suggests a mortality rate of 12.6 percent — compared to the national rate of 6.4 percent.
US Deaths Approach 100,000
Meanwhile, the chart shows US deaths will top the 100,000 mark within a week, most likely a few days.
Daily Confirmed Covid-19 Deaths
Brazil, India, and Russia are in uptrends, Brazil alarmingly so.
Flattening Curves
The European Union has flattened the case curve more than the US.
Yet, whereas the US was the leading contributor of cases, it’s now the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, there are massive undercounts in Brazil, Russia, India, and Africa. So globally, it’s worse than it looks.
In the US, the primary concerns have shifted significantly.
US Primary Concern Shift
- Reopening Too Soon
- Abandoning Social Distancing Too Soon
- Return of Covid-19 in Autumn
- Vaccine will not be ready in time or will not work
Reopening is fine, and arguably overdue. But by all means, get out and enjoy the sunshine.
But that does not mean throwing caution to the wind. Packed restaurants, bars, and churches are not good to say the least.
Sharing microphones in crowded bars is a definite no-no regardless of what officials permit.
For now, my karaoke weekends will have to wait.
Mish
It’s time to open up the WHOLE economy and get rid of these silly masks.
The media, various MD’s, politicians such as yourself and government health officers everywhere have seemingly joined together to try and shame people into continuing to wear silly masks, under the premise that asymptomatic transmission will result in others contacting the CV19 virus.
Yet, a bit of research turned up this rather important statement from the WHO itself, which all of the above conveniently ignore.
“Asymptomatic transmission
An asymptomatic laboratory-confirmed case is a person infected with COVID-19 who does not develop symptoms.
There are few reports of laboratory-confirmed cases who are truly asymptomatic, and to date, there has been no documented asymptomatic transmission. This does not exclude the possibility that it may occur. Asymptomatic cases have been reported as part of contact tracing efforts in some countries.”
As you can see, there has NOT been ANY confirmed case of asymptomatic transmission of CV19 in the lab!
Most common argument I hear when I explain to people what their statistical risk of death is, is that the mask will prevent them from accidentally infecting an elderly person. I then explain that they should in that case wear a REAL mask. They shrug. The lockdowns continue.
The only statistic I’m interested in is the year-over-year increase in number of deaths. Everything else is way too subjective.
Agreed and here is an article that states the same thing:
Focus on the Covid-19 Death Rate
Gregory van Kipnis
– May 24, 2020
YOY change in deaths is not very reliable because COVID-19 has obviously only caused additional deaths while the lockdown has probably caused some decreases and some increases.
Trump finally put a quarantine today on Brazil travelers. You can still fly to and from Mexico with no quarantine.
Don’t forget Indonesia. The numbers are low there because of lack of testing. Social distancing has also been deemed a failure over there.
But then again hospitals aren’t overwhelmed, so who knows.
Most of Indonesia’s poor and that is the majority , are dying at home and given their religious beliefs, buried almost immediately. The true numbers will never be known.
It seems that most hot, tropical countries have far less. Brazil seems to be an exception but many indigenous people are extremely depressed economically and socially, have slightly different immune systems/microbiomes, and also some of the Brazilian city barrios are real hell-holes with millions packed together in extreme poverty, so it’s a slightly special case.
Meanwhile, another Nobel Laureate kicks in:
Note: this is in globalist-friendly yahoo.ca. You can’t get more mainstream than this. The coronavirus pandemic is basically over.
And it never really happened. It’s been an over-projection due to deliberate propaganda to engender fear. The virus is real, but it has been used for nefarious ends and continuing to analyse the thing as if it is solely a medical event is a little silly.
The 73-year-old has no background as an epidemiologist, but he assessed the outbreak in China and prepared a paper based on his own calculations. Most countries, he predicted, would suffer a Covid-19 death rate worth around an extra month in excess deaths over the calendar year.
“In Europe, I don’t think that anything actually stopped the virus other than some kind of burnout,” he added. “There’s a huge number of people who are asymptomatic so I would seriously imagine that by the time lockdown was finally introduced in the UK the virus was already widely spread. They could have just stayed open like Sweden by that stage and nothing would have happened.”
BUT TESTS IN SWEDEN, ITALY AND SPAIN SHOW ONLY 5% HAVE BEEN EXPOSED TO DATE–IT AINT OVER
You might be right that it ‘ain’t over.’ But usually the virus picks off the weakest first, and then, as it weakens, so also does its ability to kill off members of the population. So even though it might still be making the rounds for a while, it’s going to have less and less impact.
Also, according to some, initial 60% figure for herd immunity is off because it assumes 100% of population gets exposed. Apparently it’s more like half the population gets exposed so herd immunity is achieved around 30%, which some places may be close to already.
In any case, the bottom line is that it isn’t nearly as bad as far too many people confidently predicted. The reaction has been far too costly and panic-stricken, wreaking great psychological, financial and political damage. And far too many people stoking up the panic were gunning for that sort of damage in so doing. At least 50% of what has been going on has nothing to do with the virus or medicine.
I’d bet heavily that Brazil is generally not testing in the favelas, and therefore not counting infections/deaths there. Like India and some others, the slums don’t exist in this crisis and resources are spent elsewhere.
You say population adjusted Brazil is…, but looking at the deaths/million, Brazil looks better than all you list (except Russia).
“APIB has recorded more than 980 officially confirmed cases of coronavirus and at least 125 deaths, which suggests a mortality rate of 12.6 percent — compared to the national rate of 6.4 percent.”
It is still 1/10,000 in that group.
“Population adjusted Brazil is new epicentre”
I think that is wrong. Brazil is “trending” , but for total cases per million (and leaving aside reporting errors from whichever country) it is 51st on the list at
Click the tab “total cases per million” on the data table for countries, click again if it lists lowest first.
???
As for rate, for now Brasil is listed @ 15000 new cases daily for @ pop of 200 million , US flattened down at 30000 cases daily for pop of 300 million. Probably some other countries trended faster and flattened higher.
Figures everywhere are questionable, but the reality of the virus in Brasil is just going to be more evident because they don’t have the infrastructure to deal with infected and fatalities.
For country comparisons demographic is very important, just reading Africa 60% is under 25 yrs. So a whole load of data (we don’t have, because of inaccurate reporting) is needed to start to guess what is really happening
OMG! I didn’t realize you can still fly between US and heavily infected Latin American cities. We are acting like we want to fail.
I fully expect a 2nd wave now that the people believe the danger is over. They will do all the wrong things and give this virus a second wind..
We are now in the “reaping the dividends from the first wave” phase i.e. cases are down because of the shut down and social distancing. Pretty soon, we’ll be in the “reaping the dividends from the first opening” phase where cases will go back up and there will be another scramble for ventilators.
Yes Sir, unless the heat kills it, that is the only way out.
There’s another theory out there which is more observation-based than proven, namely that these things seem to have a life-cycle of their own. Although some do come in waves, most of them don’t: they storm in, burn bright for a month or so, then taper off. We don’t really know what viruses are exactly, and we don’t really know how antibodies develop or whatever. We don’t really know how our immune systems work in the microbiome and so forth. There is A LOT we don’t know, but much that we observe and can make reasonable inferences therefrom.
So some believe in the second wave.
Some believe that quarantining the healthy is the way to go.
Others believe different approaches are better.
And some believe that the second wave theory is flimsy at best.
At this point in the US, given warmer weather and 2 months lockdown and isolation, it’s time to open up and stop being so chicken about the whole thing.
But many won’t believe that either. Those that don’t, should stay home and keep undermining society as a whole and their own immune system in particular. It’s your choice; it shouldn’t be the government’s, nor especially an individual governor or whatever. Time to end the madness.
I think you’re being quick to call reopening “fine” and Brazil the new epicenter Mitch. The US is still number one in many aspects of your chart above.
When looking at the new cases trend, there are early signs of a bottoming (here in Canada too btw). People are getting antsy and calling things “fine” too soon. We will have a second wave well before August. And because we’re starting from a base of 1M+ (known) infections, the upswing will be brutal.
A new strain?
In Brazil, 15 percent of deaths have been people under 50 — a rate more than 10 times greater than in Italy or Spain. In Mexico, the trend is even more stark: Nearly one-fourth of the dead have been between 25 and 49. In India, officials reported this month that nearly half of the dead were younger than 60. In Rio de Janeiro state, more than two-thirds of hospitalizations are for people younger than 49.
By the way, direct flights from Brazil/USA are still operating…
No difference in virus. Just a difference is the healthcare system. This virus will kill someone without supplemental oxygen.
The US will suffer the same fate at some point in the future. The next lockdown will be much to late.
Compounding growth has this effect.
Latin American populations are much younger than European ones. On Aircraft carriers, you can be pretty sure almost all dead and infected are under 50….
Until someone can prove it wrong, I’ll also continue sticking to the model that externally applied viral load matters. The more virus you are doused in, the worse your prognosis, all else being equal. And once you accept that, you’ll see that the greater the number of infected people you are in contact with, the more virus you are infected by. Hence the worse your prognosis. For any given age group, preexisting comorbidity etc.
So, in countries where people distance, then even those people who do get infected, will statistically have been infected by fever others over less time. Hence have been doused in less virus. Hence will get infected and sick, but less severely so, than in countries where people’s behavior allow for increased total amount of exposure to already infecteds.
More formally, the pandemic runs away exponentially not only in the dimension of number of infecteds, but also in expected severity of infection. For any given cohort.
Whether such models are correct or not, is ultimately an empirical question (medicine is not logic, math nor economics..). But until models with the above properties are reliably refuted empirically, I see little reason why the “default” assumption, should be that inhaling one given “dose” of a pathogen, does not differ in any way from having your lungs stuffed to the gills by a million such doses.
Good analysis. I’m kind of amazed that India is managing to control things so well given the population density there, though I agree that reporting is probably not very accurate.
I would like to see the testing breakdown by income in India. I would think they are testing middle and upper incomes while neglecting lower caste peoples.
Reopening = More Covid cases.
That was the plan all along. The closing was to allow hospitals time to get prepared. Then something happened. It became a solution.
It’s not a solution. It’s a stopgap. The solutions are herd immunity or a vaccine.
A warp speed vaccine is a pipe dream at this point. Mid-2021 would be a miracle.
There will be more lockdown. My state will be out of hospital beds by July at current climb rates.
Brazil looks smart for realizing this early.
A vaccine is a pipe dream. There never has been an effective vaccine against Corona viruses, not even one in veterinary populations, where precautions are far lower than for humans. Not only that, you can get a Corona virus a second time, showing that protection is ephemeral, even against the very same virus (We know from cold viruses that some of the same ones are around as 40 years ago).
Why is that? Well, one reason is that the epithelial cells in you respiratory tract targeted by the virus, from the point of view of your immune system, are actually the outside of your body, much like skin. One of those promising candidate vaccines did provoke an antibody response, but all (100%) of the monkey were nevertheless infected when exposed to the virus.
I think there will be a vaccine at some point but realistically 3-5 years sounds about right. That’s mostly hope speaking though.
You make a very good point though and at this point you are completely correct.
Regardless we will probably get to herd infection before a vaccine is made.
I just hope our bodies can build limiting immunities to this virus so even if reinfected the body can fight it quickly like a common cold.
There was a vaccine for SARS that was safe and effective in Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials. By the time it was ready to go into Phase 3 trials, SARS was gone, and no one was willing to pay for the Phase 3 trials. Thus, while there is no reason to believe it would not have succeeded in the Phase 3 trials, since the Phase 3 trials were not done, it is technically correct that there was “never a vaccine”. Still, there is no reason to believe that they can not develop one for SARS-COV2.
As for how long the immunity lasts from an infection, that is unknown. For ec43 and 229e, immunity is very short, and you can catch it again after only about 4 months. For SARS immunity lasted several years. Because of the various approaches being used for vaccines for SARS-COV2, it would seem that some would confer longer immunity than others, but only time will tell how long that immunity will be.
There are lots of other unknowns as well. Can the body completely clear itself of Covid19, or will it return as some point, as happens with come viruses? Will it leave lasting damage the manifests in other ways in the future and reduces the quality of life for those who have had it? Will a second infection, after immunity wears off be worse than the first time, or more mild? Will SARS-COV2 vanish on it’s own from the world, and never bother us again? Just because we don’t know the answers, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t aggressively pursue options that might be beneficial.
You conveniently forget: HCQ + zinc is a proven prophylactic and early infection therapeutic at this point.
If people remember, there is no cause for alarm.
We can’t have that, now, can we?