Facts about Covid-19: Fully referenced facts about Covid-19, provided by experts in the field, to help readers make a realistic risk assessment (April 18, 2020 Edition)

Swiss Propaganda Research ^ | 04/18/2020

[SeekAndFind]

Below you will find regular, but not daily, updates on medical and political developments.

April 18, 2020

Medical updates

• A new serological study by Stanford University found antibodies in 50 to 85 times more people than previously thought in Santa Clara County, California, resulting in a Covid-19 lethality of 0.12% to 0.2% or even lower (i.e. in the range of severe influenza).
• In a new analysis, the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM) at the University of Oxford argues that the lethality of covid19 (IFR) is between 0.1% and 0.36% (i.e. in the range of a severe influenza). In people over 70 years of age with no serious preconditions, the mortality rate is expected to be less than 1%. For people over 80 years of age, the mortality rate is between 3% and 15%, depending on whether deaths so far were mainly with or from by the disease. In contrast to influenza, child mortality is close to zero. With regard to the high mortality rate in Northern Italy, the research group points out that Italy has the highest antibiotic resistance in Europe. In fact, data from the Italian authorities show that around 80% of the deceased were treated with antibiotics, indicating bacterial superinfections.
• The Finnish epidemiology professor Mikko Paunio from the University of Helsinki has evaluated several international studies in a working paper and comes to a Covid19 lethality (IFR) of 0.1% or less (i.e. in the area of seasonal influenza). According to Paunio, the impression of a higher lethality was created because the virus spread very quickly, especially in multi-generation households in Italy and Spain, but also in cities like New York. The „lockdown“ measures had come too late and had not been effective.
• UK: London’s temporary Nightingale hospital has remained largely empty, with just 19 patients being treated at the facility over the Easter weekend. London’s established hospitals have doubled their ICU capacity, and are so far coping with surge.
• In Canada, 31 people died in an old people’s home after „almost all nursing staff had left the facility in a hurry for fear of the corona virus spreading. Health authorities found the people in the home in Dorval near Montreal only days later – many of the survivors were dehydrated, malnourished and apathetic.“
• A Scottish doctor who also looks after nursing homes writes: „What was the government strategy for nursing homes? The actions taken so far have made the situation much, much worse.“
• In Switzerland, despite Covid19, total mortality in the first quarter of 2020 (until 5th April) was in the medium normal range.

  One reason for this could be the mild flu season due to the mild winter, which has now been partially „offset“ by Covid19.

• According to a report from April 14, Swiss hospitals and even intensive care units continue to be very under-utilized. This again raises the question of where and how exactly the test-positive deaths (avg. age 84) in Switzerland actually occur.
• The President of the German Hospital Association has sounded the alarm: more than 50 percent of all planned operations throughout Germany have been cancelled, and the „operations backlog“ is running into thousands. In addition, 30 to 40% fewer patients with heart attacks and strokes are treated because they no longer dare to go to the hospitals for fear of corona. There were 150,000 free hospital beds and 10,000 free intensive care beds nationwide. In Berlin, only 68 intensive care beds are occupied by corona patients, the emergency clinic with 1000 beds is currently not in use.
• New data of German authorities show that in Germany, too, the reproduction rate of Covid19 had already fallen below the critical value of 1 before the lockdown. General hygiene measures were therefore sufficient to prevent the exponential spread. This had already been shown by the ETH Zurich for Switzerland as well.
• On a French aircraft carrier 1081 soldiers tested positive. So far, almost 50% of them remained symptom-free and about 50% showed mild symptoms. 24 soldiers were hospitalized, one of them is in intensive care (previous illnesses unknown).
• Leading German virologist Christian Drosten thinks it is possible that some people have already built up an effective so-called background immunity against the new corona virus through contact with normal common cold corona viruses.
• Klaus Püschsel, a forensic doctor from Hamburg who has already examined numerous test positive deceased, explains in a new article: „The numbers do not justify the fear of corona“. His findings: „Corona is a relatively harmless viral disease. We have to deal with the fact that Corona is a normal infection and we have to learn to live with it without quarantine“. The fatalities he examined would all have had such serious pre-existing conditions that, „even if that sounds harsh, they would all have died in the course of this year. Püschel becomes even clearer: „The time of the virologists is over. We should now ask others what is the right thing to do in the corona crisis, for example the intensive care doctors.“
• A review on Medscape shows that common cold infections caused by coronaviruses typically decline at the end of April – with or without a lockdown.
• Swiss magazine Infosperber writes: „Fewer corona cases? Just test less!“ The daily number of „new cases“ reported says little about the state of the epidemic. It was negligent to trigger fear with the curve of cumulative test-positive deaths, they argue.
• OffGuardian: Eight more experts questioning the coronavirus panic.

Ventilation with Covid19

Other experts in Europe and the USA have expressed their opinion on the treatment of critical Covid19 patients and strongly advise against invasive ventilation (intubation). Covid19 patients do not suffer from acute respiratory failure (ARDS), but from oxygen deficiency.

• AP: Some doctors moving away from ventilators for virus patients
• Video: Covid-19: Critical Discussion of the Recommendation for Early Intubation
• Video: New York intensive care doctor on Covid19 as a possible diffusion hypoxemia
• Journal: COVID-19 pneumonia: different respiratory treatments for different phenotypes?
• (German) Die WELT: Sterberate bei Beatmungspatienten gibt Rätsel auf

Political updates

• Video: Police violence during corona lockdowns around the world.
• Video: „The Swiss government belongs in prison. A polemic.“
• Video: „Swiss doctors were muzzled, the Federal Council is divided.“ An interview with Dr. med. Stephan Rietiker, the founder of InsideCorona.ch
• A Swiss citizen has sent an urgent application to the Federal Administrative Court and the Federal Council to have the lockdown lifted immediately.
• German economist Norbert Haering explains in several articles how the „corona crisis“ is being used to introduce worldwide monitoring instruments that have been planned for some time in the areas of travel, payments, contact tracing and biometrics.
• Giorgio Agamben, Italian philosopher, on the Corona measures: „A country, indeed a culture is imploding right now, and nobody seems to care. What is going on before our eyes in countries that claim to be civilized?“
• Italian lawyers lodged a complaint against corona measures of the government.
• The German professor of economics Stefan Homburg in DIE WELT: „Why Germany’s lockdown is wrong – and Sweden is doing much better“: „In summary, countries like Sweden, South Korea or Taiwan have acted wisely by not using lockdowns. The virologists there guided the population and politicians through the crisis with a steady hand, instead of unsettling them by constantly changing course. The coronavirus was successfully contained without harming fundamental rights and jobs. Germany should take this policy as a model for itself.“

[wastoute]

You might consider adding articles that explain “Gain of Function” research in Horseshoe Bat Coronavirus, like this one.

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lab-made-coronavirus-triggers-debate-34502 It’s a bit outdated being from 2015 but still terribly relevant.

[Captain7seas]

The list of names on this research paper show the link from the US lab to Wuhan. Included is the name of the Chinese that the Epoch Times video points to as being primarily responsible for the weaponization of the virus.
Shi Zhengli.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/

A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence
Vineet D Menachery,corresponding author1 Boyd L Yount, Jr,1 Kari Debbink,1,2 Sudhakar Agnihothram,3 Lisa E Gralinski,1 Jessica A Plante,1 Rachel L Graham,1 Trevor Scobey,1 Xing-Yi Ge,4 Eric F Donaldson,1 Scott H Randell,5,6 Antonio Lanzavecchia,7 Wayne A Marasco,8,9 Zhengli-Li Shi,4 and Ralph S Bariccorresponding author1,2

[brookwood]

“A new serological study by Stanford University found antibodies in 50 to 85 times more people than previously thought in Santa Clara County, California, resulting in a Covid-19 lethality of 0.12% to 0.2% or even lower (i.e. in the range of severe influenza).”
Here is a link to the study.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1
In the comments it is pointed out that by asking for participants to volunteer using Facebook ads, the study is biased toward people who are worried that they may have Covid19, either because they have cold symptoms or because they had contact with someone who was positive.
One comment
“ Zev Waldman MD • 5 hours ago

I agree with other commenters that people who suspected prior Covid infection (or exposure) are more likely to seek antibody testing than those who did not. “
Another pile of garbage from SeekandFind and Swiss Propaganda Research. Also note that the CDC mortality rate for the flu of about .1% is a percentage of symptomatic cases. About 75% if people who are positive for the regular flu have no syptoms, so on this basis the regular flu has a mortality rate of .025% not .1%
https://www.nhs.uk/news/medical-practice/three-quarters-of-people-with-flu-have-no-symptoms/
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm