francois wrote: ↑28 Mar 2020, 02:05
I am not sure I am following you. Can you summarize in a few sentences the facts?
I was thinking a lot about all things Corona.
What follows is not a summary, and especially not in a few sentences. The issue is too complex and there are too many facets to be considered. Or I am just too stupid to boil it all down to a way smaller article.
I finally came to a conclusion how there can be so different opinions all backed up by scientific facts. Or better said: partly by facts.
Many humans tend to be in a echo chamber inside their heads. They use facts and arguments that help their believes or agenda. They attack the weakest arguments of the opposing group, or what they perceive as the weakest points.
And they usually ignore facts and arguments of the opposing side they either cannot disprove or that disproves their own arguments.
Now, we have lots of news and statistics on Corona. So much in fact that it is hard to see two main issues that are the underlying cause of many deaths, and Corona is partly to blame, but other mistakes in the past when it comes to our medial care systems are also partly to blame.
I believe that the long
quote of the Dr. Wodark he has some valid points, but so have the more orthodox who say the Corona infection is different than previous Influenza waves.
I do not care to use as many quotes as I could to back up my claims and arguments, maybe in the days to come I convert this post into a more elaborate article to post on my own blog someday, then I will include many quotes. For now I only use very few links or quotes to back up my more crucial arguments. Cause I do not have that much free time.
Dr. Wodark and others say the medical systems, especially in Spain and Italy got that much downsized that they malfunction already in normal circumstances. That is especially true for hospitals. So far, so true. I presume the same could be said for the medial system in the USA, especially for poorer people. A virus not cares of you have some medical care system or not, it tries to infect as many people as it can. But having no access to medical care means you have to care for yourself, and in the current situation means many people have not the funds to isolate themselves and have others do the shopping for necessities; and also have not the funds to be tested for Corona.
The nosocomial infection are one other issue. These numbers have been too high in most rich countries, and in poorer countries as well. I do not get that for years: in countries like in most EU countries where there is a universal health care system, also true e.g. for Canada, it makes no sense to not do more efficient work against nosocomial infection.
Correct and disciplined disinfection is one major part in keeping nosocomial infection numbers low. The one country to manage that quote well in the last decades and also now is the Netherlands. Of course you first have to pay more for eliminating as much as possible multi-resistant bacteria in hospitals. But patients who went into a hospital for a different treatment e.g. a broken leg who got nosocomial infection are much more costly for a universal health system than paying in advance to keep nosocomial infection as low as possible. In the current corona pandemic the nosocomial infection come back to bite us all in our collective universal health systems butts.
Like Dr. Wodark or the
professor of Immunology Prof. Dr. Stefan Hockertz (telephone interview, in German only, but he raises some very good points) state, a person who died and was tested positive on CoVid-19
not died due to the virus but died with the virus. The cause of death may be a multi-reason one, e.g. the 49% of current deaths in Italy, where the patients had three other pre-existing illnesses. To claim these 1, 2 or 3 pre-existing illnesses had nothing to do with the deaths and only Corona had is unscientific and panic-mongering.
And it tries to get peoples attention away from the basic issues with almost all health systems in the rich but also poorer countries: that over the years money was spend on Big Pharma and on the companies that build and sell expensive examination machinery, while there is proof that neither benefits the patients. But that is greed for you, and the wealthy want to be more wealthy, and when by doing so poorer people suffer the wealthy not cared in the times of old, and they not care nowadays.
So, the critics of the current handling of the Corona pandemic have valid arguments saying that a positive tested person who died having several preexisting illnesses has not died mainly because of Corona, but with Corona. And that the fear-mongering distracts most people from the underlying self-made issues of the health systems in almost all countries, and that a great deal of the reasons is that money was spend in the wrong way (Big Pharma and expensive but less significant examination machinery) and not against nosocomial infections, and not increasing the very much needed numbers of nurses and especially nurses for emergency hospitalisation. Nurses said so for years, and it was ignored for years.
But that is just one side of it all. While the critics are correct on that stating that especially in Spain and Italy the health systems have been inadequate for years and in former years nosocomial infections there have been too high, there sure is a connection to the deaths now claimed to be only due to Corona.
To illustrate the point, here one other quote.
Rava wrote: ↑26 Mar 2020, 06:58
[A] statistic by the Italian health authorities:
I think I need to translate this slide.
On the left side it says
Italy
In Italy as well or in a retirement home
the test is not measuring
any cause of death.
The test only shows
that the sick had contact
with one of the many variants
of SARS viridae.
And on the right:
Dead people with positive SARS2-CoV-Test in Italy
[blue] (1%) no other illnesses
[green] (25%) one other illness
[yellow] (26%) two other illnesses
[red] (49%) three other illnesses
Source: ISS National Health Administration Italy, 17. March 2020
So, 99% of the dead people in Italy tested positive for CoV have had at least one other illness, 49% even had 3 other illnesses.
Only 1% had no other illness.
When 99% of persons who died who tested positive on CoV had other illnesses, is that an obvious proof that all these other illnesses had nothing to do with the death, and only CoV-19 was the cause of death? To me it sounds more like the opposite.
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But that is only one side of the coin. The other side saying that something is different with the current pandemic have valid points as well. The corona virus is able to spread exponentially, and since there are always persons who not get any symptoms in the first 2 to 3 days while being infectious to others helps the virus to spread.
Many experts on infectiology say in almost all modern rich countries the people unlearnt basic rules when it comes to viral infections, and the corona viridae have been treated in the past as part of the Influenza viridae.
Like sneezing into the arm pits, keeping a distance to others of at least 1.5 meters. In the last years we had several thousand deaths due to the common Influenza. But that was never mentioned as big as corona is mentioned now.
The numbers do indeed not differ that much from a severe outbreak of the common influenza of past years. Sill, there is something different. Maybe the number of patients infected by Corona who develop a severe illness may be only double the number of previous influenza spreads, or maybe only threefold.
Double or threefold might sound like much, but so far all deaths in this cold season from November till now including Corona is not much different that a severe season of the common influenza we had some years ago.
Then why the news and numbers that seem so alarming?
Because every person dying who was tested positive for Corona is said to be died doe to Corona. When 49% of patients had 3 preexisting illnesses, it is highly likely most of these patients would have died anyway, with or without Corona, especially when the nosocomial infections numbers in the hospital or residential care home for the elderly being very high.
Both sides have valid points, both sides can back up their opinions by medical facts and statistics. But both sides also are partly wrong.
The critics claim there is nothing unusual with Corona. I think due to the way Corona is able to spread (partly due to the unlearnt by most people precautions against common influenza) exponentially, it is able to overwhelm a medical care system that had severe issues already: underfunded hospitals, too high numbers of nosocomial infections.
The other ones have valid points a s well. Corona is different. It is able to overwhelm the medical system, but not only because of the exponentially steep infection curve, but also because of the issues in the medical systems the critics point out and many news reports on Corona either ignore or not report big enough on: the very same underfunded hospitals and too high numbers of nosocomial infections.
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So, all in all one could say Corona is showing us modern seemingly well-informed people of the rich countries many lacks, lacking in our personal hygiene behaviour in the past years, and also lacks in our medical care systems.
The ongoing issue in our health systems that now comes to bite us in our universal health care butts: the underfunded hospitals. The too high numbers of nosocomial infections. The too low numbers of nurses and especially the too low numbers of emergency hospitalisation nurses.
And of course the one matter with our human behaviour I mentioned at the very top:
That many people tend to be in a personal echo chamber: ignoring arguments of the other side they cannot disproof and only focus on issues of the other side they believe they can proof incorrect.
And the other side does the very same.
In this longer article I tried to illustrate that both sides - the current handling of the Corona pandemic by politicians and media have some valid points.
But the orthodox doctors agreeing that Corona pandemic is different also have valid points.
Lets just hope humanity is able to learn the most basic lessons:
● Learn again the unlearnt basic rules during a Influenza outbreak, and we have that every winter
● Realize that letting the lobby give trillions of € or £ or $ to Big Pharma or for expensive but less significant examination machinery is a severe mistake. This should be stopped.
● Instead spending much more money reducing nosocomial infections since it reduces the very high costs of severe illnesses due to often multi-resistant Infektionsvektoren. [1]
● and spend more money for needed nurses and especially emergency hospitalisation nurses
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[1] Not able to find a translation, this term is often untranslated to be found in medical articles. It means vectors for infection, and can mean bacteria, viridae but also other people. In the case of a Corona infection, the most important Infektionsvektoren are the Corona virus itself, and humans are the other.