COVID-19/Pathology

COVID-19/Pathology
A summary from March 2020
Interest of	Ryan Cole

This is a rapidly evolving area.
Be sure to date content appropriately.

The effects of COVID-19 on humans are a matter of ongoing intense study. It is generally very mild, but for the elderly and infirm it can be fatal, especially (it is suspected) in the case of a high initial dose. Containing it is a serious challenge because it can be asymptomatic but still infectious.

Case fatality

Numbers of infection and deaths from the WHO for 2019/2020 as reported by Ben Swann for Truth in Media on his Youtube channel on 2020-03-18. The base from which the percentage for the fatality rate for the coronavirus is calculated, is the number of confirmed cases. Whereas for the seasonal flu it is the number of estimated cases. So the death rate for the seasonal flu is ~0.1%. If the flu were calculated like the coronavirus, per confirmed cases, the death rate would be around 10%.

COVID-19 has a very widely ranging rate of case fatality which declined steadily as more testing was carried out. It is more fatal to men than women and to those with pre-existing health problems, especially lung complaints. It is more dangerous to the old rather than the young, possibly mainly due to co-morbities. It may have have most impact on Asians. Relatively few cases were initially reported in Africa. It was reported in March 2020 to be more dangerous to those with blood type A.

The Daily Mail suggested on 7 April 2020 that the fatality rate was about 2%.

A peer reviewed April 2020 study by Stanford University put the fatality rate at 0.14% or less.

Uncertainty

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated in a press briefing in March 2020 that "Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died," overlooking the bias towards reporting of symptomatic and serious cases.Craig Murray by contrast, noting the bias of hospital gathered statistics, estimated a rate of about "0.5%", comparable to the Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968/9. On 24 March the BBC wrote that "The UK government's scientific advisers believe that the chances of dying from a coronavirus infection are between 0.5% and 1%."

Inflation of Statistics

Cases of flu precipitously declined in comparison to 2019. In March Prof Walter Ricciardi, scientific adviser to the Italian government, did relate: "The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus". In Germany the president of the Robert Koch Institut confirmed on 20 March that the institution does the accounting in the same way. In late March / early April the United Kingdom and the United States have adopted policy that could lead to a higher number of deaths due to the coronavirus when under the same circumstances these deaths would not have been counted in such a way before. The CDC announced that deaths would be counted as COVID-related without evidence if they were presumed to be so; in its Guidance for Certifying Deaths Due to Coronavirus Disease 2019 from 03. April is advising that: "In cases where a definite diagnosis of COVID–19 cannot be made, but it is suspected or likely (e.g., the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to report COVID–19 on a death certificate as 'probable' or 'presumed'."

Incubation period

#Masks4All: "I protect you, you protect me."

The incubation period is 1-14 days, with a median of 5-6 days Some disease carriers remain asymptomatic.

Infection

Infection occurs through a similar mechanism to traditional influenza, i.e. generally inhalation, possibly also through touch or survival on surfaces. However, COVID is significantly more efficient at entering the lungs, so the virus has a greater R₀ value, meaning it spread more readily. The infectious period was suspected to be about 14 days, but March 2020 research suggested it might be over one month. The initial hope was that the virus might be sensitive to heat, although as of late March 2020 the suspicion was that it was not — but that high humidity could reduce its rate of transmission.

Reinfection?

Some reports have suggested that reinfection may be possible, although as of March 2020 this was unproven, possibly due to faulty testing. Also uncertain was whether re-infection would be milder or more severe.

Treatment

Many drugs have been suggested to treat COVID-19, including Chloroquine, which showed efficacy against the disease in clinical trials in February and March 2020.

Prognosis

Like the (more deadly) SARS and MERS, severe Covid infections can cause permanent lung damage.

Mutations

Two strains of COVID, "l" and "s" have been reported.

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Associated Press	“Posts continue to circulate online falsely claiming that COVID-19 survivors don’t need vaccines because of natural immunity. In fact, that protection is variable and not long-lasting, so vaccines are still recommended.”		30 September 2021
COVID-19/Timeline	“All city residents aged six years or older were eligible and 9,899,828 (92.9%) participated... There were no positive tests amongst 1,174 close contacts of asymptomatic cases... there was no evidence that the identified asymptomatic positive cases were infectious.”	Shiyi Cao Yong Gan Chao Wang Max Bachmann Shanbo Wei Jie Gong Yuchai Huang Tiantian Wang Liqing Li Kai Lu Heng Jiang Yanhong Gong Hongbin Xu Xin Shen Qingfeng Tian Chuanzhu Lv Fujian Song Xiaoxv Yin Zuxun Lu	November 2020
Face mask	“Masks can help reduce your chance of #COVID19 infection by more than 80%.”	Rochelle Walensky	5 November 2021
Elon Musk	“Extremely big difference between died because of or died with. Also, did the person actually have C19 or did they just have C19 symptoms? It’s almost impossible to die without feeling weakness, shortness of breath or other C19 symptoms, unless you were crushed by a falling piano.”	X Elon Musk	2020
Elon Musk	“There is considerable conflation of diagnosis & contraction of “corona”. Actual virality is much lower than it would seem. I think this will turn out to be comparable to other forms of influenza. World War Z it is not”	X Elon Musk	2020
Alexander Myasnikov	“It’s all bullsh*t... It’s all exaggerated. It’s an acute respiratory disease with minimal mortality. Why has the whole world been destroyed? That I don’t know.”	Alexander Myasnikov
David Malcolm Nott	“This disease is so virulent, it's so dangerous and so pathogenic, it causes such high mortality... If you look at David Miliband and you look at his International Rescue Committee. He did some modelling based on the Imperial College London at WHO and in 34 fragile countries he has shown that in the next few weeks if we don't do anything, 500 million or one billion people will become infected and of that 3 million will possibly die... This is a global problem, and we're really all in our little countries dealing with the problems on our own... not our country but other countries are making huge mistakes... What we really really need is a global pandemic executive perhaps which can go to every country in this world and say look, we have learned from this pandemic. We know how to deal with it. We know what the problems are. [Led by who?] Led by David Miliband, without a shadow of a doubt. We've got somebody who is a respectful statesman, politician, had an enormous track record, and he needs to be in charge of it.”	David Malcolm Nott	May 2020

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:The Spartacus COVID-19 Letter	Article	28 September 2021	Institute for Coronavirus Emergence Nonprofit Intelligence	The Spartacus Letter - Rev. 2 (2021-09-28) Spartacus
File:Prof. Maria Rita Gismondo- The situation was never dramatic.pdf	interview		Billy Six	Interview with Italian virologist Maria Rita Gismondo

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