Corona virus fatality rate: Playing with numbers

March 14, 2020
  1. Over the last 50 days (starting January 23rd), 5436 deaths around the world have been attributed to complications after being infected with the Covid-19 coronavirus. While the number of deaths yesterday was 448, the peak may not yet have been reached. Hopefully all the restrictions in place will lead to the peak being reached soon. The global number of deaths over this period has averaged about 110/day. A vast majority of the deaths are of people over 65.
  2. Around 152,000 people die every day (7.7/1000 of population). Around 65% of these die due to age related causes.
  3. Symptoms of influenza rarely lead to testing for the influenza virus. Every year an estimated 290,000 to 650,000 people die in the world due to complications from seasonal influenza (flu) viruses. This figure corresponds to 795 to 1,781 deaths per day due to the seasonal flu.

But:

  • In retrospect it seems that this coronavirus first appeared around November 2019. So some of the deaths attributed to influenza since then may have been due to Covid-19.
  • At least 145,000 people have tested positive for the virus. However people are not generally tested unless symptoms are severe. Many are infected and show no symptoms at all. Many are infected and recover without ever having been diagnosed.
  • The number of people infected is – as an estimate – around 10-20 times the number who have tested positive (1.4 – 3 million).

Even if the number of deaths due to coronavirus is certain, which it is not, the fatality rate depends entirely upon what number is used to divide by:

  • Around 0.07% of all daily deaths
  • Around 0.15 – 0.35% of those infected
  • Around 3.7% of those who have tested positive
  • Around 6 – 15% of daily influenza deaths

Numbers don’t lie but the same numbers can be used in many different ways. They can be used rationally or, more likely, to promote an alarmist agenda or a political agenda.

And they can be used maliciously.

I find the most significant statistic for my own behaviour (and since I am in the risk-age group) is that risk of death increases by a factor of about 50 if I get infected. However, even if I do get infected the chances of survival are around 10 times higher than the chance of dying. It makes sense to exert myself to avoid infection but I don’t need to kill myself to avoid being infected.

 

Tags: ,
Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Disease, Medicine | Comments Off on Corona virus fatality rate: Playing with numbers

Market Sell-Off! Corona Crash! But there can only be sellers if others buy

March 13, 2020

Markets have crashed globally.

The value of stocks has tanked and unrealized wealth has vanished.

“Poof”.

Just like that, your portfolio may soon be worth half of what it was just 10 days ago.

But even in the worst market sell-off, there have to be buyers prepared to buy what sellers will divest.

Warren Buffet’s much quoted line comes to mind:

“Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful” 

I found this text about the Great 1929 Depression on my computer which I probably saved after the 2008/9 crash. Unfortunately I no longer have the author or the source. It does seem correct. Certainly more millionaires were created by the Depression than were destroyed.

Not everyone suffered during the Great Depression. More people became millionaires during this time than in any other time in American history. Opportunities, that were not present during the 1920s economic boom times, suddenly became available. An economic downturn is a good time to start a business. Start-up costs are much lower in a recession than in boom periods. Savvy entrepreneurs edged in and positioned themselves for when the economic climate improved. Many poorly run businesses closed during the Depression years and their equipment and assets could be bought at fireside sales for next to nothing. Commercial rents were cheap and wages were low. There was also time to get the business fundamentals right before increased orders made it too hectic for the entrepreneur to build and test his business model. It was these ‘if you can dream it, you can do it’ Great Depression entrepreneurs that made the best of the crisis to provide a service, or product, for new markets.

Who were some of these maverick entrepreneurs? Some very famous names made their money during the Depression era. In Kentucky, a grandfather, called Colonel Sanders, started serving fried chicken at his gas station. By 1937 he had expended to a 142 seat restaurant due to popular demand. Two young electrical engineering graduates stared a electrical machine business in a rented garage during the 1930s. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard officially became business partners in 1939 with only $538 in investment money.

Many people with small amounts of liquid cash were able to buy bankrupt businesses at bargain prices. Towards the end of the 1930s some business people watched the upsurge in military spending by some countries. The world was preparing for war and those that invested in companies that made in-demand products for the government stood to make lots of money. Companies dealing with shipping, military vehicles, textiles (for uniforms, tents, etc.), metals (copper, steel, aluminum and iron), shipping and petroleum products made a fortune. Well known companies that were bought at this time were John Deere, Reynolds Metals and Douglas Aircraft. 

Another huge opportunity was real estate. During the Depression years, demand was low and thus prices were low as well. Visionary business people knew that real estate values would go up in the future and when they did they used the equity to leverage their business growth and expansions. Those wise folk that were not caught up in the stock market frenzy in the 1920s, and saved their cash, were well positioned to snap up bargain businesses and became millionaires as a result.

There will be winners coming out of the Corona-Depression.

Not everybody who buys will be a winner, but all the Corona Crash winners will be buyers.

Most of those who sell now will be among the losers.

 

Tags:
Posted in Alarmism, Economy | Comments Off on Market Sell-Off! Corona Crash! But there can only be sellers if others buy

Covid-19 global lock-down is a mishmash of fear and precaution

March 12, 2020

Being over 70, I am apparently in the high-risk group if I get infected.

I am sure that all those who are currently battling with containing the outbreak are well-qualified and and are doing their best. But being well-qualified and knowledgeable are not always an indicator of wisdom.  Even given the same level of knowledge, there is a difference between a measured response and an alarmist response. The current panic response to the outbreak seems to me to be more alarmist than measured.

The Twitter and Facebook worlds are ideally suited to spreading alarm. Fact and fiction are blended with the ridiculous and the malicious to give a “tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing”.

  • Don’t touch your own face unless you have washed your hands.
  • Stock-up on toilet paper.
  • Stock-up with food for 14 days. Replenish every day.
  • Wash your hands every 20 minutes.
  • Don’t go to sports events. Complain if the match is cancelled.
  • Stay 1 m away from fellow passengers on public transport.
  • Viruses are necessary for biodiversity.
  • Ban the virus (except in cases of asylum).
  • Ban foreigners who may carry the virus from entering your country.
  • Your own citizens who carry the virus may enter freely.
  • Banning a foreigner carrying the virus is racist.
  • Children are the lowest risk group. Close the schools.
  • The old are at greatest risk. Don’t visit them / lock them up.
  • If you think you have a cold, self-isolate.
  • If you are tested positive, wait it out, don’t self-immolate.
  • If you think a household member is infected, self-isolate.
  • The old who are infected take up the most health resources. Let nature cull those over 65.
  • It is divine punishment for ……
  • Coronavirus transmission is ‘highly sensitive’ to high temperatures. Covid-19 pathogen appears to spread fastest at 8.72° Celsius.
  • Close the world until summer.

The fear-driven response is going to continue for a few months yet. There will be fatalities. But the deaths resulting from the Covid-19 outbreak are still well below the “normal” 1000+ deaths per day due to influenza. At the time of the peak in China in February, deaths reached about 150 in a day (mainly in Wuhan). Yesterday, March 11th, the peaks in Iran and Italy have given a world total of 331 deaths. Some say it is going to get worse.

 

 

Tags: ,
Posted in Alarmism, Disease, Medicine | Comments Off on Covid-19 global lock-down is a mishmash of fear and precaution

Are rights real in this age of entitlement?

March 11, 2020
  1. A right is an entitlement to a privilege.
  2. A privilege is an actual advantage available (whether granted by anybody or not) to a particular person or group. (By analogy, your right is your ownership of another’s debt, an entitlement is that the credit is in your account and a privilege results when it is encashed).
  3. Having an entitlement is no guarantee that the privilege will result.
  4. A grant of an impossible entitlement or an entitlement granted by an incompetent authority cannot be realized as a privilege.
  5. The universe is not in debt to any living creature.
  6. There are no entitlements which flow from the laws of nature as rights of any kind except the obligation to comply with the natural laws.
  7. No living thing is born with any entitlements.
  8. There is no entitlement even to life. Survival is a result, not an entitlement.
  9. The primal drivers for all living things are survival and self-interest.
  10. Humans are not born equal. Each human is born with a unique set of genes and has the potential and the constraints given by that set of genes (nature). All humans are born naked, with no resources, no debts, no liabilities and with only those privileges as may be granted, or liabilities that may be imposed, by the local, surrounding human society.
  11. Humans are not brought up equally. Every individual receives varying amounts and quality of support from the surrounding community (nurture).
  12. Human lives are not equal in value. The value of a human life to its surrounding society is neither static nor a constant. It varies across individuals, across societies and across the lifetime of the individual.
  13. An individual’s capability for behaviour lies within the envelope of what is allowed by an individual’s genes (nature), as enabled or constrained by upbringing (nurture).
  14. An individual’s actual actions are limited first by capability (nature and nurture) and then as motivated or constrained by individual cognition.
  15. Every individual is free to act within his capabilities and his desires but within the physical constraints that the surroundings (environment or society) may have applied.
  16. Human brains give us the ability to reason which, in turn, gives our assessments of self-interest. All human behaviour is governed first by perceived self-interest.
  17. Even apparently altruistic actions are only as a subset of perceived self-interest.
  18. An individual’s immediate, perceived self-interest can override any consideration of causing harm to others.
  19. Coercion, physically or by the application of threats (including by legislation), can change the perception of self-interest.
  20. All societies – from family groups and up to nations – grant their members various privileges conditional always upon their behaviour.
  21. “Acceptable behaviour” is a dynamic, local, value-judgement. It varies across individuals, families, societies and over time.
  22. All societies create legislation to try and coerce “acceptable” behaviour from their members by rewarding “good” behaviour and penalizing “bad” behaviour.
  23. In practice, protecting or rewarding the perpetrators of “bad” behaviour shields and perpetuates that behaviour.
  24. “Improvement” of individual behaviour means eliciting a greater compliance with a society’s standards of behaviour.
  25. Global declarations of entitlements can only be effected (encashed) locally.
  26. There is no global, timeless definition of what constitutes “acceptable” or “barbarous” behaviour which is shared by all 7 billion humans.
  27. No society attempts to, or has the competence to, guarantee that any of its members will not be victims of “unacceptable behaviour” received from others.
  28. Human rights are an imaginary social construct.
  29. All declared human rights are of universally applicable, irrevocable, unconditional entitlements to some privilege of received behaviour.
  30. Declared human rights are free of cost and require no reciprocal duties.
  31. A declaration of human rights in itself creates no social contract.
  32. All claims of human rights are claims against the behaviour received or not received from others.
  33. Human rights entitlements are theorized to apply only after birth and cease with death. (A living murderer retains rights but not so the victim).

 

Tags: ,
Posted in Ethics, Language, Philosophy | Comments Off on Are rights real in this age of entitlement?

Common influenza has killed 20 times more people than coronavirus in the last 2 months

March 8, 2020

The global mortality due to all strains of conventional influenza is greater than 1000 deaths per day (between 400,000 and 600,000 deaths per year). The flu season in northern climes runs from about September to March and most fatalities occur at this time.

The current Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak has resulted in 3,600 deaths, globally, in the last 50 days with over 2,000 just in China.

During the same period influenza has killed at least 50,000 (and more likely around 80,000) around the world.

The number of influenza deaths occur in spite of there being vaccines for some strains of the virus. There is no vaccine yet for Covid-19. There is no “cure” for influenza and neither is there a “cure” for Covid-19. However treatment of influenza is much better established than for the new virus.

Common influenza – even with vaccines available and with better established treatment –  has killed at least 20 times more people than Covid-19 in the last 2 months. So why the unnecessary and ridiculous panic?

I suspect it is because we have now been conditioned by Alarmism and are governed by fear. I note that cowardice is when actions are subordinated to fear (and bravery is when fears are subordinated to actions). The alarmist world has become a more cowardly place.

#coronavirus

Tags: ,
Posted in Alarmism, Disease, Medicine | Comments Off on Common influenza has killed 20 times more people than coronavirus in the last 2 months

MH370: 6 years on

March 8, 2020

8th March 2014.

 

Tags:
Posted in Aviation | Comments Off on MH370: 6 years on

Corona Safety

March 3, 2020

I like this presentation from Siemens.

Corona safety.pdf

 

Tags: ,
Posted in Disease | Comments Off on Corona Safety

Covid-19 and the culling of humans

March 3, 2020

It’s early days yet to have a clear picture of the effects of the Covid-19 coronovirus outbreak.

In all but being formally declared it is pretty close to being a pandemic.

But what is already pretty clear is that it targets and culls humans by age.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/

data from worldometers.info

 

Tags: ,
Posted in Ageing, Medicine | Comments Off on Covid-19 and the culling of humans

All the doomsday predictions throughout history that have come true

February 7, 2020

list:

 

 

end:

 

Tags:
Posted in Alarmism | Comments Off on All the doomsday predictions throughout history that have come true

Woke by the Iowa Caucus shambles

February 4, 2020

I have been dragged out of my self-imposed hibernation by the shambles surrounding the Iowa Caucus. It ranks quite high on the entertainment scale (and certainly higher than the Eurovision song contest trials which are beginning).

The “partial” results are still awaited but the following thoughts occurred:

  1. Nothing wrong with Iowa or its caucus, only with the idiots counting and reporting the Democratic caucus.
  2. Trump won the Republican caucus, and also, it seems, the Democratic one.
  3. The “partial” results that will be first reported are those showing Sanders in the worst possible light.
  4. The cancelled results of the Des Moines Register poll and the delay in the results both – coincidentally of course – deny Sanders momentum and hide the disaster for Biden (who also coincidentally is the darling of the Democratic establishment).
  5. Voter suppression, candidate suppression, result suppression or – for the DNC – all of the above.
  6. Blaming age of voters and unfamiliarity with technology is just to hide an app not fit for purpose and incompetent developers and administrators.

Guaranteed entertainment till November.

Let the games commence.

 

Tags:
Posted in US | Comments Off on Woke by the Iowa Caucus shambles

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »