If you want some good news that I haven't seen in the media at all, then here you go. The new coronavirus isn't hitting nations where it is hot very hard. Of the 75 countries that have reported at least 10 deaths to the virus, 20 of them are predominantly south of the Tropic of Cancer. If you sort those countries by percentage of the population that has died, the top twenty are all predominantly north of that latitude, with Iran and the United States the only two that aren't entirely north of it.
That doesn't prove that the new virus has a seasonal dependence and doesn't spread as well in hot weather. But it is circumstantial evidence in that direction. If the virus doesn't spread nearly as well in the summer, like influenza or other coronaviruses, then that will greatly help to limit its spread.
It's taken much longer than expected, but it looks like social distancing has started to slow the exponential growth in deaths. We've gone from doubling every 3 days, to every 5. That's a 93% reduction in projected deaths over the next 30 days, so fairly significant.
It's a shame many Americans have refused to obey guidelines to slow the spread. It likely cost tens of thousands of lives and prolonged the time it's going to take before we can return to normal.
The fourth cholera pandemic of the 19th century began in the Ganges Delta of the Bengal region and traveled with Muslim pilgrims to Mecca. In its first year, the epidemic claimed 30,000 of 90,000 pilgrims.[2]
Cholera spread throughout the Middle East and was carried to Russia,
Europe, Africa and North America, in each case spreading via travelers
from port cities and along inland waterways.
The pandemic reached Northern Africa in 1865 and spread to sub-Saharan Africa, killing 70,000 in Zanzibar in 1869–70.[3] Cholera claimed 90,000 lives in Russia in 1866.[4] The epidemic of cholera that spread with the Austro-Prussian War (1866) is estimated to have taken 165,000 lives in the Austrian Empire, including 30,000 each in Hungary and Belgium, and 20,000 in the Netherlands.[5]
In June 1866, a localized epidemic in the East End of London claimed 5,596 lives, just as the city was completing construction of its major sewage and water treatment systems; the East End section was not quite complete.[6] It was also caused by the city's overcrowding in the East End, which helped the disease to spread more quickly in the area. Epidemiologist William Farr identified the East London Water Company as the source of the contamination. Farr made use of prior work by John Snow and others, pointing to contaminated drinking water as the likely cause of cholera in an 1854 outbreak. In the same year, the use of contaminated canal water in local water works caused a minor outbreak at Ystalyfera in South Wales. Workers associated with the company, and their families, were most affected, and 119 died.
In 1867, Italy lost 113,000 to cholera, and 80,000 died of the disease in Algeria.[3]
Outbreaks in North America in the 1870s killed some 50,000 Americans as
cholera spread from New Orleans via passengers along the Mississippi
River and to ports on its tributaries.
The Spanish flu, also known as the 1918 flu pandemic, was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic.
Lasting from January 1918 to December 1920, it infected 500 million
people – about a quarter of the world's population at the time. The
death toll is estimated to have been anywhere from 17 million to
50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in human history.[2]
To maintain morale, World War I
censors minimized early reports of illness and mortality in Germany,
the United Kingdom, France, and the United States. Newspapers were free to report the epidemic's effects in neutral Spain, such as the grave illness of King Alfonso XIII,
and these stories created a false impression of Spain as especially
hard hit. This gave rise to the name Spanish flu. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify with certainty the pandemic's geographic origin, with varying views as to its location.
Most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill the very young
and the very old, with a higher survival rate for those in between, but
the Spanish flu pandemic resulted in a higher than expected mortality
rate for young adults.[3]
Scientists offer several possible explanations for the high mortality
rate of the 1918 influenza pandemic. Some analyses have shown the virus
to be particularly deadly because it triggers a cytokine storm, which ravages the stronger immune system of young adults.[4] In contrast, a 2007 analysis of medical journals from the period of the pandemic found that the viral infection was no more aggressive than previous influenza strains.[5][6] Instead, malnourishment, overcrowded medical camps and hospitals, and poor hygiene promoted bacterial superinfection. This superinfection killed most of the victims, typically after a somewhat prolonged death bed.[7][8]
The 2009 swine flu pandemic was an influenza pandemic that lasted from January 2009 to August 2010, and the second of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus (the first being the 1918–1920 Spanish flu
pandemic), albeit a new strain. First described in April 2009, the
virus appeared to be a new strain of H1N1, which resulted from a
previous triple reassortment of bird, swine, and human flu viruses further combined with a Eurasian pig flu virus,[10] leading to the term "swine flu".[11]
Some studies estimated that 11 to 21 percent of the global population
at the time—or around 700 million to 1.4 billion people (of a total 6.8
billion)—contracted the illness. This was more than the number of people
infected by the Spanish flu pandemic,[12][13] but only resulted in about 284,000 (range from 150,000 to 575,000) fatalities for the 2009 pandemic.[14]
A follow-up study done in September 2010 showed that the risk of
serious illness resulting from the 2009 H1N1 flu was no higher than that
of the yearly seasonal flu.[15] For comparison, the WHO estimates that 250,000 to 500,000 people die of seasonal flu annually.[9]
Unlike most strains of influenza, the Pandemic H1N1/09 virus does not disproportionately infect adults older than 60 years; this was an unusual and characteristic feature of the H1N1 pandemic.[16] Even in the case of previously healthy people, a small percentage develop pneumonia or acute respiratory distress syndrome
(ARDS). This manifests itself as increased breathing difficulty and
typically occurs three to six days after initial onset of flu symptoms.[17][18] The pneumonia caused by flu can be either direct viral pneumonia or a secondary bacterial pneumonia. A November 2009 New England Journal of Medicine article recommended that flu patients whose chest X-ray indicates pneumonia receive both antivirals and antibiotics.[19]
In particular, it is a warning sign if a child seems to be getting
better and then relapses with high fever, as this relapse may be
bacterial pneumonia.
The idea of human sacrifice has its roots in deep prehistory,[4] in the evolution of human behaviour.
From its historical occurrences it seems mostly associated with
neolithic or nomadic cultures, on the emergent edge of civilization.
Human sacrifice has been practised on a number of different
occasions and in many different cultures. The various rationales behind
human sacrifice are the same that motivate religious sacrifice in
general. Human sacrifice is intended to bring good fortune and to pacify
the gods, for example in the context of the dedication of a completed
building like a temple or bridge.
In ancient Japan, legends talk about hitobashira ("human pillar"), in which maidens were buried alive at the base or near some constructions to protect the buildings against disasters or enemy attacks,[5] and almost identical accounts appear in the Balkans (The Building of Skadar and Bridge of Arta).
For the re-consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs reported that they killed about 80,400 prisoners over the course of four days. According to Ross Hassig, author of Aztec Warfare, "between 10,000 and 80,400 persons" were sacrificed in the ceremony.[6]
Human sacrifice can also have the intention of winning the gods' favour in warfare. In Homeric legend, Iphigeneia was to be sacrificed by her father Agamemnon to appease Artemis so she would allow the Greeks to wage the Trojan War.
In some notions of an afterlife, the deceased will benefit from victims killed at his funeral. Mongols, Scythians, early Egyptians and various Mesoamerican chiefs could take most of their household, including servants and concubines,
with them to the next world. This is sometimes called a "retainer
sacrifice", as the leader's retainers would be sacrificed along with
their master, so that they could continue to serve him in the afterlife.
Another purpose is divination from the body parts of the victim. According to Strabo, Celts stabbed a victim with a sword and divined the future from his death spasms.[7]
Headhunting
is the practice of taking the head of a killed adversary, for
ceremonial or magical purposes, or for reasons of prestige. It was found
in many pre-modern tribal societies.
Human sacrifice may be a ritual practiced in a stable society, and may even be conducive to enhance societal bonds (see: Sociology of religion), both by creating a bond unifying the sacrificing community, and in combining human sacrifice and capital punishment,
by removing individuals that have a negative effect on societal
stability (criminals, religious heretics, foreign slaves or prisoners of
war). However, outside of civil religion, human sacrifice may also result in outbursts of blood frenzy and mass killings that destabilize society. The bursts of human sacrifice during European witch-hunts,[8] or during the French Revolutionary Reign of Terror, show similar sociological patterns[citation needed] (see also Moral panic).
ATHENS, Nov. 3 — Excavations on the
southern Mediterranean island of Crete have revealed, along with rare
artifacts, a religious drama played out in a Minoan temple 3,500 years
ago in an advanced culture's last hour.
The
dig at the village of Arhanes unearthed both evidence of the Minoans’
new capital and the first proof of a human sacrifice there, clearly
designed as a desperate attempt to appease the gods shortly before the
city was ruined by an earthquake about 1650 B.C.
An issue in the US is reporting deaths on the virus. Unlike China which is incentivized not to report deaths, the US is incentivized to report more deaths. Most other countries with socialized medicine are also incentivized to under report deaths. It's estimated that 25~50% of the reported deaths were not caused by Covid-19. This is because the assumption is that a death is caused by Covid-19 if the person tested positive for it or showed symptoms of it even if a more obvious cause is present. Hospitals may also choose to misreport this because they get supplemental income when treating a Covid-19 patient. Recent reporting shows that Covid-19 will not be seasonal. Right now a worry is that people who have a minute risk from this virus are not being infected by it increasing heard immunity. This is important in case there is not a way to treat more vulnerable populations. By increasing those with anti-bodies it decreases the spread. Preventative treatment is making sure any underlying conditions are under control, getting enough sleep, and getting enough exercise.
Based on those numbers, it looks like the disease doesn't get that bad until you're old. The state of Indiana has been choosing residents at random and testing them, and concluded that a few percent of the population has had the disease, and the death rate at least in that state is about 0.7%.
I'm going to predict that, at least in the United States, COVID-19 will not be the leading cause of death for any substantial age range this year. That will partially be due to the various countermeasures taken, but it's also far from being a cataclysmic disaster.
Comments
That doesn't prove that the new virus has a seasonal dependence and doesn't spread as well in hot weather. But it is circumstantial evidence in that direction. If the virus doesn't spread nearly as well in the summer, like influenza or other coronaviruses, then that will greatly help to limit its spread.
The fourth cholera pandemic of the 19th century began in the Ganges Delta of the Bengal region and traveled with Muslim pilgrims to Mecca. In its first year, the epidemic claimed 30,000 of 90,000 pilgrims.[2] Cholera spread throughout the Middle East and was carried to Russia, Europe, Africa and North America, in each case spreading via travelers from port cities and along inland waterways.
The pandemic reached Northern Africa in 1865 and spread to sub-Saharan Africa, killing 70,000 in Zanzibar in 1869–70.[3] Cholera claimed 90,000 lives in Russia in 1866.[4] The epidemic of cholera that spread with the Austro-Prussian War (1866) is estimated to have taken 165,000 lives in the Austrian Empire, including 30,000 each in Hungary and Belgium, and 20,000 in the Netherlands.[5]
In June 1866, a localized epidemic in the East End of London claimed 5,596 lives, just as the city was completing construction of its major sewage and water treatment systems; the East End section was not quite complete.[6] It was also caused by the city's overcrowding in the East End, which helped the disease to spread more quickly in the area. Epidemiologist William Farr identified the East London Water Company as the source of the contamination. Farr made use of prior work by John Snow and others, pointing to contaminated drinking water as the likely cause of cholera in an 1854 outbreak. In the same year, the use of contaminated canal water in local water works caused a minor outbreak at Ystalyfera in South Wales. Workers associated with the company, and their families, were most affected, and 119 died.
In 1867, Italy lost 113,000 to cholera, and 80,000 died of the disease in Algeria.[3] Outbreaks in North America in the 1870s killed some 50,000 Americans as cholera spread from New Orleans via passengers along the Mississippi River and to ports on its tributaries.The Spanish flu, also known as the 1918 flu pandemic, was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic. Lasting from January 1918 to December 1920, it infected 500 million people – about a quarter of the world's population at the time. The death toll is estimated to have been anywhere from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in human history.[2]
To maintain morale, World War I censors minimized early reports of illness and mortality in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States. Newspapers were free to report the epidemic's effects in neutral Spain, such as the grave illness of King Alfonso XIII, and these stories created a false impression of Spain as especially hard hit. This gave rise to the name Spanish flu. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify with certainty the pandemic's geographic origin, with varying views as to its location.
Most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill the very young and the very old, with a higher survival rate for those in between, but the Spanish flu pandemic resulted in a higher than expected mortality rate for young adults.[3] Scientists offer several possible explanations for the high mortality rate of the 1918 influenza pandemic. Some analyses have shown the virus to be particularly deadly because it triggers a cytokine storm, which ravages the stronger immune system of young adults.[4] In contrast, a 2007 analysis of medical journals from the period of the pandemic found that the viral infection was no more aggressive than previous influenza strains.[5][6] Instead, malnourishment, overcrowded medical camps and hospitals, and poor hygiene promoted bacterial superinfection. This superinfection killed most of the victims, typically after a somewhat prolonged death bed.[7][8]
The Spanish flu was the first of two pandemics caused by the H1N1 influenza virus; the second was the swine flu in 2009.The 2009 swine flu pandemic was an influenza pandemic that lasted from January 2009 to August 2010, and the second of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus (the first being the 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic), albeit a new strain. First described in April 2009, the virus appeared to be a new strain of H1N1, which resulted from a previous triple reassortment of bird, swine, and human flu viruses further combined with a Eurasian pig flu virus,[10] leading to the term "swine flu".[11] Some studies estimated that 11 to 21 percent of the global population at the time—or around 700 million to 1.4 billion people (of a total 6.8 billion)—contracted the illness. This was more than the number of people infected by the Spanish flu pandemic,[12][13] but only resulted in about 284,000 (range from 150,000 to 575,000) fatalities for the 2009 pandemic.[14] A follow-up study done in September 2010 showed that the risk of serious illness resulting from the 2009 H1N1 flu was no higher than that of the yearly seasonal flu.[15] For comparison, the WHO estimates that 250,000 to 500,000 people die of seasonal flu annually.[9]
Unlike most strains of influenza, the Pandemic H1N1/09 virus does not disproportionately infect adults older than 60 years; this was an unusual and characteristic feature of the H1N1 pandemic.[16] Even in the case of previously healthy people, a small percentage develop pneumonia or acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). This manifests itself as increased breathing difficulty and typically occurs three to six days after initial onset of flu symptoms.[17][18] The pneumonia caused by flu can be either direct viral pneumonia or a secondary bacterial pneumonia. A November 2009 New England Journal of Medicine article recommended that flu patients whose chest X-ray indicates pneumonia receive both antivirals and antibiotics.[19] In particular, it is a warning sign if a child seems to be getting better and then relapses with high fever, as this relapse may be bacterial pneumonia.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice
The idea of human sacrifice has its roots in deep prehistory,[4] in the evolution of human behaviour. From its historical occurrences it seems mostly associated with neolithic or nomadic cultures, on the emergent edge of civilization.
Human sacrifice has been practised on a number of different occasions and in many different cultures. The various rationales behind human sacrifice are the same that motivate religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice is intended to bring good fortune and to pacify the gods, for example in the context of the dedication of a completed building like a temple or bridge.
In ancient Japan, legends talk about hitobashira ("human pillar"), in which maidens were buried alive at the base or near some constructions to protect the buildings against disasters or enemy attacks,[5] and almost identical accounts appear in the Balkans (The Building of Skadar and Bridge of Arta).
For the re-consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs reported that they killed about 80,400 prisoners over the course of four days. According to Ross Hassig, author of Aztec Warfare, "between 10,000 and 80,400 persons" were sacrificed in the ceremony.[6]
Human sacrifice can also have the intention of winning the gods' favour in warfare. In Homeric legend, Iphigeneia was to be sacrificed by her father Agamemnon to appease Artemis so she would allow the Greeks to wage the Trojan War.
In some notions of an afterlife, the deceased will benefit from victims killed at his funeral. Mongols, Scythians, early Egyptians and various Mesoamerican chiefs could take most of their household, including servants and concubines, with them to the next world. This is sometimes called a "retainer sacrifice", as the leader's retainers would be sacrificed along with their master, so that they could continue to serve him in the afterlife.
Another purpose is divination from the body parts of the victim. According to Strabo, Celts stabbed a victim with a sword and divined the future from his death spasms.[7]
Headhunting is the practice of taking the head of a killed adversary, for ceremonial or magical purposes, or for reasons of prestige. It was found in many pre-modern tribal societies.
Human sacrifice may be a ritual practiced in a stable society, and may even be conducive to enhance societal bonds (see: Sociology of religion), both by creating a bond unifying the sacrificing community, and in combining human sacrifice and capital punishment, by removing individuals that have a negative effect on societal stability (criminals, religious heretics, foreign slaves or prisoners of war). However, outside of civil religion, human sacrifice may also result in outbursts of blood frenzy and mass killings that destabilize society. The bursts of human sacrifice during European witch-hunts,[8] or during the French Revolutionary Reign of Terror, show similar sociological patterns[citation needed] (see also Moral panic).
ATHENS, Nov. 3 — Excavations on the southern Mediterranean island of Crete have revealed, along with rare artifacts, a religious drama played out in a Minoan temple 3,500 years ago in an advanced culture's last hour.
The dig at the village of Arhanes unearthed both evidence of the Minoans’ new capital and the first proof of a human sacrifice there, clearly designed as a desperate attempt to appease the gods shortly before the city was ruined by an earthquake about 1650 B.C.
smutsigaliam.com - lista med grymma porrsidor
Recent reporting shows that Covid-19 will not be seasonal. Right now a worry is that people who have a minute risk from this virus are not being infected by it increasing heard immunity. This is important in case there is not a way to treat more vulnerable populations. By increasing those with anti-bodies it decreases the spread. Preventative treatment is making sure any underlying conditions are under control, getting enough sleep, and getting enough exercise.
https://www.conservativereview.com/news/horowitz-one-chart-exposes-lie-behind-universal-lockdowns/
Based on those numbers, it looks like the disease doesn't get that bad until you're old. The state of Indiana has been choosing residents at random and testing them, and concluded that a few percent of the population has had the disease, and the death rate at least in that state is about 0.7%.
I'm going to predict that, at least in the United States, COVID-19 will not be the leading cause of death for any substantial age range this year. That will partially be due to the various countermeasures taken, but it's also far from being a cataclysmic disaster.