All of it is OFF by days and magnitude. What is the curious thing? All of the spikes, even though they don’t match precisely, occur approximately the same time (within a few days) before the WHO Beijing meeting and site visits in Shenzhen and Guangdong.
And then the incidence recedes to some other rate, as soon as the WHO authorities have vacated the country after their inspections and meetings.
THEREFORE, I am skeptical of the numbers being reported out of China and do not give China a pass for accurate reporting. In my opinion, backed up by an assessment of the various reports available, something trouty fishy is going on here.
Shouldn’t people be skeptical of both China and the USA’s response to this pandemic?
Edit: And I’m not saying “fuck the WHO.” They are credible. They are trying to do their jobs. However, I am saying China may very well have one over on them and we just don’t know it yet. Healthy skepticism. Not conspiracy theories.
That’s more like it. Mostly agreement about your final assessment.
If you look at the graphs that you detail, though, they don’t show the misalignment you think they do. The Hopkins data is based on reported cases. The WHO data backtraces for each patient from the report to the onset date. That makes sense in light of the ~2 week difference between the data sets. While there is a spike (which they attribute to an uptick in testing) it is not as large and it doesn’t align, but it shouldn’t align. There is always a lag from onset to testing to reporting. It is upsetting that China delayed reporting by maybe a week, but it is important to get the numbers right, now. I think the WHO has the right numbers now.
The third graph you posted isn’t the right graph to compare. That’s the “New Suspect/New Diagnosis” graph from the source. The correct graph for “Existing confirmed/Existing Suspect” is this one, which shows the same 2/13 report spike as Hopkins.
Finally, the WHO report delineates that the next critical step for China’s management of the pandemic is to carefully monitor and report the recovery, especially as they re-open workplaces, schools, etc. There is some between-the-lines finger-wagging in the report that warns that pushing too soon and too fast could just get the whole outbreak going again.
The spike was due to a change in case definitions in Hubei. Suspicion is they ran out of testing kits, but they started reporting clinically diagnosed cases and no longer required lab confirmation. Resulted in a huge spike that day which fairly quickly regressed to the mean.
Point taken. I speak epidemiology, but I don’t speak or read Chinese, so I probably picked the wrong one. I translated the page and tried to grab the right graph, based on the English.
My larger point is that whatever mean China has regressed to needs to again be verified by the WHO: it all still seems suspect, to me. The WHO is not currently there, and curiously, when the WHO was there, we saw a very significant shift in reporting. What would happen if they do a followup series of site visits? Would we see another spike right before it?
It all reminds me of the UN inspections in Iraq and Iran, how those countries catch word and tidy up before the site visits so that the inspectors would have no choice but to write squeaky clean reports because they never saw evidence to the contrary. To me, spikes like these right before the inspection ARE the evidence of malfeasance.
The relationship between cases and fatalities in Iran vs. well, any other country, suggests that something screwy is going on. Either they have a much more serious virus than other nations are seeing, or they are missing a boatload of cases. Most likely, the virus is the same.
Some intriguing casting choices there. Long been one of my favorite of his books (read both the regular and unabridged versions in high school), and obviously it’s been on peoples’ minds of late…
Dunno if this belongs in this thread, but here’s my anecdotal experience of NOT being COVID-19 Patient Zero in Alabama. I woke up with flu symptoms this morning and went to the hospital-affiliated urgent care clinic for a rapid flu test. Yes, I had the flu shot.
A three-hour wait from the time I registered to the time the physician’s assistant took me to triage. I was not given a mask, even though I specifically said I had flu symptoms and was coughing. I sat as far away from other people in the waiting area as possible.
I watched the clinic receptionist turn away an elderly woman who did not have a credit or debit card for the clinic to have on file (“securely”, natch) for subsequent billing.
The clinic did have a sexy app that I could download for free to track my wait status. I should have waited in my car and checked the app for my progress in the queue.
When I arrived there were 11 people ahead of me, so 3 2/3 patients per hour because there was one nurse practitioner seeing patients assisted by one PA and the receptionist. The receptionist kept getting called to the back for unknown reasons, and the phone would ring and ring. I didn’t see her wipe down the check-in tablet or the counters or anything else with germicidal wipes once. There was hand sanitizer available, which I used liberally.
Once I made it back to the exam room, the piped-in sounds of ocean waves and singing birds was a nice touch, but the overflowing waste basket of used tissues less so. No one asked about whether I had traveled (I haven’t, but that’s not the point), other sick people in my orbit, nothing like that.
The rapid test was positive for flu, no surprise there. The NP called in a prescription for the new and improved antiviral (name brand only), pressed a coupon in my hand from the drug manufacturer and said if my drug plan balked at it, the pharmacy could call and she would change it to the older generic one. I asked what about my kiddo and spouse? Both in close contact with me, both still asymptomatic. She suggested Sambucol (“all-natural, anti-viral elderberry”). Last time Kiddo had the flu, her pediatrician prescribed antivirals for all of us. I guess that’s one difference between primary care and urgent care.
All this flu-addled, feverish rambling to convey a general sense of disorganization, understaffing, and maybe even indifference? Today was a “normal” day, and the staff at the clinic was just getting by. The lack of effort at sanitizing surfaces that every single person in that waiting room had to touch was especially unsettling, especially when compared to the pharmacy, where the tech wiped down the credit card terminal and the counter where I set my purse as soon as I was done and before the next person could use them. Other than the pharmacy, I didn’t come away with a feeling of confidence in this little corner of the healthcare system.
Yup, American medical system is hopelessly fucked. The term, which I heartily despise, is “move the meat.” See as many patients as possible as quickly as possible. The profit motive is absolutely deadly.
