Covid-19 disease

Lies and Statistics

It is a while since I updated the running average temperatures of my Ten Weather Stations. There have been countless extreme weather events recently. The usual suspects of heat, fire, flood and ice melt joined by the occasional surprise package, like summer snowfalls in China. But none have done much to alter the trends in my token scraps of the planet.

The five representatives of the northern hemisphere have continued to cool. The southern five have been much cooler this meteorological year than last, but over the last ten weeks their temperatures have started to rise, and may continue to do so until November.

I have simplified the graphs by not naming the 5 stations but in order of warmth in Week 27 (with mean temperatures in degrees Centigrade above the Pre-Industrial baseline) they are Koltsovo (5.52), Shanghai (2.87), Rome (2.40), Mumbai (2.16) and Washington DC (1.39). They combine to trend steadily downwards but are still well above the IPCC’s 2040 Paris Accord projected target.

Wellington is warmest of the southern 5 (1.11), followed by Buenos Aires (0.97), Sydney (0.82), Cape Town (0.3) and Rio de Janeiro (-0.18). Together they are over 0.2°C cooler than the global average in 2017, as determined by the IPCC.

I don’t know why the running average temperature is so different in the two hemispheres this year – and have not seen any explanations online while checking if climate change is still a hoax or not. My Ten Station Globe’s recent experience looks like this:-

The Ten Stations are currently warming at a rate 25 times greater than hoped for by the IPCC. (At the end of this year the temperature above Pre-Industrial is projected to be 1.06°C. Adding 25 “IPCC units” to this gives the 1.61 degrees indicated in the graph above. One unit is the projected annual global average rise of 0.0217°C.)

That Other Hoax

The “inventor” of the PCR Test says it should not be used to detect COVID 19 in the human animal (or paw paw or goat). It seems to be widely accepted that 80% of the pointless tests give “false positives”. So the four members of the family in New Zealand that have triggered the lockdown of Auckland may not have the infamous disease at all. Across the Tasman, Kim Jong Dan is doing terrible things to the population of Victoria. Police have been videoed strangling a young woman and body-slamming her to the payment – for not wearing a face covering.

So, two of the countries least affected by the novel flu are rapidly turning into the most tyrannical. New Zealand is on course to be under martial law by the beginning of October.

Yesterday I chose ten countries to “follow”, just to see if the next lockdown of the UK could be justified by “the figures”. What figures? Number of cases cannot be trusted. Number of COVID 19 deaths reported cannot be trusted. (How many people who haven’t had a test have been sent letters informing them that they are Covid positive?) In truth, there are no reliable data for the disease anywhere.

Although they may have been inflated in various underhand ways, I am running with the reported COVID deaths. Worldometers calculate deaths per million population for every country. It is easy to spot the countries that have been “hit hard”.

I thought I’d calculate the chances of dying from (or with) COVID 19 by simply dividing the number of deaths by the country’s population. Yesterday my Number One country, against which the other nine would be measured, was Australia. Hearing about about the poor Kiwis facing outright tyranny this morning made me add New Zealand to the list. I’m not quite organized yet so the Table below should be treated with caution. It seems to be heading in the right direction – in that the chance of dying from (with) COVID in rank order is the same as Worldometers Deaths per Million list. (The two sets of figures have a family resemblance.)

Note: Not all the populations are the latest “live” figures. The Worldometer “perMil” figures were accessed early this afternoon. I hope to take the temperature of the 11 countries at a set hour each day but the immediate takeaway is that I am at least 150 times more likely to die of/with COVID in the UK than the average New Zealander. Of course, being over 70 I have the regime’s cross-hairs on my heart or forehead. Curious how a country where the chances are 0.0005% of being killed by/with COVID can become the most fascistic nation on earth  in a heartbeat.

UK Column News features lies and statistics today. Support Billy TK.

Beach 112 · Muston Sands

Grim

30200304GrimReaper1_6mI photographed him before catching the Scarborough bus this morning. He shows people arriving at Filey Surgery which way the wind is blowing.

Back at the ranch a couple of hours later, I learned that 35 more UK citizens had tested positive for Covid-19. My country had been “in the pink” until today. It seems likely that the Fifth Week (since Patient Zero showed up) will see exponential growth of infections become too obvious to ignore. Though people will still go to football and rugby stadia this weekend in their hundreds of thousands.

I should explain “in the pink”. I have chosen to follow the fortunes of 20 countries and one Plague Ship. One of my countries, Syria, has yet to report a confirmed infection. Argentina, Ireland, Nigeria and New Zealand have only recently become officially infected.

I have created spreadsheets using Andy’s Prediction Tool, giving every country and Diamond Princess the same parameters. The infection rate (R0) is currently estimated to be between 4 and 7. I am applying an “R nought” of 2.5 to all countries. The mortality rate claimed by countries is sometimes as low as 1%, (ten times greater than seasonal ‘flu) but I think South Korea has just stated its current rate is over 3%. (South Korea is the exemplar in the way it is dealing with the virus.) I have chosen to go with a 2% mortality rate. And a doubling time of 7 days. Some countries are seeing their numbers of confirmed cases and deaths doubling every three or four days. Today the UK’s reported infections rose over 50% in 24 hours.

Given my modest assumptions, it is disheartening that only eight countries are “in the pink”, with reported infections being fewer than predicted. The United States is one of these seemingly blessed countries – but its “government” has tested very few people for the disease so far, guaranteeing low returns. South Korea’s heavy testing gives totals that are more believable but puts the country deep “in the black”.

I’m still working on presentation but this will illustrate my terms.

20200304_SthKorUSAcovinf

In this same week, South Korea had 8 more “black deaths” than predicted and the USA 5 fewer.

It will be interesting to see how these two compare a month from now. I expect Mr Reaper to be far busier in North America, whether the US reports the death toll accurately or not.

Update (about 20 minutes later)

Dr John on today’s figures.

Divergence

The three main online counters/mappers of confirmed Covid-19 cases are in close agreement. Although several hours separate their update postings, the totals are, as I write, the same for 26 countries admitting to infections. And for the Plague Ship.

Worldometers is possibly the most responsive counter. It has two more confirmed cases than Johns Hopkins in Mainland China; 1 more than WuFlu. It has one more case than WuFlu in Japan; one less than WuFlu in Hong Kong. Pretty much even Stevens. You could say that all countries are conspiring to under-report cases in lockstep.

The odd country out, though, is the United States. Twenty-four hours ago, I noticed that the US total on WuFlu had jumped from 15 to 29. Both Johns Hopkins and Worldometers are sticking at 15; Wu Flu at 29. I have only looked for a current figure on one US mainstream media channel. CNBC has 15. Wu Flu seems to know something the other counters don’t.

The what and why of this are not worth pursuing. The US infections must be well into the thousands by now. Multiply the Chinese government total of infections by a hundred and you are approaching 7,500,000. If that seems ridiculously high to you – it is about 1% of the population currently in enforced quarantine (or “lockdown”). The WHO is offering a SARS-COV-2 virus mortality rate of 2%, “though it is still too early to tell”.

The highest figure I heard today for deaths-to-date on the Chinese mainland was a far-out 50 million, on the frighteningly persuasive Hal Turner Radio Show. Nothing to worry about everywhere else in the world then? On another “independent” TV News channel I learned that only a small percentage of “ordinary Chinese” believe the outbreak began in the Wuhan Wet Market.

Being told the truth would be great.