[vhfpmr (OP)]

So is the suggestion that it's the quinine, or fruit bats, or both that's conferring the immunity?

[alancalverd]

According to my source, the quinine is irrelevant. It's the habitual exposure to corona viruses that produces herd immunity in the local population. It may even be evolutionary, like the sickle cell response offers protection against malaria.

[Petrochemicals]

I wasn't necessarily suggesting that we shouldn't lock down, but it would be interesting to see a price list for other measures that might save more per unit cost. I wonder how fixing climate change would compare, for example.

I'm intrigued by the debate about essential vs non-essential in the media too, quite a lot of the economy is essential eventually.

If your germany and you have invested in healthcare, rather than the nhs, lockdown is not worth it, people in that country have no qualms about calling the nhs, but the argument then becomes is investing in a good health care system worth it ? And taxing accordingly, if you are a member of the bullingdon club the answer was no !

[alancalverd]

The preliminary fatality rate in Germany was much lower than in Italy or Spain, leading to a discussion and explanations citing the country's higher amount of tests conducted, higher amount of available intensive care beds with respiratory support, absence of COVID-19 analyses in post-mortem tests and higher amount of positive cases among younger people. The head of the Robert Koch Institute warned that the German death rate would increase over time.

my italics. In other words, the infection rate is probably as high as anywhere else, but postmortem recording is probably underplaying the actual fatality rate.

Fact is, there are no facts. Or at least very few credible facts.

[Bored chemist]

Given the enthusiasm of the green movement for turning East Anglia back into a malarial swamp,

No, that's your intention. The Greens are trying to stop the UK getting warmer and wetter.

[Bored chemist]

Had an interesting discussion with a tropical agronomist today. He had been shown an anticorrelation between the incidence of malaria and COVID,

How did they rule out
"poor countries can't afford covid testing"
as an explanation?

[Petrochemicals]

This gif uses data for USA specifically, but is likely reasonably extended to most industrialized nations. It is a fascinating and horrifying graphical progression:

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/1727839/

It indicates that in the order of a few weeks, deaths directly attributable to COVID-19 has eclipsed even heart disease as the leading cause of death (who knows how many otherwise preventable deaths will result from the flooding of hospitals and the exhaustion of physical and human resources associated with outbreaks).

That said, the value of human life is not infinite. The United States Department of Transportation defines the value of a statistical human life as about $10,000,000. So the difference between 100,000 deaths (locked down) vs 2,000,000 deaths (not locked down) is on the order of (1.9x10⁶)(10⁷) = $1.9x10¹³

Add to that lost wages assuming that everybody was still working, and it looks like without the lockdowns ~80% of people would contract the disease, of which about 50% would have no symptoms. So if 40% of the US working population were out sick for 2 weeks, with US median pay, that's about $1800x1.56x10⁸x0.4 = $1.1x10¹¹. Not so big compared to all the dying, but also not great.

It's hard to know what "would" have happened without lockdowns, but we can see example after example of places that "should" have locked down earlier (from a casualty perspective). But if we really want an "economical" strategy. Aggressive testing and tracking will be able to ensure that populations with low enough infection rates can return to business "as usual" while those with problematic infection rates can shelter in place for a few weeks at a time. (the more people self-isolate, the less time is required to strangle the infection: if only 10% of people isolate, there's no point at all)

Whats the value of an 80 year old with rumatoid arthritis that lives in a carehome ?

[alancalverd]

Given the enthusiasm of the green movement for turning East Anglia back into a malarial swamp,

No, that's your intention. The Greens are trying to stop the UK getting warmer and wetter.

https://www.greatfen.org.uk/creating-wetlands

Note: creating.

[alancalverd]

Had an interesting discussion with a tropical agronomist today. He had been shown an anticorrelation between the incidence of malaria and COVID,

How did they rule out
"poor countries can't afford covid testing"
as an explanation?

The sudden appearance of clusters of unusual symptoms and an increase in deaths from respiratory disease, is unequivocal, even in the poorest of countries. Limited testing in the UK has actually distorted the statistics: it's quite obvious that deaths in non-hospital settings have increased but they aren't reported as COVID as there's been little or no testing in care homes and private houses.