Tag: corona

Tuberculosis and Corona

In 1900, 10,000 people out of a population of 5 million died in the Netherlands every year by Tuberculosis (TB). By comparison, until now Corona killed 4,500 people out of a population of 17.1 million. TB is primarily known as lung disease, and it spreads through the air through coughing (sounds familiar?) or contaminated food. Contamination by drinking milk from sick cattle could also occur before pasteurization. Usually illness occurs within a year or 2 after infection, but it can also last 60 years or more. Before World War II, tuberculosis was incurable. The only treatment that existed was to let people take the fresh air from forests and mountains.

Today, 80% of TB cases occur in 6 countries: China, India, South Africa, Nigeria, Indonesia and Pakistan, in 2015 10.4 million people fell ill, 1.8 million of whom died. In Europa is relative free from TB nowadays.

At the moment, Dutch hospitals Radboud UMC and UMC Utrecht are conducting tests to see whether the BCG vaccine, which is a known drug against TB, also has an effect against COVID-19. The vaccine contains the innocent brother of the tuberculosis bacteria. The test started on April 16 and works with a group of 1600 people older than 60. One half gets the drug, the other half does not. The aim of the research is to see whether the risk of infection with the coronavirus decreases, or whether it reduces the severity of the symptoms if an infection does occur.

Is sociale distancing like retirement?

Office workers are expected to work from home if possible. Well that works fine… of course I don’t have the best equipment here at home, but since I got an old television from the attic, I have a better screen than at work … until my laptop breaks, of course … I noticed that the Microsoft teams and skype apps just fit at my hard disk but had to clean up a lot to have enough disk space for all my other hobbies… ..

Communication with colleagues is going well because the people you work with know where to find you. However, that will not apply to everyone. With certain people and processes where contact was also difficult in the old pre corona situation, this has become more difficult. … .And of course… bump into someone by chance is not possible. … so expanding work contacts with new people is more difficult .. Fortunately, Corona is almost defeated, right? If not, more social moments must be built into working life, otherwise the social organization will fall apart.

Working at home takes some time to getting used to, a few weeks ago you only saw your wife full-time during the holidays and right now you see each other almost every day … we get used to it… In the beginning we sat at 1 table but that does not work, we each have another type of job. Anyway, after a while you will organize your environment in such a way that you can sit there for 8 hours a day. How boring it sometimes can be, even for a computer man like me…

However, you feel less involved in society, no hobbies possible, rules regarding the distance when you walk outside … no longer going live tot your parents … although I will try this next week anyway.

Working from home offers the solution to the environmental problems. If we want to maintain this in society after Corona, it must be ensured that productivity remains the same in any case. And the question is also what should happen to those empty office buildings? All our pension money is in those buildings … Should they be filled with economic refugees as soon as the Corona virus strikes in the developing world? Or is this still a typical disease of (semi) western consumer countries? I don’t see a major pandemic in Africa yet.

However, dependence on large American companies is increasing. Do we want that? As technology becomes more and more important for the private sphere, these companies that fall under the American Patriot act become more powerful because a lot of economic information also leaks out, which provides a competitive advantage for the organisation or country who has all the data.

But maybe it is just the way it is.

The economy is also a patient

Social isolation does not work. The remedy is worse than the disease. At the moment we have had social isolation for a month in the Netherlands. Major events have been canceled. Bars and restaurants are closed, everyone works at home behind the computer if possible. People should keep 1.5 meters away from strangers. Groups of more than 3 people together are prohibited. The number of deaths and the number of new patients in intensive care units is currently decreasing. Bottleneck is the small number of ic beds per capita in the Netherlands. It will take a few more weeks before we are back to “normal” capacity utilization. It is expected that as soon as measures to prevent spread are lifted, the number of new cases will increase. Looking purely at prevention, this situation should last until there is a pill against this disease. And that can take another six months. And then hope that the disease does not mutate to a new variant, just like with the seasonal flu.

However, the economy has also become a patient due to these measures. The economic downturn is unprecedented. … Only not to measure according to the usual methods. New official figures for economic growth will not be available until May. Yet there is already an urgent need to know what is to come economically. The current situation is so unique that there are no economic models for it. According to the NOS (Dutch public broadcaster), economists are trying to get a grip by experimenting with so called ‘nowcasting’ instead of forecasting, such as counting the number of times a barrier at the port of Rotterdam opens in real time.
Perhaps the coming downturn of the economy can be compared to that of the Second World War. Demolishing something is easy but rebuilding it again is much more difficult when it takes too long. Simply put, do we choose the end of civilization in these regions or will we take a different approach?

The truth is that it is still the case that the average age of the people who die is 70 years old. So it is still an old people’s disease or deadly to the physically weak in this society. …..A bit of bad luck if it is your own grandpa or grandma. Or father and mother…. Last week, the blood bank reported that 3 percent of donors had Corona. A much higher percentage is required for group immunity. An intermediate variant between the current measures mentioned above and opening everything up is to ensure that the current measures only apply to people over 50 and those who are weak. So that the rest just get sick and group immunity arises. Additional measures such as supporting loneliness, having groceries delivered, etc. must then be taken. And maybe just knowingly and exclusively voluntarily infecting non-risk groups. I don’t see the latter as politically possible of course … But it would be nice if we had everything behind us within 1 month.

A learning moment is that air pollution has never been so low here. The daily traffic jam problem has also been solved. It would be nice for humanity if there would also be a balance between the ecological footprint of consumption in western and semi-western economies and what the earth can handle.

This is also a chance!

The prediction of Corona

A number of models can be used to predict Corona. The one that was easiest to use for me is the SIR model. SIR is based on parts of the population that go through certain phases. Infectious, Infected and Recovered or deceased. (Susceptible Infected Recovered, SIR). Conversion rates apply between these phases. e.g. with the Corona sickness, 1 person infects 2.3 other people. They also call this the R0. Using the literature on the internet and source code from Kaggle I made a number of new graphs that compare the theoretical contamination with the contamination realized. These charts are here. It looks like Italy is going in the right direction. I am working at better predictions.

This is Corona

OVID-19 is the disease transmitted by SARS_CoV2 virus. SARS_COV2 is the official name, when it did not yet have an official name it was often called nCoV-2019 or in China Wuhan-Hu-1 virus. The virus was first reported on December 30, 2019 in Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei province. At the outbreak in 2019 and early 2020, the first patients were mainly visitors and employees of the Huahan fish market in Wuhan, with disease transmission between coughing and sneezing.

SARS_CoV2 virus source: NIAID under this licence

Recent research from the WHO evaluated the survival of the COVID-19 virus on different surfaces and reported that the virus can remain viable for up to 72 hours on plastic and stainless steel, up to four hours on copper, and up to 24 hours on cardboard.

An infected person infects an average of 2.2 other people . The disease is characterized by flu-like symptoms, including fever, cough, shortness of breath, muscle pain, fatigue. See also my Corona statistics page for the symptoms.

Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2

New statistics added to corona page

I added the symptoms from wikipedia in my corona page. The most important ones are fever, fatique and headaque. In the top 10 countries with the most deaths the US and the UK are rising. China is stable for a while.

In my own country the Netherlands the real number of cases is unknown. Only when people are very sick they get a test because of the shortage of test material. At this moment my girlfriend had fever two days ago and stil suffers from fatigue. It is unknown if this is Corona or just a little bit of seasonable flu.

Corona deaths per country top 10

China still ranks first among most Corona victims. However there is now a decline in the number of new cases. Italy is now in first place in Europe. The Netherlands my own country still has only 20 victims. This evening, our Prime Minister gave a speech on national television for the first time since 1973. The Netherlands will be locked in the near future with the aim of spreading infections over time. It is not possible to stop corona, but delaying the epidemic would put less pressure on healthcare capacity.