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Lab leak vs natural spill over is a distraction from the lack of evidence that COVID-19 is a viral pandemic originating in China.
In my previous threads I showed that the lockdown in Wuhan was too late.
I showed that all cause mortality was already well above normal and an estimated 7 million people left the city in the weeks leading up to the lockdown, including 300,000 people on the eve of the lockdown.
I showed that the vast majority of international travelers went to other Asian countries.
I showed that studies, including the Seattle Flu Study, finding a lack of early spread of the virus lack plausibility due to the absence of false positives, and I showed that there is a larger body of contradictory evidence.
In this thread, I will show that the excess mortality during the spring 2020 wave was associated with a decline in emergency department utilization, not just for low acuity visits but for high acuity visits as well.
If this is confusing due to media reporting on overwhelmed hospitals, the confusion is coming from the fact that the emergency department and intensive care unit are separate.
I will present data showing that ED utilization went down while ICU utilization went up, suggesting that patients delayed care until it was too late.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-daily-per-100k-economist
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/22/world/coronavirus-spread.html
#COVID #COVID19 #epidemiology #bioinformatics #healthcareisahumanright
A common explanation given for the lack of excess mortality in places like Japan is masking; however, there are many places that had low masking rates and low excess mortality rates during the spring 2020 wave.
For example, Denmark, Norway, and Australia all had low masking rates and low excess mortality rates.
Australia is particularly notable as it's a top destination for Chinese travelers.
Singapore was late to adopt masking and is also a top destination of Chinese travelers.
"For weeks after the first reports of a mysterious new virus in Wuhan, millions of people poured out of the central Chinese city, cramming onto buses, trains and planes as the first wave of China's great Lunar New Year migration broke across the nation....
...Officials finally began to seal the borders on Jan. 23. But it was too late.
Speaking to reporters a few days after the city was put under quarantine, the mayor estimated that 5 million people had already left...
...The top 10 global destinations for travelers from high-risk Chinese cities around Lunar New Year, according to their analysis, were Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, the United States, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Australia."
https://www.coviddatahub.com/engagement-with-recommended-behaviours
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-daily-per-100k-economist
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/22/world/coronavirus-spread.html
