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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
"We retrospectively investigated the utilization of 3 hospital-based EDs in the southeast of the Netherlands, during a 60-day period starting on February 15, 2020...
...The daily ED volume in 2020 was 18% lower than during the reference period...
...When comparing a 30-day period around the modified lockdown (March 16 to April 15) with the corresponding period in 2019, the decline in ED utilization is even more pronounced.
ED visits were 29% lower in 2020 compared to 2019...
...The reduced ED utilization during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic has been observed in other health care systems, too, with reduction rates varying from 30 to 63%.
Likewise, ED census decreased during the initial stages of the 2003 SARS epidemic in Hong Kong...
...Although it cannot directly be concluded from the findings of our study, this observation probably reflects a complex interaction between pure lockdown effects and viral fear."
Barten DG, Latten GHP, van Osch FHM. Reduced Emergency Department Utilization During the Early Phase of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Viral Fear or Lockdown Effect? Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness. 2022;16(1):36-39. doi:10.1017/dmp.2020.303
