Coronavirus in Poland

Another day, another barrage of senseless numbers!

Fatalities (daily total) 9 (average age 79)

Hospitalizations (running total) 1881 a big drop of 126, the lowest rate since March 28 I expect an increase in the next couple of days but probably not over 2200 (knock wood)

Cured (daily total) 143

the number of new infections seems to be high (599) but over half (326) are from a single voivodeship (while 3 report no new cases) and mostly they seem to be discovering asymptomatic or mild symptoms (a large majority of all infections)

"Coronavirus spread by people with no symptoms 'appears to be rare,' WHO official says"

And corona-comedy continues...

edition.cnn.com/2020/06/08/health/coronavirus-asymptomatic-spread-who-bn/index.html

Very seldom do we hear any news about what is going on in Poland but tonight on our local t.v. they had a quite an in depth report on the problem Silesia is having.

The news here confirmed what PolAmKrakow said Poland will be shutting down twelve of the mines there.
I was taken back how Katowice is pronounced correctly as I was pronouncing it as it sounded in English.

@johnny reb
Another bit of info is that all miners will receive full pay while the mines are closed. I still dont think that paying them will be enough to keep them in the PiS fold. I am in Katowice, Chorzow and Opole over the next two days. I should get a feel from things then. But my colleagues there are saying there could be more pushback simply because of the closure and miners want to work not sit in quarantine.

Yes, the news here mentioned that too.
Of course I sat right up and listened because of my interest in Poland.
I gave it thought and took into consideration that the mines have circulating air and that the miners lungs are most likely irritated all the time with coal dust making them more susceptible of being exposed and contracting the virus.

Also in that report it showed military satellite shots of China's hospitals having twice as many cars in their parking lots as in the last year on the same dates indicating China knew about this virus back in October.

U.S surveillance also shows that the Chinese citizens were googling such symptoms back in October.
China's cell phone traffic also indicated that Chinese people were calling about an unidentified sickness in October.
Oh China knew about this virus back in September of last year if not before and tried to hide it and ended up killing over a 100,000 people so far in the U.S. alone.

(Many more to come)
This is nothing short of an act of war.

@johnny reb
Agreed on all points. Anyone who buys something non essential that is made in China is someone I can not respect at this point. The deaths of people, and the financial devastation caused by China around the world is probably something we will never be able to accurately measure. How many people died because they didn't go to hospitals out of fear for things that could have been taken care of, while the virus was ramping up around the world?

Since this is the WHO I would normally be skeptical (they've lost a huge amount of credibility in recent months) but I've read that asymptomatic transmission is rare before

Similarly incubation periods that are longer than 5 days are also rare (early on there was panic about 14 days being typical).

One problem is that in most cases symptoms are pretty light (most people think they have a light cold and shrug it off).

This is one big reason that I think that hospitalization rates are a much better metric that absolute number of cases detected (or suspected).

Todays numbers and the post weekend bump?

Fatalities (daily total) 19 (average age either 73 or 70 (there might be a mistake on one of the ages)

Hospitalizations (running total) 2039 an increase of 158

Cured (daily total) 198

bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52975934

Harvard researchers say satellite images show an increase in traffic outside five hospitals in the Chinese city from late August to December.

The traffic spike coincided with a rise in online searches for information on symptoms like "cough" and "diarrhoea".

Actually the chinese reaction is a sure pointer that these findings are truly onto something...

techstartups.com/2020/06/07/norwegian-scientist-birger-sorensen-claims-coronavirus-lab-made-not-natural-origin/

Todays numbers

Fatalities (daily total) 23 (average age 76)

Hospitalizations (running total) down 46 to 1993 I'm going to say that around 2000 is the new normal down from 2300-2400 a couple of weeks ago

Cured (daily total) 215

Slowly winding down, big story just 38 new cases from Silesia (though that's probably an artifact of reduced testing) but no huge numbers in other places either...

A truly disciplined gull...must be german! :)

pbs.twimg.com/media/EaLy8OXX0AAH2sW?format=jpg&name=medium

@mafketis
If the mines in Silesia aren't open you aren't testing miners and their families so there is a quick drop off. Not only will it control the actual spread of virus, but it makes the numbers look better at the same time. Like something is actually being done.

I hear that if we can get testing down to zero we will have no new confirmed cases of the Corona.

Check and mate.

@kondzior
Thanks for repeating what I said. Check and mate.

Todays numbers are incomplete because there was no update at 18.00... so this is from the morning

Fatalities (daily total) 9 (average age 72)

Hospitalizations (running total) down 293 (?!) to 1700 the lowest number since March 27...

Cured (daily total) 285

The fatality rate should bump up tomorrow again and we'll see what happens with the hospitalization rate by early next week....

Here's an interesting comparison. The chart at the bottom of this post is for Ireland and you can see the steady fall in all the numbers which reflect the R0 number being close to 0.5. I decided to compare some of the figures (didn't have access to all of them for Poland). I chose the number of daily newly confirmed cases, daily deaths and hospital admissions. There is no similar drop in Poland's numbers.

POLAND

Confirmed New Cases

16 April 336
6 May 309
13 May 283
20 May 471
27 May 399
03 June 292
10 June 282

Deaths per day

16 April 28
6 May 17
13 May 22
20 May 14
27 May 4
03 June 23
10 June 23

Hospital Patients

16 April ??
6 May ??
13 May 2,648
20 May 2,414
27 May 2,320
03 June 2,219
10 June 1,700

Most importantly, the number of active cases, that is people currently infected with the virus hasn't dropped at all. In fact it's been steadily rising:

16 April 6,830
06 May 9,352
13 May 10,594
20 May 11,115
27 May 11,494
03 June 11,558
10 June 13,225

Figures for Ireland. The chart doesn't show number currently infected but it's dropped from 12,708 on 16 April to 838 on 10 June:

• 
  IRELANDCOVID.JPG
  

That again... I don't understand why it makes sense to track it closely for a virus that doesn't affect most people who are infected. Some illnesses affect all sufferers in similar ways (maybe differing in degree) tracking R0 for that is absolutely rational and makes sense.

But coronavirus leaves little or no trace for most infected. That means that anything less than universal testing won't really reveal the extent of the infection (again every random test has shown far more cases than anyone had estimated).

Do you have numbers for how many people are actually tested every day in Ireland?

It looks like those are raw numbers.... to compare them to Poland you need to multiply them by 6 (conservatively).

Taking that into account the proportionate death rate in Ireland is still higher than in Poland...

Here's a good source for a rational take on coronavirus hysteria in the US... (resemblance to Europe not that strong but his first points are important about symptoms and testing)

twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1271135876379299848

It's not the number that counts, it's the pattern. A steady drop in infection, hospital cases and death rate, compared to an increase in infection and no steady decrease in hospital cases and deaths in Poland.


Ireland records all coronavirus deaths, in every setting, including the community. Does Poland include deaths at home? They didn't back in April but I think they've been trying to be a bit more up front about numbers because there was a fair bit of criticism and suspicsion that they were fudging the figures.


Data for Ireland shows 74.48 tests per 1,000 of the population on 9 June.
Data for Poland shows 25.55 tests per 1,000 of the population on 3 June.

The percentage of those tests showing a postive result is currently 0.7% in Ireland on 9 June and 1.7 in Poland on 3 June. Apparently not all countries update their testing figures daily, so the most recent results for the countries are shown.

Source: ourworldindata.org

The "infection rate" is meaningless with this virus just as the R0 number cannot really be traced with any kind of reliability (since a large majority of cases won't require any kind of medical intervention). How can you track the R0 with asymptomatic cases (or people who just think they have a cold and don't see a doctor)?

The Irish testing rate (roughly 3 times that of Poland) is more or less in line with the different economies (Irish per capita gdp is roughly 3 times that of Poland).


Sources?

The overall fatality rate in 2020 was lower than 2019* so unless you're proposing a diabolical plot that's far too complex for the clowns in the current government to carry out....

The idea that Poland is fudging the numbers more than any other country is the coronavirus version of Russians shooting down the plane in Smolensk... I can believe they would, but I need evidence and no one has pointed to anything reliable (and again the medical establishment is not a fan of the government - how would they get them to cooperate in fudging the numbers?)

*overall fatality rates are hard to fudge and have been useful in figuring out the exact death totals from coronavirus


Deaths peaked in mid to late April and until we get to 25 or more deaths a day for 3 days of any 5 day period they're not increasing

Hospitalization has fallen about 10% from when I began tracking the daily rates (about 25% from the April-May peak).

In the fresh set of guidelines, World Health Organisation recommends that governments asks everyone to wear face masks where there is a 'widespread transmission and maintaining physical distancing is difficult' while general public can wear a fabric mask.

Anyone keeping track of how many "guidelines" the Worst Health Organization has been flip flopping on?

-There is no Human to Human transition
thenation.com/article/world/taiwan-who-coronavirus-china/

-Travel restrictions are not necessary
reuters.com/article/us-china-health-who/who-chief-says-widespread-travel-bans-not-needed-to-beat-china-virus-idUSKBN1ZX1H3

-Stop using hydroxychloroquine
theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/04/who-to-resume-hydroxychloroquine-trial-after-earlier-halt-over-safety-concerns

-Masks are not necessary
edition.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-masks-recommendation-trnd/index.html

WHO also stands for We're Hardly Organized

Im glad Trump cut off giving anymore funding to this crooked organization. Let them get money from their Commie Chinese masters.

You didn't answer my question regarding how Poland counts deaths. I know how Ireland does it. How does Poland do it?

The Polish numbers don't make sense. Did you notice how 500 people apparently left hospital overnight a couple of days ago?


And hospitalization in Ireland has fallen 86%. When you look at the chart of the Irish numbers, they make complete sense in relation to each other. The Polish numbers don't. If you look at Ireland's stats you can clearly see that the virus is on the way out, with Poland's stats it's hard to judge what the true situation is, but it's clear that the virus is still very active.

Btw what are the numbers for daily hospital admissions in Poland as opposed to overall numbers in hospital? Have they fallen? I don't think so, because the overall number in hospital has remained very constant. The drop is only 25% because as some are discharged or die, others are admitted. Hospital admissions in Poland must be continuing at a very similar rate to mid-April.

[/quote]
Take another look at the Polish numbers. Hardly any difference between mid April and June. People are still dying in double digits in a single day.

16 April 28
6 May 17
13 May 22
20 May 14
27 May 4
03 June 23
10 June 23

I'm not saying that this is the Black Death or something to get hysterical about, but I do think that it's not good to take a cavalier attitude to a potentially lethal illness that can also leave survivors with seriously impaired health in the long term. But what I object to most is the old Stalinist style propaganda rubbish. All that smug, self-congratualtory stuff from Szumowski and pals about what a great job Poland has done in handling the epidemic and how much better they are than other European countries which is so obviously untrue. It's just so PRL, that way of treating the public like fools.

Btw I was in the supermarket today and there were several people without masks. Has there been any change in the regulations?? I can't find anything reported about it.

@Atch
Regulations cant be enforced if you have asthma or another condition that makes it hard for you to breath with a mask. No proof of asthma required.

The virus is active in small pockets within the country yes. Largely in mining communities and close quarter situations. Most of the country is very safe, and this heat we are having now will kill the virus according to experts, if you believe experts any more.

Why don't you look it up and let me know?


No... please point out when that was. I'm assuming that the numbers are reported for different hospitals at different times and so there will be some jumps (in admissions or releases) rather than more gradual changes...


I just follow the daily total (usually released in the morning though not yet today)

Also, daily snapshots are a very unhelpful way of looking at the numbers, you need to look at changes over time I can't find any period that comes close to the mid-late April surge in fatalities and hospitalizations. It's not letting up as slowly as I'd like but the trends are clearly downward. I started tracking the daily numbers just to get a better picture (compared to the constant 'the sky is falling! new infections!' narrative from the media).

I don't like the government's (unjustified) crowing about how great their response was and I don't like the panic mongering in the media any better (which treats newly discovered asymptomatic infection just like new hospitalizations).

This is a virus that can be very deadly for a very small percentage of the population but when you follow the numbers and science, the picture that has emerged is very different from what seemed to be the case in the beginning of March (when I was _very_ concerned). I'm still concerned but the world has moved on and it's not March 10 anymore.

The incubation period is rarely longer than 5 days, asymptomatic transmission is not common, no confirmed cases from touching surfaces and it doesn't hang around in the air for hours...

But there's still a lot of unknowns especially regarding who's vulnerable (besides the cases of elderly people with comorbidities in closed environments). Someone mentioned bloodtype (I'm not even sure what mine is...) and there have been hints something about vitamin C absorption and latent tuberculosis as population risks but...

My possible hypothesis (scary) is that the virus is going to get who it's going to get and governments can only delay that and not stop it after all. In Ireland it burned through the at risk population early on while in Poland it's still simmering and picking them off more slowly...

Not such a small percentage. About 17% of the population of Poland is aged 65+.


The fact that you don't know, says it all really, doesn't it? We don't know how they reach their figure and it matters.


Would you believe I can't find the source now! But I think I was wrong anyway, it was 300 I think, not 500, which is more plausible.

Btw you're beginning to sound a bit grumpy. Don't be cross :) I'm not trying to be awkward for the sake of it. I just think that a) we're not out of the woods virus-wise and b) PIS are a bunch of liars, but we knew that all along anyway.

agreed but at least partly irrelevant when looking at numbers...

I do think the lockdown was a good idea at the time and probably did some good and that Poland getting through this as (relatively) unscathed as it has is due more to luck and/or yet unknown genetic/biological reasons that aren't yet well understood than anything good done by PiS.


Counting deaths has been a contentious political issue in a lot of countries, not many people look at hospitalization that closely (or that would be too).

I think diverting patients to a restricted set of hospitals in Poland was a good idea that has made tracking those numbers easier than in some countries... Does Ireland have dedicated units or are all hospitals expected to deal with it?

Maf, is there any more news about the possible TB vaccination link?

Todays (partial) numbers from the morning since there hasn't been a late afternoon/evening update.

Fatalities daily total 7 (average age 79)

recovered (109)

The hospitalization rate hasn't been updated since yesterday.... (when it was 1700).

I suspect there wont' be many updates until Monday (with big jumps in numbers) and we should get a better idea of what's going on Wednesday....