The Pensioner Virus -The Death Of The 80 Year Old With Pre-Existing Conditions -Coughing Tigers

I like to point out updated reports from government agencies in Germany, Italy, Spain, France and Switzerland on the still very asymmetrical age structure of deceased people with positive SARS-CoV2 test as well as the reported numerous previous illnesses of the deceased.

The average age at time of death is around 80 years and older. As sad as this is, we have to see the number of infected persons in this context.

The question arises, why would the share of old people's homes and nursing homes affected by SARS-CoV2, be so disproportionately high? Who infected all the old people in the last weeks, some of whom were bedridden?

And, given the age structure and the reported comorbidities: how can one speak of an alone(!) dangerous virus?

Why does a suspected new pathogen of zoonotic origin almost exclusively affect old and very old people when it should be new for the entire population? What does science have to say about this?

And, how much is left of this pandemic if you start to correctly state the cause of death of the multimorbid persons? In Italy 50% of the deceased suffered from 3 or more comorbidities.

Instead of spreading fear and panic among the population using the numbers of John Hopkins University of infected people worldwide, the media should also consider the sufficiently large sample of deceased after 4 weeks of crisis. This shows a completely different picture of the effect of this supposedly new virus.

Germany

• RKI, „Täglicher Lagebericht des RKI zur Coronavirus-Krankheit – 2019 , 5.4.2020, https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/2020-04-04-de.pdf?__blob=publicationFile

„Der Altersmedian [der Verstorbenen] liegt bei 82 Jahren.“

[Translation]

„RKI, Daily RKI management report on coronavirus disease - 2019, 5.4.2020”

“The median age [of the deceased] is 82 years”

Italy

• ISS, “Characteristics of COVID-19 patients dying in ItalyReport based on available data on March 30th, 2020”, 30.3.2020, https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-COVID-2019_30_marzo_eng.pdf

“The present report describes characteristics of 10,026 COVID-19 patients dying in Italy*. [* COVID-19 related deaths presented in this report are those occurring in patients who test positive for SARSCoV-2 RT by PCR, independently from pre-existing diseases.]”

“Mean age of patients dying for COVID-2019 infection was 78 (median 79, IQR 73 - 85).”

“Women dying for COVID-2019 infection had an older age than men (median age women 82 - median age men 78).“

“Table 1 presents most common comorbidities diagnosed before COVID-2019 infection. Data on diseases were based on chart review and was available on 909 patients dying in-hospital for whom it was possible to analyse clinic charts. Mean number of diseases was 2.7 (median 3, SD 1.6). Overall, 2.1% of the sample presented with a no comorbidities, 21.6% with a single comorbidity, 24.5% with 2, and 51.7% with 3 or more.”

“As of March 30th, 112 out of the 10,026 (1.1%) positive COVID-19 patients under the age of 50 died. In particular, 23 of these were less than 40 years, 19 men and 4 women (age range between 26 and 39 years). For 2 patients under the age of 40 years no clinical information is available; the remaining 15 had serious pre-existing pathologies (cardiovascular, renal, psychiatric pathologies, diabetes, obesity) and 6 had no major pathologies.”

Spain

• Ministerio de Sanidad, “Actualización nº 65. Enfermedad por el coronavirus (COVID-19)”, 04.04.2020, https://www.mscbs.gob.es/profesionales/saludPublica/ccayes/alertasActual/nCov-China/documentos/Actualizacion_65_COVID-19.pdf

[Table 2: Fallecidos - 86,9% over 70 years]

France

• Sanité Publique, “COVID-19 : point épidémiologique du 2 avril 2020”, 2.4.2020, https://www.santepubliquefrance.fr/maladies-et-traumatismes/maladies-et-infections-respiratoires/infection-a-coronavirus/documents/bulletin-national/covid-19-point-epidemiologique-du-2-avril-2020

“Parmi les certificats de décès rédigés par voie électronique et transmis à Santé publique France depuis le 1er mars 2020, 1 931 décès contiennent une mention de COVID-19 parmi les causes médicales de décès renseignées (Tableau 4). L’âge moyen au décès est de 80,5 ans et 59,1% des certificats concernent des hommes. Des comorbidités étaient renseignées dans 1 203 soit 62,3% des certificats de décès certifiés par voie électronique.”

[Translation]

“Among the death certificates that have been issued electronically and sent to Santé publique France since March 1, 2020, 1,931 deaths include COVID-19 among the medical causes reported (Table 4). The average age at death is 80.5 years and 59.1% of the certificates concern men. Comorbidities were reported in 1,203 or 62.3% of the electronically certified death certificates.”

„Sur l’ensemble des décès certifiés électroniquement, 2,8% des cas ne présentaient pas de co-morbidité et étaient âgés de moins de 65 ans.”

[Translation]

“2.8% of all electronically certified deaths had no comorbidity and were younger than 65 years.”

Swiss and Liechtenstein

• BAG, „Situationsbericht zur epidemiologischen Lage in der Schweiz und im Fürstentum Liechtenstein“, 5.4.2020, https://www.bag.admin.ch/dam/bag/de/dokumente/mt/k-und-i/aktuelle-ausbrueche-pandemien/2019-nCoV/covid-19-lagebericht.pdf.download.pdf/COVID-19_Epidemiologische_Lage_Schweiz.pdf

„Bisher starben in der Schweiz 559 Personen, die im Labor positiv auf COVID-19 getestet worden waren. Davon waren 358 Männer (64%) und 201 Frauen (36%). Die Altersspanne der verstorbenen Personen betrug 32 bis 101 Jahre. Der Altersmedian lag bei 83 Jahren.

Von den 543 verstorbenen Personen für welche vollständige Daten vorhanden sind, litten 97% an mindestens einer Vorerkrankung. Die drei am häufigsten genannten Vorerkrankungen waren Bluthochdruck (66% der verstorbenen Personen), Herz-Kreislauferkrankungen (55%) und Diabetes (28%).“

[Translation]

“So far, 559 people have died in Switzerland who had tested positive for COVID-19 in the laboratory. There were 358 men (64%) and 201 women (36%). The age range of the deceased was 32 to 101 years. The median age was 83 years.“

“Of the 543 deceased for whom complete data are available, 97% suffered from at least one previous illness. The three most common pre-existing conditions were high blood pressure (66% of those who died), cardiovascular disease (55%) and diabetes (28%). ”

There is the question why this context information is regularly missing in the reporting on high numbers of infected persons? Most of which, as the BMJ reports, do not show symptoms at all, cf.

• Day, “Covid-19: four fifths of cases are asymptomatic, China figures indicate”, BMJ 2020; 369, 2 April 2020, https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1375

In the meantime, tigers have also tested positive for SARS-CoV2. How did they get infected?

• BBC, “Coronavirus: Tiger at Bronx Zoo tests positive for Covid-19”, 6.4.2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52177586

“The Bronx Zoo, in New York City, says the test result was confirmed by the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Iowa. Nadia, along with six other big cats, is thought to have been infected by an asymptomatic zoo keeper.”

Or should one better ask: what is being tested?

If the population is so heavily infected that the virus reaches the tigers in the zoo or the test is no good, then we will sit here for a long time watching how science measures the seasonal virus curve.

Trillions(!) of dollars spent in the USA and in the rest of the world and nobody verifies the test? Which is not very specific and has stability issues as reports show!

• Emily Feng, “Mystery In Wuhan: Recovered Coronavirus Patients Test Negative ... Then Positive”, NPR, March 27, 2020, https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/27/822407626/mystery-in-wuhan-recovered-coronavirus-patients-test-negative-then-positive

“In February, Wang Chen, a director at the state-run Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, estimated that the nucleic acid tests used in China were accurate at identifying positive cases of the coronavirus only 30%-50% of the time.”

• Li et al., “Stability Issues of RT-PCR Testing of SARS-CoV-2 for Hospitalized Patients Clinically Diagnosed with COVID-19.”, J Med Virol. 2020 Mar 26. doi: 10.1002/jmv.25786, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32219885

There seems to be no pressure in this matter.