Yesterday, there were ten cases of the COVID-19 infections in the Netherlands. For three of these cases, it is
not known how they got infected. One of these was a 49 year old woman who had
stayed in the hospital for a week. The hospital now has been 'closed' for new
patients. So far, no other people who had been in contact with the patient have
been tested positive. I heard that the doctors treating the patient several
times considered to test the patient, but they received a negative advice from
the Erasmus MC, but it
was against the 'protocol' only to test people who have been in a risk area or
have been in contact with people who have been a risk area. Since last Friday,
the protocal has been changed.
I recieved the book On
the Road: The Original Scroll written by Jack Kerouac (edited by Howard Cunnell), written in English and published
by Penguin Books Limited in 2008,
ISBN:9780141189215, from Bol.com, which I bought for € 14.27.
I went to opening of the exhibitionAH-Erlebnis at B93, with works by Willemijn
Calis, Elmar Ipskamp and
Julianne Menke. I
especially liked the video work by Willemijn with a sleeping couple breathing
at the same pace. I also talked with Claudio Beorchia, because I was interested in his book Saintscapes.
Views Of Lombardy, which I saw last January.
We had a nice talk and he gave me a copy (60/100) of his book De wachters
van de Polder. At 23:02:01, after I came home, I ordered his book
Saintscapes from Idea Books for € 36.75.
The RIVM today announced that there are 188 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in The Netherlands. From the start of this month we went from
10, 18, 23, 38, 82, 128 to 188 cases. With 8, 5, 15, 44, 46, and 60 new case
in the past days, that looks like an exponential curve, meaning that if you
would only look at these numbers, you could only conclude that we are still in
the break-out phase and the spreading is not under control. It is being said
that the increase in the past days is due to more extensive testing. The
public health institutes are still trying to track the origin of each case. Of
the 188 cases, 112 have been abroad, most of them in Northern Italy. 47 cases
got infected by one of the other confirmed cases, leaving 29 cases where it
is unknown how they got infected. One of these cases is a 86 year old man, who
died yesterday with having an infection. It is not clear if the infection was
the main cause of his death, because he was initially admitted in a hospital
for another condition.
I went to the opening of the exhibitionSignals and
Words at XPO with works by Thiago Hersan and Claudio
Beorchia. Thiago Hersen is covering the signal part with some devices
processing WiFi packets based on the idea of astrolabe. Claudio Beorchia covered the words part with five works
on display. I found them all interesting. The most interesting of the very
different project, I found his project Guilty, where he rewrites the
Italian penal code into first person perspective, and his book project
Anthems, Updates, where he processed the national anthems of 27
European countries through Google Translate. At 17:59, I received copy 68/100
of the book Anthems, Updates from Claudio.
Yesterday, the Dutch government announced 'lock-down' measures with
respect to the spread of the SARS-CoV-2
virus in the Netherlands. This sounds like we are past the containment
phase. So far, there are only two countries in the world where a serious
outbreak of the virus has been successfully halted, and these are the Peoples
republic of China and South-Korea. The first did it through extreme lock-down
measures, the second did it through very extensive and wide testing.
South-Korea was prepared, because they learned their lessons from
the MERS outbreak in 2015. I am afraid that most national public health
institutions did not learn from their experiences. In the past months,
South-Korea tested 220,000 people on the SARS-CoV-2 virus. They are still
testing about more than 10,000 people every day. Although others have suggested other reasons why
the out-break is now under control, and not in Italy, where it started in a
very similar way, I think that their agressive and wide testing of people have
contributed a lot. Here in the Netherlands, especially at the start of the
out-break, testing has been rather limited. And even now, people are not tested
in large counts. Figures about how many people have been tested and are tested
every day are not published. The RIVM has stopped reporting about the number of
'imported' and under investigation cases. At 14:00 they reported that 190
people were tested positive, leading to a total of 804 official cases. Of
these, 179 are professional care givers. They also reported that five more
people, all old and in poor health, died, bringing the total to ten. They did
reported that 115 people are being treated in hospitals at the moment.
This evening, our prime minister Mark Rutte talked about herd immunity during his televison speech about the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Which percentage of a population needs to be
infected for herd immunity depends on the measure of contagiousness. For SARS
this percentage is between 50% and 80%. He suggested that in this way we can
protect the old and weak. I wonder how this is going to work. It would mean
that the old and weak have to go into isolation until the epidemic is over. And
from which age should people go into isolation? And what about the fact that
amongh those you need IC treatment at the moment here in the Netherlands about
half are under the age of fifty. This might be explained that a lot of young
people got infected during carnaval parties in the South of the country,
parties which were mainly visited by young people. It also seems that the
infection rate among people in their twenties are high, usually with mild
symptoms.
I wanted to give HSLuv a try
with respect to generate a limited colour palette as inspired by
the colour palettes by
Peter Struycken like I did more than two years ago. I used hsluv-0.1.0.min.js for this purpose, resulting in the palette
displayed below. I have to admit that it looks more balanced than the one I
created before.
Today, Alexander W. Friedrich, the medical microbiologist and head of the
department of medical microbiology and infection prevention at
the UMCG in Groningen, made some bold statement with respect to testing
for the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
He stated that he was annoyed about the position of the RIVM, that you are only
contagious from the moment you have symptoms and that you have to stay at home
- and that because of this only contacts who have had contact with the person
tested positive after he or she fell ill are identified. "That is simply not
true, just as it is not true that children cannot transmit the virus. That is
why from the start we in the northern provinces have said: we are counting
back two days from that first day of illness and we also trace those contacts.
Second, children are contagious even if they don't get sick themselves."
(Translation by me with help of Google translate.) He feels that the situation
in the four northern provinces: Friesland, Groningen, Drenthe, and Overijssel,
is different from the rest of the country and that it search and contain is
still a valid strategy and there is good reason to deviate from the national
policy. He also feels that care workers should be tested more, because they
could infect a lot of people. He also claims that there is no problem with the
testing capacity. He claims that it caused by the decision made before the
first cases appeared in the Netherlands, that only two labs, at the RIVM and
the Erasmus MC, should be freed for testing. I remember that in the first
weeks, all positive test had to be repeated by a test by the RIVM to let it
count as an established infection. The government has responded with stating
that they are not happy with this deviation and that everywhere the same policy
with respect who is being tested should be followed, again stating that the
testing capacity is limited. Meanwhile news about cheap and fast tests becoming
available internationally are being reported.
Although spring has just started, it has been rather cold compared to the
previous months. We have been seeing clear blue skies for some days, with no
contrails visible in the sky. Many of the flowes on our
magnolia have opened, but only a little bit, as can be seen in the picture
on the right. It will even get a little colder, especially during the nights,
and I am afraid that the flowers will turn brown as they have done in other
years.
It looks like that the COVID-19 crisis is
getting out of control in the Netherlands. It was already known that the
number of officially reported cases was much lower than the real number of
cases, because of the limited number of tests that are performed. Today, there
was also some discussion about the limited availability of reagents for
RNA extraction
produced by Roche
Diagnostics company, because about 80% of the testing machines in the
Netherlands are bought from that company. (Some positive news was that a
national lab for testing disease out-breaks in animals, have said that they are
able to perform between 500 and 1500 tests per day.) Now it also appears that
the number of fatal cases are under reported, because persons who have not
tested positive are not included. Some GPs have reported that there are
patients with clear signs of the SARS-CoV-2 virus who have died at home, who
are not included in the official figures. Sometimes conditions of patient can
deteriorate so quickly that they die before entering a hospital. I can also
imagine, that some people simply refuse to be admitted in a hospital or are
not allowed to enter a hospital because they are already receiving palliative
care, such as people with severe dementia. Furthermore, it is becoming clear
that the number of patients requiring IC is going to be higher than the
available locations and that regular patients are no longer getting the optimal
care due to delayed treatments. I am afraid that triage will also start to
happen in the Netherlands, just like it has happened in Italy. I live an area
where the number of cases is still relatively low, yet patients from more
severly affected areas are transfered to local hospitals to lighten the burden
of the hospitals in the most affected areas. Futhermore, also morgues are
reporting that they are already under pressure and fearing that the situation
might become much worse. They too, like many others, are reporting a shortage
of protective materials. To me it sounds like the out-break is out of control.
The first estimates are that this is going to hit our economy hard. Some people
are already raising the question whether the economic consequences of all the
measures are in balance with the number of casualties we are trying to prevent.
I would say that our magnolia is in full blossom,
despite the cold nights of the past days, whioh has made some of the edge of
the flower petals turn brown. I took two pictures, one of which is shown to the right.
I saw Prof. Dr. Ira
Helsloot in a TV program make some interesting statements. He is professor
of the Governance of Safety and Security at the Radboud University and editor
for the Joural of Contingencies and Crisis Management. He is convinced that
the current measures, an 'intelligent' lock-down' in the Netherlands, are
causing more problems to the health of people than they are preventing. He
reasons that the general age of the people who die from COVID-19 is around 80 and are already in a poor condition, people who
were going to die anyway in a few years. But the measures are also causing
economical damage, we are heading to a serious recession. Recession will lead
to a drop in income and it is a known fact that people with a low income will
have more health problems and on average live ten years shorter. He argues that
by trying to extend the lives of a few thousand people now, we are causing
milions of people to die earlier in the coming fourthy years. He says the
decisions that are made now, are made out of fear for hard choices. We have
become accustomed to the idea that our health care is sufficient, that we do
not have to let people die because we cannot give the care. This is a kind of
luxury problem. Of course, politicians are also afraid to tell people that our
health care in these kind of times, cannot help everyone, because it gives the
idea maybe in the future health care is going to fail in normal times. And as
always we are valuing solutions for the short term over those for the long
term.
This night, the temperature dropped to -5.6°
Celsius, which is equal to the lowest temperature measured on this day of the
year on 1996. This morning, I noticed that all the flowers on our magnolia had turn brown. I already had expected this to happen earlier
this week, because it is cold for the time of the year and the clear skies
during the night have caused the temperature to drop below zero many nights in
the past week.
This months interesting links
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
Too cold
Friday, March 27, 2020