COVID-19/Coronavirus thread

[caulfield12]

For other large states – such as Florida and Texas – the worst is expected to come later. on April 27 and 28 respectively.

Some context: While it’s unclear when exactly the state (NY) expects to return to normal, lifting social distancing measures too soon – before the peak, for example – could reignite transmission of the virus and cost lives.

The current version of the IHME model says it expects social distancing until the end of May, and assumes that states will enact other measures – such as mass screening and contact tracing – that will prevent any resurgence of the virus.

The institute previously told CNN that the projections assumed social distancing until August, as the model’s FAQ had stated in now-deleted language.

But on Thursday, the institute’s director, Chris Murray, said that was not actually the case – despite what a professor behind the model and an institute spokesperson had both said earlier.

cnn.com

 

[Chisoxfn]

15 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

That’s because we are doing  social distancing. If we weren’t this would already be a nightmare everywhere. And if we pull the plug any time soon, we will get to see the Imperial study. I’m just stealing these words.

 

Social distancing absolutely has worked (and is buying us time for sure). The specific factor I am aware they are looking in to adjusting is a revised mortality rate to reflect new views on under reporting.  I am sure they are also modifying projections based upon emerging data/trends on social distancing. 

[Balta1701]

26 minutes ago, Chisoxfn said:

Social distancing absolutely has worked (and is buying us time for sure). The specific factor I am aware they are looking in to adjusting is a revised mortality rate to reflect new views on under reporting.  I am sure they are also modifying projections based upon emerging data/trends on social distancing. 

Dude, come on. The mortality rate is clearly a function of what the hospitals can endure. If they are truly overwhelmed then the mortality rate skyrockets.

better treatments and better usage of ventilators is happening, but only because we aren’t overwhelmed in most places right now. If there was no time to learn, if every country just let it burn through like New York, then even the best efforts would still have huge casualty rates.

The Imperial study was explicitly what you said a few weeks ago you were thinking of...do nothing and see what happens until everyone is immune. Thanks to the Imperial study even the UK realized that was insane. So no, that study is still valid, because everyone chose a different path.

[caulfield12]

1 hour ago, Balta1701 said:

Dude, come on. The mortality rate is clearly a function of what the hospitals can endure. If they are truly overwhelmed then the mortality rate skyrockets.

better treatments and better usage of ventilators is happening, but only because we aren’t overwhelmed in most places right now. If there was no time to learn, if every country just let it burn through like New York, then even the best efforts would still have huge casualty rates.

The Imperial study was explicitly what you said a few weeks ago you were thinking of...do nothing and see what happens until everyone is immune. Thanks to the Imperial study even the UK realized that was insane. So no, that study is still valid, because everyone chose a different path.

That’s because Imperial and everyone else is working off 3-5 different models depending on the amount of mitigation/suppression.  That was their worst case scenario for the UK, and it made the headlines because of the eye popping numbers, but they had other models being published looking at a full range of scenarios.  

Just like we originally had 1.6-2.2 million predicted deaths with no social distancing (see UK original response), then revised down to 100-240,000k, then 86k and finally now into the low 60’s.  Each day keeps changing and updating the various scenarios.

IHME will start putting out forecasts next week for what happens in the case of various openings of the country beginning in May.

The most important point is that things will look exactly like they do this Friday through Monday (peak deaths) sometime in July if they reopen May 1st.

 

Trump administration shuttered pandemic monitoring program, then scrambled to extend it

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/10/politics/trump-usaid-prevent-program-coronavirus/index.html

 

Edited April 11, 2020 by caulfield12

[Chisoxfn]

1 hour ago, Balta1701 said:

Dude, come on. The mortality rate is clearly a function of what the hospitals can endure. If they are truly overwhelmed then the mortality rate skyrockets.

better treatments and better usage of ventilators is happening, but only because we aren’t overwhelmed in most places right now. If there was no time to learn, if every country just let it burn through like New York, then even the best efforts would still have huge casualty rates.

The Imperial study was explicitly what you said a few weeks ago you were thinking of...do nothing and see what happens until everyone is immune. Thanks to the Imperial study even the UK realized that was insane. So no, that study is still valid, because everyone chose a different path.

I don't think you and I are saying the same thing.  There are emerging views that with a larger portion of the population being asymptametic (potentially as high as 50%) and just general underst-estimating of the overall count (much more so than initial estimates), that the mortality rates may be massively elevated (still well in excess of the flu so I'm not doing some flu comparison here).  Obviously...if you don't social distance, you have more infected, hospitals crash, and mortality skyrockets (but that is a different variable driving the mortality than the variable I am discussing).  That said...basic math says if I think 1 person dies out of every 100 (if hospitals are safe) but instead, it is actually 1 person per 1000...you end up at a dramatically different point of the basic mortality curve.  And from there, you tweak mortality based upon the stress & capacity of the hospitals, including relevant equipment, etc to treat and ventilate, etc.   

You have to look at all the independent factors and then when you run the model, you blend in the components to come up with new projections. Social distancing is the single biggest reason we have contained it and you can't lax very much. The widely held wisdom is you need 90% social distancing to shut this thing down in 3 months (doesn't mean you have killed it...but that is what you are probably talking about).  If you are only at 80% of population doing Social Distancing...it is going to take 4 months.  Anything 70% below and you just flat out won't contain it.  That is why it will be paramount once we do knock this down that everyone is ready to rapidly identify and respond (including rapid shutdowns of borders, etc) until they actually have a cure and/or an effective way to treat this thing.  Further, the R0 has been fundamentally lowered due to this measures (moving from 2.5+  to 0.6).  R0 < 1 would indicate the virus will continue to dwindle and eventually die-out over time. 

To go a little deeper, there is also emerging research being done on select comorbidities and what is driving such the high rates of mortality within subsets of the population and an emerging UK study is believing the COVID virus is getting into the body by latching on to ACE2 receptors.  Specifically patients with hypertension, diabetes, and other cardiovascular diseases tend to take groups of drugs which are known as Ace Inhibitors and/or angiotensin receptors, which cause an individual to put out more ACE2 receptors, which increase their susceptibility to the infection (and depth of the infection).  This only explains these particular comorbidities, but obviously research is being done broadly and who knows whether any of this holds or not.   

[caulfield12]

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/04/11/andrew-yang-joe-biden-trump-attack-ad-gary-locke-ebof-bts-vpx.cnn
 

Earlier in this thread, there was a worthwhile discussion of trying to take the high road, not politicizing things...but ads like this come directly out of the 1988 playbook.

It’s beneath the office of the Presidency to resort to transforming an Asian-American into a nefarious “foreign agent.”

While this type of crap happened after Pearl Harbor (concentration camps like Manzanar) ...that was almost 80 years ago now.  There’s simply no excuse for it today.

Worst of all, it’s simply another passing along of the buck in an interminable series of them, an attempted distraction, and shirking of any responsibility for the Federal government’s heretofore pathetic response to Covid-19.

Edited April 11, 2020 by caulfield12

[NWINFan]

17 hours ago, Dick Allen said:

Where you able to investigate Ted Cruz’s father?

The Ted Cruz accusation was nothing but a sound bite and of course not to be taken seriously. Chris Matthews went nuts, started yelling how Oswald was a Castro lover and some other reactionary nonsense. I couldn't believe Cruz took this seriously, and he should have laughed it off. But it wasn't funny for many reasons. the main one being that Trump again was abusing his platform again. This is one reason that I don't believe much of what he says now, He also gives conspiracies a bad name.

[NWINFan]

14 hours ago, The Beast said:

 

If you are both journalists, I would love to read some of each of your work. Journalism was a profession I considered but got scared off of because my school wasn’t prestigious enough and I was scared of job outlook and salary. That being said, I have thought of writing again and I do love volunteering for political campaigns.

Does anyone else work in media or for political organizations?

I would like it if you read my work too, but this is not my web site, and I can't directly promote myself. But you want to write again, I encourage you to do that because there are all kinds of benefits to it, even if it doesn't get published. I am working on something now, and I don't know if it will ever see the light of day, but it is helping on the emotional side.

Reporting now is important. The public needs to be informed to protect itself, and the country needs to take this seriously. We don't need idiotic conspiracy theories. This isn't about Trump or Biden or either political party. The losses are going to run deep and some may never fully recover. The public should understand one thing: An honest media will have to report some bad news at times, and scapegoating does no good. And calls for opening the country up right now are beyond irresponsible. Some of these people have some serious issues.

[Balta1701]

10 hours ago, Chisoxfn said:

I don't think you and I are saying the same thing.  There are emerging views that with a larger portion of the population being asymptametic (potentially as high as 50%) and just general underst-estimating of the overall count (much more so than initial estimates), that the mortality rates may be massively elevated (still well in excess of the flu so I'm not doing some flu comparison here).  Obviously...if you don't social distance, you have more infected, hospitals crash, and mortality skyrockets (but that is a different variable driving the mortality than the variable I am discussing).  That said...basic math says if I think 1 person dies out of every 100 (if hospitals are safe) but instead, it is actually 1 person per 1000...you end up at a dramatically different point of the basic mortality curve.  And from there, you tweak mortality based upon the stress & capacity of the hospitals, including relevant equipment, etc to treat and ventilate, etc.   

You have to look at all the independent factors and then when you run the model, you blend in the components to come up with new projections. Social distancing is the single biggest reason we have contained it and you can't lax very much. The widely held wisdom is you need 90% social distancing to shut this thing down in 3 months (doesn't mean you have killed it...but that is what you are probably talking about).  If you are only at 80% of population doing Social Distancing...it is going to take 4 months.  Anything 70% below and you just flat out won't contain it.  That is why it will be paramount once we do knock this down that everyone is ready to rapidly identify and respond (including rapid shutdowns of borders, etc) until they actually have a cure and/or an effective way to treat this thing.  Further, the R0 has been fundamentally lowered due to this measures (moving from 2.5+  to 0.6).  R0 < 1 would indicate the virus will continue to dwindle and eventually die-out over time. 

To go a little deeper, there is also emerging research being done on select comorbidities and what is driving such the high rates of mortality within subsets of the population and an emerging UK study is believing the COVID virus is getting into the body by latching on to ACE2 receptors.  Specifically patients with hypertension, diabetes, and other cardiovascular diseases tend to take groups of drugs which are known as Ace Inhibitors and/or angiotensin receptors, which cause an individual to put out more ACE2 receptors, which increase their susceptibility to the infection (and depth of the infection).  This only explains these particular comorbidities, but obviously research is being done broadly and who knows whether any of this holds or not.   

At this point, there really is strong evidence worldwide that it's not 1 person per 1000. 50% asymptomatic still seems at the upper limit compared to what most who have studied it have said but I can't rule it out, but to get to 1 person in 1000 as a death rate, you need >90% of people to have it to be asymptomatic. The US is reporting 4% mortality rates right now, and mortality rates lag behind infection rates, but I'd believe we'd plausibly wind up with at 2-3% casualty rate assuming we still avoid the hospital overwhelming. There's just no way that the US actually has 5 to 10 million cases right now, for the numbers you're suggesting - and just to go back to where this conversation started, the tests in Colorado would have shown a much higher rate of antibodies present if the US did.

[southsider2k5]

The US now leads the world in deaths.

[southsideirish71]

1 hour ago, southsider2k5 said:

The US now leads the world in deaths.

On paper.  My guess is China still leads this. 

[southsider2k5]

55 minutes ago, southsideirish71 said:

On paper.  My guess is China still leads this. 

That's probably true, though I would also bet our count is very low as well.

[raBBit]

1 hour ago, southsideirish71 said:

On paper.  My guess is China still leads this. 

Yeah China can be effectively removed from this conversation.

USA has third highest population in the world, removing China, they're the second highest. India is pretty interestign. I can't speak to the habits of the country but I am going to guess they're less transient or something leading to their proportionally low numbers. At work I work with a team over there and they just got put on lock down at the beginning of the month I believe. My main contact was pretty freaked out but said he doesn't know of anyone who's contracted it.

I'd be interested to see the daily death rates of other natural leading killers (heart attack, flu, pneumonia, cancer, etc.) and see how their daily trends have gone over the past 6-8 weeks or so when the COVID deaths started coming in.  I listened to one doctor on NPR who said the rates of those causes of death are falling in comparison to the pre-established norms. I don't know what data he was citing/using though but I cant definitely see that being the  case.

If someone is getting treatment for a cancer, their immune system is compromised as a result and then they contract COVID and die, what killed them? I'd imagine the credit would probably be given to COVID but if the person wasn't receiving treatment for cancer they'd in all likelihood be able to overcome COIVD.

Edited April 11, 2020 by raBBit

[Dick Allen]

Not one single shipment of N95 masks arrived at a US port in March.  
 

 

[caulfield12]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/keep-workers-lay-them-off-141821376.html

But some of the workers have said they would rather stay on unemployment or be laid off (because of the extra $600/week.)

“If you don’t feel comfortable leaving your house in a pandemic, I am not going to push you. That’s not fair,” Blondy said. “But I might not have work for you in the future.”

She said she wished the unemployment system were clearer about how to handle situations like these. Can employees refuse work? Does she have to challenge their unemployment claim — something she does not want to do? Can it be considered fraud if she doesn’t?

A spokeswoman for the Department of Labor said Wednesday that states could interpret their own laws and that employers were not responsible for challenging unemployment claims. But in general, “individuals that quit without good cause or refuse suitable offers of employment are not eligible for benefits.”

 

[bmags]

New cases declined in Illinois today, but still only at 5k tests per day. The good news is a positive rate closer to 24% which is also down from yesterday, though last week that was more like 17-20%.
 

The plateau of testing just makes this all very cloudy. 

[Jack Parkman]

4 hours ago, southsider2k5 said:

The US now leads the world in deaths.

Deaths per capita is a better statistic tbh. Of course the US leads in deaths, because we're the 2nd most populated country to be hit hard and you can't trust the numbers coming out of China. 

[Quin]

1 minute ago, Jack Parkman said:

Deaths per capita is a better statistic tbh. Of course the US leads in deaths, because we're the 2nd most populated country to be hit hard and you can't trust the numbers coming out of China. 

We also can't trust the US numbers due to severe lack of testing and delayed response.

[Jack Parkman]

Just now, Quin said:

We also can't trust the US numbers due to severe lack of testing and delayed response.

Also correct. But in a pandemic, the more populated countries will obviously have higher pure numbers, and that's my point. 

more people>more people getting sick>more people dying(just in pure numbers) which is why per capita is a better measuring stick. 

[Dick Allen]

14 minutes ago, Jack Parkman said:

Deaths per capita is a better statistic tbh. Of course the US leads in deaths, because we're the 2nd most populated country to be hit hard and you can't trust the numbers coming out of China. 

The problem is the administration wants it both ways. Deaths per capita makes sense. So does tests per capita. 

[southsider2k5]

2 hours ago, Jack Parkman said:

Deaths per capita is a better statistic tbh. Of course the US leads in deaths, because we're the 2nd most populated country to be hit hard and you can't trust the numbers coming out of China. 

Sure.  But we are no where near the most densly populated to get his, which tells you something about our pathetic reaction to it.

[Chisoxfn]

3 hours ago, Quin said:

We also can't trust the US numbers due to severe lack of testing and delayed response.

Death numbers are pretty legit. Case numbers are not. And balta...when I used the 1 in x and than shifted out I was purely making an example so anyone who read the post could understand what I am saying. 
 

No one believes mortality rates for this virus are 2-3 percent. Those are grossly inflated numbers. They also aren’t .1/.2 percent which is the flu. They lie somewhere in between and if I were to get, they are somewhere between .5 and 1 percent (in a controlled setting where you have ventilators and equipment).  
 

 

 

[whitesoxfan99]

1 hour ago, Chisoxfn said:

Death numbers are pretty legit. Case numbers are not. And balta...when I used the 1 in x and than shifted out I was purely making an example so anyone who read the post could understand what I am saying. 
 

No one believes mortality rates for this virus are 2-3 percent. Those are grossly inflated numbers. They also aren’t .1/.2 percent which is the flu. They lie somewhere in between and if I were to get, they are somewhere between .5 and 1 percent (in a controlled setting where you have ventilators and equipment).  
 

 

 

If we are going to say these are inflated than you could just as easily say the flu mortality rate is inflated as well.

H1N1 was only like .02%.  

[caulfield12]

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3050327/coronavirus-still-stumps-experts-when-human-carrier-turns-infectious
Article discussing possibility of asymptomatic transmission on February 12th.

Find it pretty disconcerting that the head of HHS (compared to GA governor) would be almost two full weeks behind the mainstream press...or even this thread if we went back to February and looked for the first discussions about it.  But that’s one of the biggest questions for WHO and China.  Why were they STILL reporting in mid January that there was no person-to-person transmission?  Trying to prevent fear or panic is understandable...but not when you are lying and then still send out 5 million people across China (Chinese New Year) and the world on trains, planes and buses.   Most likely, local authorities were attempting to bury the story as long as possible...but then every epidemiologist would have to know the rate of spread/transmission wouldn’t allow for any other rational explanation known to modern science.  Seems that bipartisan meetings are going to be delayed until 2021 (shocking, right?) 

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/11/politics/new-york-times-coronavirus-trump-administration/index.html

According to the report, Dr. Robert Kadlec, the top disaster response official at the Department of Health and Human Services, convened the White House coronavirus task force on February 21. During his meeting, the group conducted a mock-up exercise of the pandemic. It predicted 110 million infections, 7.7 million hospitalizations and 586,000 deaths. As a result, the group "concluded they would soon need to move toward aggressive social distancing, even at the risk of severe disruption to the nation's economy and the daily lives of millions of Americans." 

However, it would take more than three weeks for Trump to enact social distancing guidelines on March 16. 

Two days after that meeting Kadlec learned of human-to-human transmission from asymptomatic individuals, the Times report states. But instead of immediately implementing mitigation steps, the President's focus turned to messaging. 

.

[caulfield12]

31 minutes ago, whitesoxfan99 said:

If we are going to say these are inflated than you could just as easily say the flu mortality rate is inflated as well.

H1N1 was only like .02%.  

If we go along with the assumptions many are currently making about China....that 42,000 died here instead of 3300ish, then you would have roughly 12x the rate of 3%, which would be 36%.   That’s preposterous, right?   So then it has to be the lack of testing...keeping in mind many people in countries around the world are not being credited as Covid-19 deaths.  Even Dr. Birx is arguing the US numbers are underestimating it.   It’s just hard to believe it’s any lower than 2-3% looking at those numbers in Europe.

I guess there really needs to be two numbers.  Those who actually get sick, test positive and ultimately recover...versus the hundred thousands who recover on their own and/or are asymptomatic.

What is the ICU admittance rate for the seasonal flu?  For COVID-19, it has pretty consistently been running at 12-20% around the entire world.

Estimates suggest that up to 10% of patients (already) hospitalized with influenza will be admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). But more than half (51%) of patients diagnosed with either influenza A (higher rate of admission) or B who were admitted to the hospital also had cardiovascular disease.  It’s almost impossible to sort out and isolate because of the preexisting conditions and co-morbidities.

That’s not even considering the permanent lung damage many are being left with...

 

Edited April 12, 2020 by caulfield12