COVID-19/Coronavirus thread

[DisneyTaxDad]

Couple of interesting charts regarding the situation in Texas:

Keep in mind Texas has nearly 130% the population of New York.  Hospitalizations do not appear to be spiking in correlation with any real change in behavior outside of an increase in treatment of other medical conditions.  

 

 

Notice the hospital admissions for Covid remain relatively flat.  Increase appears to be tied to an increase in elective procedures where a Covid test is required.

Meanwhile despite an encouraging downward trend, Illinois still has 2,458 Covid hospitalized patients despite being one of the first jurisdictions to implement Covid related restrictions and one of the most conservative in easing them.  Texas has 2,153 despite having 228% of Illinois' population.  

[Balta1701]

woo hoo, previous one day record was about 1900 cases, we blow past that today with 2500 new cases reported! Look out New York, we will show you!

[StrangeSox]

 

[Dick Allen]

17 hours ago, Balta1701 said:

woo hoo, previous one day record was about 1900 cases, we blow past that today with 2500 new cases reported! Look out New York, we will show you!

Embers, ashes. The Trump administration will stomp those out very quickly, very powerfully. Some say with more power than you have ever seen. But then again, it will be up to the governors. If they don't respond well, the federal government will step in. Believe me. Thanks to POTUS, the coronavirus has been reduced to ashes. You can thank him in November.

Edited June 11, 2020 by Dick Allen

[RTC]

12 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

Embers, ashes. The Trump administration will stomp those out very quickly, very powerfully. Some say with more power than you have ever seen. But then again, it will be up to the governors. If they don't respond well, the federal government will step in. Believe me. Thanks to POTUS, the coronavirus has been reduced to ashes. You can thank him in November.

Not only that, but we have really, really great ashes.  Maybe the best ever.  We need to build a wall because people want to steal our ashes.

[The Beast]

https://www.bluezones.com/2020/06/covid-19-straight-answers-from-top-epidemiologist-who-predicted-the-pandemic/

Straight talk, not happy talk.

[caulfield12]

Since Memorial Day on May 25, the number of coronavirus hospitalizations has goneup in at least a dozen US states, according to data CNN aggregated from the Covid Tracking Project. They are Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas and Utah. 

As states across the country reopen their economies, people are being forced to live alongside the virus. A closely watched coronavirus model from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington was updated on Wednesday is now forecasting nearly 170,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States by October 1.

...

The rising number of coronavirus cases in the United States has unnerved Wall Street. A second wave of infections could force many businesses to close again just after they reopened.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the US economy wouldn't be shut down again despite the rising case count.

"We can't shut down the economy again. I think we've learned that if you shut down the economy, you're going to create more damage, and not just economic damage, but there are other areas," he told CNBC in an interview.

Mnuchin said more than a trillion dollars would be pumped into the economy over the next month.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/11/investing/global-stocks-coronavirus-fed/index.html

 

[Balta1701]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/11/investing/stock-market-today-coronavirus/index.html

Well, the only people who count may have started realizing that they f***ed up today.

The good news...if Wall Street realizes the trouble they're in, it won't take long for the Senate to act on an additional large aid bill.

[Big Hurtin]

Trump Rally Forces People to Sign a Waiver to Not Sue if They Contract Coronavirus

[pettie4sox]

5 hours ago, Big Hurtin said:

Trump Rally Forces People to Sign a Waiver to Not Sue if They Contract Coronavirus

The comment section is savage.

[NWINFan]

5 hours ago, Big Hurtin said:

Trump Rally Forces People to Sign a Waiver to Not Sue if They Contract Coronavirus

He is asking this of the people who support him? And they are still going to vote for him?

[southsider2k5]

45 minutes ago, NWINFan said:

He is asking this of the people who support him? And they are still going to vote for him?

Jim Jones likes this post.

[Jerksticks]

Where them exponential dead Swedes and dead Americans at?  Next week?

 

 

[Balta1701]

22 minutes ago, Jerksticks said:

Where them exponential dead Swedes and dead Americans at?  Next week?

 

 

I know you're trolling, but seriously you're just being an a** here. The US death toll is 110,000 and case numbers are once again rising. Sweden's approach has led to a pile of bodies that they're getting really angry about.

https://fortune.com/2020/06/10/sweden-coronavirus-briefings-scandal/

Quote

Sweden’s top health authority will drop daily press briefings that had provided updates on the country’s Covid-19 infection rate and death toll.

The decision comes amid a furore over Sweden’s strategy to fight the pandemic, after state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell admitted his approach was flawed. Instead of every day, updates will now only be provided on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

 

[southsider2k5]

39 minutes ago, Jerksticks said:

Where them exponential dead Swedes and dead Americans at?  Next week?

 

 

How many dead people were you hoping for?

[StrangeSox]

we're holding steady at ~1k dead Americans every single day, many more with serious illness that may have life-long physical and financial consequences, and we have multiple hotspots emerging. meanwhile, countries that didn't take the dumbest route possible are at or closing in on....zero new cases a day. definitely a good time to smug-post about not yet seeing exponential growth, just a steady churn of death.

 

 

edit: I guess I'd appreciate acknowledging even once that multiple claims of "50-100m Americans already infected" as early as mid-March were completely baseless and totally wrong.

Edited June 12, 2020 by StrangeSox

[DisneyTaxDad]

Interesting charts:

Within Sweden, April 2020 was clearly a difficult month, however, within the last 30 years, there have been several that have been far more deadly.  Noticeably, May 2020 returns to a more typical death-rate and by this week they are seeing no change to their average daily death rate.  

 

Here is a chart of Swedish deaths per day:

Deaths remarkably drop despite not having a significant lockdown to lift.

Here is a fun table regarding Germany, often praised for their response:

 

 

Couple observations, firstly, Covid was already in a decline among the population when the lockdowns were implemented.  As restrictions were eased, we see some small blips and a return to standard decline - this is comparable to the small waves we are seeing in some US jurisdictions.

The science regarding Covid seems to be emerging and changing rapidly.  However, at this point, we have a sizable amount of data to interpret.  It is difficult to correlate a change in behavior, such as a "lockdown", with a measurable impact on Covid.    Fortunately, the data is consistent that those outside of our most vulnerable populations, will do remarkably well and there is minimal danger.  The data across the US is consistent, outside of New York, and voluminous that the majority of deaths are related to a LTC facility.  Clearly, these populations need to be protected.

Just as we saw some small blips in Wisconsin, Georgia, and Alabama, we can expect them to fade.  My expectation is that we will see numbers fade in today's "hotspots" of Texas and Arizona and be concentrating on other regions in the coming weeks.  Keep an eye on California, particularly Southern California.  I expect that will be of focus in the coming weeks.

[Balta1701]

29 minutes ago, DisneyTaxDad said:

The science regarding Covid seems to be emerging and changing rapidly.  However, at this point, we have a sizable amount of data to interpret.  It is difficult to correlate a change in behavior, such as a "lockdown", with a measurable impact on Covid.    Fortunately, the data is consistent that those outside of our most vulnerable populations, will do remarkably well and there is minimal danger.  The data across the US is consistent, outside of New York, and voluminous that the majority of deaths are related to a LTC facility.  Clearly, these populations need to be protected.

Just as we saw some small blips in Wisconsin, Georgia, and Alabama, we can expect them to fade.  My expectation is that we will see numbers fade in today's "hotspots" of Texas and Arizona and be concentrating on other regions in the coming weeks.  Keep an eye on California, particularly Southern California.  I expect that will be of focus in the coming weeks.

This is statistically proven false as there are strong correlations between several of the responses and slowing the spread. Social Distancing, travel bans, lockdowns, and business closures have shown the strongest correlations with limiting the spread of the disease.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2404-8

Quote

In the absence of policy actions, we estimate that early infections of COVID-19 exhibit exponential growth rates of roughly 38% per day. We fnd that anti-contagion policies have signifcantly and substantially slowed this growth. Some policies have diferent impacts on diferent populations, but we obtain consistent evidence that the policy packages now deployed are achieving large, benefcial, and measurable health outcomes. We estimate that across these six countries, interventions prevented or delayed on the order of 62 million confrmed cases, corresponding to averting roughly 530 million total infections.

I do agree that California is a growing hotspot, but so are the other states - because the social distancing and shutdown measures are ending. 

[caulfield12]

50 minutes ago, DisneyTaxDad said:

Interesting charts:

Within Sweden, April 2020 was clearly a difficult month, however, within the last 30 years, there have been several that have been far more deadly.  Noticeably, May 2020 returns to a more typical death-rate and by this week they are seeing no change to their average daily death rate.  

 

Here is a chart of Swedish deaths per day:

Deaths remarkably drop despite not having a significant lockdown to lift.

Here is a fun table regarding Germany, often praised for their response:

 

 

Couple observations, firstly, Covid was already in a decline among the population when the lockdowns were implemented.  As restrictions were eased, we see some small blips and a return to standard decline - this is comparable to the small waves we are seeing in some US jurisdictions.

The science regarding Covid seems to be emerging and changing rapidly.  However, at this point, we have a sizable amount of data to interpret.  It is difficult to correlate a change in behavior, such as a "lockdown", with a measurable impact on Covid.    Fortunately, the data is consistent that those outside of our most vulnerable populations, will do remarkably well and there is minimal danger.  The data across the US is consistent, outside of New York, and voluminous that the majority of deaths are related to a LTC facility.  Clearly, these populations need to be protected.

Just as we saw some small blips in Wisconsin, Georgia, and Alabama, we can expect them to fade.  My expectation is that we will see numbers fade in today's "hotspots" of Texas and Arizona and be concentrating on other regions in the coming weeks.  Keep an eye on California, particularly Southern California.  I expect that will be of focus in the coming weeks.

Where are March and April of 2020?

You realize the majority of these record months are in the heart of the 3-4 coldest winter months of the year...right?

You realize the quality of health care in Sweden has gone up exponentially in Sweden since the early 90’s, leading to much longer lifespans and fewer natural deaths due to increased longevity?

 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/

46284 deaths in 125 days

370.3 deaths per day

Gives you 135,160 yearly deaths on the same pace...the average for Sweden the last five previous years is 91,000.

So even going by that “normalized” rate of 249 per day from here on out...59760+46284=106,044

That’s a 16.5% increase in deaths compared to normal years.  But the likelihood is that death rate could fluctuate the next 2-3 months and will definitely go up again in October/November/December (winter/flu season.)

Split the difference and you’re at 120,602 deaths in 2020, compared to the normal 91,000 trend line.   That’s an increase of almost 33%.

Edited June 12, 2020 by caulfield12

[bmags]

Illinois with only a 2.3% positive rate today and under 600 new cases (25k tests).

It was a full week of new cases/day never exceeding 800.

the Northeast region even as things opened up was still pretty high in % positive, now that's down to 8% (was 15% in early may), and hospitalizations are down 77%.

Happy to see such a large testing day. I really hope starting tomorrow we see high tests as those that were at the largest protests hopefully get tested. Next week will be a big week on that front.

[DisneyTaxDad]

I'm sorry, but I'm very aware of the nature.com article and it has been roundly criticized, aged, and is somewhat of a statistical disaster.  Some, of many issues with it:

• Paper was received on March 22, 2020:  basically before the epidemic had gained steam in the United States or social distancing had been in place for a particularly long period outside of China.
• The authors somewhat admit their data is limited and they lack "sufficient data for detailed estimates of changes over time in any other country."
• The authors make no attempt to at comparing Covid spread in countries that did use various forms of "lockdowns" with those that did not.  They only tracked the infection rate by day and assume any changes resulted from "lockdowns".
• Their own analysis demonstrated that "lockdowns" reduced the speed of spread by less than 40%.  This means spread was still very rapid post-"lockdown".
• They find almost no correlation between individual "lockdown" policies and any meaningful change in growth.
• They did not disclosure the fatality rate but it is clearly greater than 1.00%.  This is at least 4x the CDC's current rate.
• Best one:  They estimate the "lockdowns" reduced deaths in Sweden by 90%.  It is well known that Sweden imposed minimal restrictions.

Unfortunately, this study is somewhat laughable.

[Balta1701]

1 minute ago, DisneyTaxDad said:

• Best one:  They estimate the "lockdowns" reduced deaths in Sweden by 90%.  It is well known that Sweden imposed minimal restrictions.

They didn't impose restrictions at the government level but that doesn't mean Swedes continued working as normal. They just didn't cut back as much as their neighboring countries, which led to death rates 5-10x higher.

https://www.thelocal.se/20200430/how-travel-increased-in-sweden-last-week-despite-coronavirus-warnings

[Balta1701]

4 minutes ago, DisneyTaxDad said:

I'm sorry, but I'm very aware of the nature.com article and it has been roundly criticized, aged, and is somewhat of a statistical disaster.  Some, of many issues with it:

• Paper was received on March 22, 2020:  basically before the epidemic had gained steam in the United States or social distancing had been in place for a particularly long period outside of China.
• The authors somewhat admit their data is limited and they lack "sufficient data for detailed estimates of changes over time in any other country."
• The authors make no attempt to at comparing Covid spread in countries that did use various forms of "lockdowns" with those that did not.  They only tracked the infection rate by day and assume any changes resulted from "lockdowns".
• Their own analysis demonstrated that "lockdowns" reduced the speed of spread by less than 40%.  This means spread was still very rapid post-"lockdown".
• They find almost no correlation between individual "lockdown" policies and any meaningful change in growth.
• They did not disclosure the fatality rate but it is clearly greater than 1.00%.  This is at least 4x the CDC's current rate.
• Best one:  They estimate the "lockdowns" reduced deaths in Sweden by 90%.  It is well known that Sweden imposed minimal restrictions.

Unfortunately, this study is somewhat laughable.

1. It was published in late May, which means that the paper spent those 2 months in fairly rapid revision, which is how data from April is included for the US.

2. You specifically asserted there was no correlation, whereas that paper demonstrates a correlation. You did not ask for a causation. 

3. They estimate that the growth rate per day with no responses is 38%. Therefore, a 40% decrease in transmission means that you have stopped all growth of the virus. It does not mean that it was very rapid afterwards, that would be incredibly successful.

 

[StrangeSox]

The paper you linked also does not contain the word "Sweden" in it or '90%'. The authors are looking at China, France, Iran, Italy, SK and US. Wonder if there's some other news article on nature.com Disney is referring to rather than the paper you linked?

 

edit; the paper also says "We adjust existing estimates of case under-reporting to further account for asymptomatic infections assuming an infection-fatality ratio of 0.75%". It says right there, and they have more in the Supplemental section, what their calculated IFR is and run a sensitivity analysis on that assumption. It's explicitly not greater than 1.00%.

Edited June 12, 2020 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Want to go back to a question that JoseAbreu asked several weeks back, at least I think it was them.

 

What behaviors have people here in Illinois changed since we've moved to Phase 3? I went to Home Depot twice, but that's really been about it.