COVID-19/Coronavirus thread

[DisneyTaxDad]

Interesting story in the Wall Street Journal:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-data-are-in-its-time-for-major-reopening-11592264199

They con­clude that twice as many lives could be saved if gov­ern­ments fo­cused lim­ited re­sources on pro­tect­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple rather than squan­der­ing them on those who seem to face al­most no risk, such as chil­dren.

Nobel Prize winning Professor of Structural Biology offers his take:

https://unherd.com/thepost/nobel-prize-winning-scientist-the-covid-19-epidemic-was-never-exponential/

[bmags]

11 minutes ago, DisneyTaxDad said:

Interesting story in the Wall Street Journal:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-data-are-in-its-time-for-major-reopening-11592264199

They con­clude that twice as many lives could be saved if gov­ern­ments fo­cused lim­ited re­sources on pro­tect­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple rather than squan­der­ing them on those who seem to face al­most no risk, such as chil­dren.

Nobel Prize winning Professor of Structural Biology offers his take:

https://unherd.com/thepost/nobel-prize-winning-scientist-the-covid-19-epidemic-was-never-exponential/

That’s an editorial from the Wall Street journal. 
 

But that’s a pretty sweet take. That’s what Sweden did, it didn’t work. And that’s even thought their population voluntarily locked down.

Is lockdown the most effective containment strategy? No, there’s too many holes in who works.

But when it launched in March it was the correct move while they figured out how this behaved. You don’t wait and see.

 

[DisneyTaxDad]

Agreed, Sweden has fared catastrophically, as you can see from how it stands out from its peers:

Although they did reduce social interaction, they id so by a far smaller degree than their peers:

[caulfield12]

2 hours ago, DisneyTaxDad said:

Interesting story in the Wall Street Journal:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-data-are-in-its-time-for-major-reopening-11592264199

They con­clude that twice as many lives could be saved if gov­ern­ments fo­cused lim­ited re­sources on pro­tect­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple rather than squan­der­ing them on those who seem to face al­most no risk, such as chil­dren.

Nobel Prize winning Professor of Structural Biology offers his take:

https://unherd.com/thepost/nobel-prize-winning-scientist-the-covid-19-epidemic-was-never-exponential/

That’s fine, but kids being back in school creates numerous super spreaders who are completely oblivious to that fact if they don’t have any symptoms.

They quickly spread it to their entire families at home, to teachers and administrators at school, to grandparents, to those with pre-existing conditions and co-morbidities.

Look at all of the events and parties beginning with Memorial Day featuring 18-29 year olds spreading the disease.

 
The fact of the matter is that the penetration level throughout the US is still only 2-5%, and it would take another 2-3 peaks or massive waves in NY/NJ to get anywhere close to the 60-80% range necessary for herd immunity to kick in.

 

The Swedes brokered a different deal than the rest of the world: Citizens take individual responsibility for social distancing, and the government keeps most of society functioning. There are some rules—high schools and universities are closed, gatherings of more than 50 people are banned, and people over 70 and those who feel ill are encouraged to stay home. But businesses largely remain open, and children who would otherwise need care are in school.

Citizens seems to be taking their responsibility seriously. Residents point out that they are practicing social distancing, with the elderly isolated, and families mostly staying home, apart from kids in school. Citymapper statistics indicate an almost 75% drop in mobility in Stockholm. Travel over the Easter weekend dropped more than 90%; the government did not tell ski resorts to close for Easter, a popular ski holiday time, but the resorts closed anyway. Lovin told the BBC it is a “myth that Sweden has not taken serious steps.”

https://qz.com/1842183/sweden-is-taking-a-very-different-approach-to-covid-19/

 

The main problem with all these comparisons is we don’t have a society of either individual responsibility or where government excels at keeping most of society functioning smoothly.  We, instead, have a completely fractured or divided country, which is the complete and total opposite of Sweden.   The only thing they have in common with the US is refusing to shoulder blame and fighting back with critics of their controversial approach.

 

Edited June 16, 2020 by caulfield12

[NorthSideSox72]

 

8 hours ago, bmags said:

but you can see his concern for some regions where the percent change has been 0 (they also happen to be about 1% positive total). If those go up to 2% positive, they would fail to meet the requirement.

7 hours ago, hogan873 said:

No, I agree.  Phase 4 is the last phase before a vaccine or otherwise herd immunity.  I can understand having challenging goals in order to get there.  I wonder, though, if a region with very low positivity shows a slight increase but the rate is still very low if it would still be permitted to move forward.  There would have to be some sort of consideration around that.

7 hours ago, bmags said:

My guess - they will defer to the local depts. of public health.

I think JB knows that if regions are low and staying low, and keeping all the capacity measures high and are able to do contact tracing pretty effectively, he cannot reasonably keep them back in Phase 3 just because they go from 1.5% to 2% positivity or even 5% to 6% in a 14-day period. The result would be the opposite of what the state needs and he knows that. Many who have been very supportive will start throwing in the towel, it would ignore the huge gains made up to this point and start to make him look like he's so dogmatic to the plan written in March that he isn't capable of leading. And then infections will go up anyway. In the end I think bmags is right that he will defer to local control upon Phase 4, or at least be much more flexible about it than the way the positivity rate provision is written.

 

5 hours ago, bmags said:

I am not sure we know as much about k-12 as we should. 

Israel had issues with transmission after opening up, but the nordic countries did have reported it no uptick since schools reopened.

To be honest, I think they have to re-open generally and have school by school decisions, and take kids temps.

The effects on education from the lockdowns appear significant and negative. Unless there is evidence it is a significant driver, tie should go to reopening.

Bolded is spot-on, for me. No one wants kids to go if it looks like a death trap, but if we are more or less where we stand today, the kids need to be back in school full-time. The negative impacts of starting them remotely in August will be huge, much worse than the missed time in April and May. That has to be part of the picture.

 

[bmags]

1 hour ago, DisneyTaxDad said:

Agreed, Sweden has fared catastrophically, as you can see from how it stands out from its peers:

Although they did reduce social interaction, they id so by a far smaller degree than their peers:

Gotta admit...I'm a little confused.

You were just stating that prioritizing protecting the long term care facilities while letting the rest population move on as normal would save twice as many lives but now you are showing that a good example case of that and it ... didn't perform better. And it's mobility was lower, you used google, but apple does a better breakdown of how travel breaks down - see Stockholm. Transit and walking fall to levels similar but not equal to Paris - but very similar to say, Atlanta (georgia has less deaths per million though that isn't a good indicator).

You also continue to operate under this idea that an equal amount of virus entered each country on the same day, and so you can just compare each one and voila. There is a reason people compare Sweden to its actual neighbors in Norway/denmark/Finland. They operate similarly and have similar geography. 

NYC I think did a poor job, but cities like new york, chicago, boston, DC etc that are major international travel hubs didn't have the benefit of a manageable number of cases before they were flooded. Each decision was affecting thousands and their death rate.

But yeah, I kinda thought "if we prioritized our elderly and let everyone else live as normal" we would do better, not "worse but only 50k more people dead worse".

COVID definitely is not clean growth. It's not each person infects two people. It's 50 people infect no one and 5 infect 40 themselves. But it's growth is serious and if you let it run unchecked in the broader population, it will get into LT Care facilities as the UK and sweden found out.

[Balta1701]

48 minutes ago, DisneyTaxDad said:

Although they did reduce social interaction, they id so by a far smaller degree than their peers:

So what are you Cub fan?

I mean, obviously you're a Cub fan, because you just came to a White Sox page, posted a graphic with no source link that included a "social mobility score" that is calculated as an average of retail/restaurant, grocery, workplace, public transit, and parks, and you didn't expect that I'm going to go find the raw numbers easily available online and find that for the first week of may, Retail/restaurants were down 20%, Transit was down 30%, workplaces were down 30%,  and usage of parks was up by 80-150%, completely swamping out the other 3 items when you do nothing but calculate an average. You posted a clearly misleading graph and just expected White Sox fans wouldn't bother to Google easily confirmable numbers...classic Cub fan behavior.

https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2020-06-12_SE_Mobility_Report_en.pdf

So aside from a cub fan, are you getting paid for this? Abbott or DeSantis's staff? 

[caulfield12]

1 hour ago, bmags said:

Gotta admit...I'm a little confused.

You were just stating that prioritizing protecting the long term care facilities while letting the rest population move on as normal would save twice as many lives but now you are showing that a good example case of that and it ... didn't perform better. And it's mobility was lower, you used google, but apple does a better breakdown of how travel breaks down - see Stockholm. Transit and walking fall to levels similar but not equal to Paris - but very similar to say, Atlanta (georgia has less deaths per million though that isn't a good indicator).

You also continue to operate under this idea that an equal amount of virus entered each country on the same day, and so you can just compare each one and voila. There is a reason people compare Sweden to its actual neighbors in Norway/denmark/Finland. They operate similarly and have similar geography. 

NYC I think did a poor job, but cities like new york, chicago, boston, DC etc that are major international travel hubs didn't have the benefit of a manageable number of cases before they were flooded. Each decision was affecting thousands and their death rate.

But yeah, I kinda thought "if we prioritized our elderly and let everyone else live as normal" we would do better, not "worse but only 50k more people dead worse".

COVID definitely is not clean growth. It's not each person infects two people. It's 50 people infect no one and 5 infect 40 themselves. But it's growth is serious and if you let it run unchecked in the broader population, it will get into LT Care facilities as the UK and sweden found out.

How many times did we hearing about “shutting down” travel from China when almost all available evidence points to European travelers/US tourists returning from that region that are far and away the principal culprit in Covid-19 spread in NYC/NJ?

But that doesn’t really fit the agenda, since most in the EU are “desirable” countries.

[StateStSports]

I look back and think of those scenes in the airport when people were returning from Europe and pressed together.  That must have started countless clusters around the country. 

Edited June 17, 2020 by StateStSports

[StateStSports]

Quick poll, when do you see some elements of normalcy coming back; I am talking concerts, fans at games, indoor places rocking?

 

I am going with July 4, 2021

[greg775]

3 hours ago, StateStSports said:

Quick poll, when do you see some elements of normalcy coming back; I am talking concerts, fans at games, indoor places rocking?

 

I am going with July 4, 2021

July 4, 2022

[hogan873]

8 hours ago, StateStSports said:

Quick poll, when do you see some elements of normalcy coming back; I am talking concerts, fans at games, indoor places rocking?

 

I am going with July 4, 2021

Late winter/early spring 2021.  I'm going to be optimistic that one or several of the vaccines will be moderately effective and available by early 2021.

[bmags]

Good stuff in here from a story in the WSJ on catching COVID and what has started to emerge as consensus:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-exactly-do-you-catch-covid-19-there-is-a-growing-consensus-11592317650

Quote

It’s not common to contract Covid-19 from a contaminated surface, scientists say. And fleeting encounters with people outdoors are unlikely to spread the coronavirus.

Instead, the major culprit is close-up, person-to-person interactions for extended periods. Crowded events, poorly ventilated areas and places where people are talking loudly—or singing, in one famous case—maximize the risk.

These emerging findings are helping businesses and governments devise reopening strategies to protect public health while getting economies going again. That includes tactics like installing plexiglass barriers, requiring people to wear masks in stores and other venues, using good ventilation systems and keeping windows open when possible.

 

Two recent large studies showed that wide-scale lockdowns—stay-at-home orders, bans on large gatherings and business closures—prevented millions of infections and deaths around the world. Now, with more knowledge in hand, cities and states can deploy targeted interventions to keep the virus from taking off again, scientists and public-health experts said.

That means better protections for nursing-home residents and multigenerational families living in crowded conditions, they said. It also means stressing physical distancing and masks, and reducing the number of gatherings in enclosed spaces.

South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam et al showed that lockdowns are not the only effective means to suppress the virus. 

But they are when you don't have adequate testing, tracing, and precautions in place in the public such as masks and reducing the three Cs Japan came up with: closed spaces, crowded spaces, and close contact.

[StrangeSox]

whyyyyyyy

 

 

[turnin' two]

17 hours ago, DisneyTaxDad said:

Agreed, Sweden has fared catastrophically, as you can see from how it stands out from its peers:

Although they did reduce social interaction, they id so by a far smaller degree than their peers:

 

[turnin' two]

14 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

How many times did we hearing about “shutting down” travel from China when almost all available evidence points to European travelers/US tourists returning from that region that are far and away the principal culprit in Covid-19 spread in NYC/NJ?

But that doesn’t really fit the agenda, since most in the EU are “desirable” countries.

So, do you think there may have been more cases imported from China if there weren't travel restrictions placed on China?

[southsider2k5]

Again, Scandinavia's deaths per millions from COVID:

Sweden 499 (7th in the world)

Finland 59 (39th in the world)

Norway 45 (49th in the world)

Cases per million people

Sweden 5404 (16th)

Norway 1602 (60th)

Finland 1285 (66th)

Repackaging the data into a different format to obscure it doesn't change the underlying data.  Sweden has gotten hit WAY harder than its neighbors.

 

[Balta1701]

I gotta admit, being right in the middle of a true, uncontrolled exponential is a little stunning. Last Thursday we went from 1800 cases to 2500 in a day suddenly, then the next few days were almost that high. Yesterday we went from that 2500 peak to a blowout of 4100 on Tuesday. I was pretty sure we'd have a day that topped 3000 this week, but every jump is blowing out what I expect.

https://www.kens5.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/san-antonio-coronavirus-latest-numbers-june-16/273-8d69db21-9248-460e-b57c-118eac27e5a7

That's about a 13% positive rate, although I'm not sure the state is publishing an honest count of the tests done any more, starting late last week they just said they met their 30,000 a day goal and then the numbers sorta stopped updating for a few days.

[turnin' two]

4 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

Again, Scandinavia's deaths per millions from COVID:

Sweden 499 (7th in the world)

Finland 59 (39th in the world)

Norway 45 (49th in the world)

Cases per million people

Sweden 5404 (16th)

Norway 1602 (60th)

Finland 1285 (66th)

Repackaging the data into a different format to obscure it doesn't change the underlying data.  Sweden has gotten hit WAY harder than its neighbors.

 

I would guess the guy that registered for an account just to make controversial posts on the Covid thread isn't interested in actually having a discussion.

Edited June 17, 2020 by turnin' two

[Balta1701]

2 hours ago, StrangeSox said:

whyyyyyyy

 

 

I keep telling you...he is a coronavirus. He's doing everything he can to make sure it's a success here.

[DisneyTaxDad]

Nobody is questioning that Sweden reduced mobility, however, they clearly did so at a lower rate than their peers yet attained similar results, including the unfortunate situation with their LTC facilities; clearly a failing.

I've already shared how their all cause deaths compare to their nordic neighbors; remarkably it is similar.

Interesting findings regarding transmission among children:  https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.20.20108126v1

They find .44 infection in children compared to adults:

This is conservative as they use Odds Ratios, not this adjusted for contact type from initial studies.  Potential criticisms include potential lack of testing on non-syptomatic children causing missing cases.  Fortunately, we have some new evidence there:

 Israel:

https://journals.lww.com/pidj/Abstract/9000/The_Role_of_Children_in_the_Dynamics_of_Intra.96128.aspx

New York:

https://academic.oup.com/jpids/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jpids/piaa070/5849922

These two studies both tested all household contacts, regardless of symptoms and found children are roughly 50% less likely to become infected as adults.  But wait, what about false negative because children are difficult to swab:

In the Netherlands, they performed a similar study using serology. 

 

https://ntvg.nl/artikelen/de-rol-van-kinderen-de-transmissie-van-sars-cov-2/volledig

Shockingly, they found similar findings, children are 50% as likely to get infected as adults and teens in the household.

Same study looked at infection pairs from a national database to see who was infecting who.  They found almost all transmission was adult to adult, minimal child to adult or child to child transmission:

We are consistently finding children are less easily infected than adults, and when they are transmission is reduced.  Children do not appear to be super-spreaders.

[DisneyTaxDad]

I've posted this before, so forgive me, but:

Sweden counts any death as a Covid death if there has been a positive test within 30 days.  Literally any death from pneumonia to falling down the stairs would be a counted as a Covid death.  However, their neighbors, such as Finland, are not even counting deaths outside of a hospital setting:  https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/17567-finland-s-coronavirus-deaths-rise-closer-to-100-actual-number-could-be-much-higher.html.

Sweden is actually 4.5% below their baseline in total deaths, Norway is 9.00% below their baseline, Denmark is 2.7% below their baseline, and Finland is actually 10.6% above their baseline.

[bmags]

39 minutes ago, DisneyTaxDad said:

I've posted this before, so forgive me, but:

Sweden counts any death as a Covid death if there has been a positive test within 30 days.  Literally any death from pneumonia to falling down the stairs would be a counted as a Covid death.  However, their neighbors, such as Finland, are not even counting deaths outside of a hospital setting:  https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/17567-finland-s-coronavirus-deaths-rise-closer-to-100-actual-number-could-be-much-higher.html.

Sweden is actually 4.5% below their baseline in total deaths, Norway is 9.00% below their baseline, Denmark is 2.7% below their baseline, and Finland is actually 10.6% above their baseline.

I truly don't know where you get your charts, but https://www.mpg.de/14915504/0605-defo-137749-international-death-counts-show-peaks-of-the-pandemic

In no way could this find that Sweden is below trend:

See the actual excess death chart from that research:

Also when the NYT looked at excess deaths and compared them to reported covid deaths, it found Sweden had an additional 800 deaths in the first two months.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html

Finland had 100. Finland has half the people...so that doesn't track.

Lastly EUROMOMO tracking excess mortality across european nations. These track the z-scores: sweden vs. finland. 

 

[Balta1701]

When reopening started my County had an average of under 10 cases per day. Until last week we never had more than 50.

145 in the last 24 hours. 

[StrangeSox]

We're not seeing spikes or increases in cities that had massive protests. It wasn't 100% of course, but a lot of people at these protests have been wearing masks. Could be some indication that outdoors + masks really knocks down transmission potential if it continues to hold up.