Coronavirus

[Lessmog]

Our recommendation is to cancel all appts unless absolutely necessary, including hair cuts. Let's flatten this curve!

Watch out for the scissor shortage to come.

-- It's combing? My hair curls!
-- Oh, cut it out. Or at least shave it til later.

 

[Unpilot]

Few if any are advocating for "no flattening of the curve whatsoever". But there exists a real danger of, if you go to far and there's no visible stressing of the hospitals, people interpreting the resultant mass unemployment and disruption in their lives as an intrusive government abuse of power, and responding accordingly.

That and the fact in the US we have a large segment of the population that is less than science literate.
Actually many are distrustful of the scientific "elite".
If this pandemic does not stress the health care system as bad as predicted...and stresses all aspects of life as it is currently doing. The backlash will be severe. IMHO.

 

[Johnny Ma]

We also don't want to be Italy.

I agree. But we're also not Italy. Taking the worst case and extrapolating to the US, with a very different healthcare system, is not helpful. It just makes people panic.

Anyway, enough of the doom and gloom. I'm excited to see what innovations Tesla comes up with in these hard times. I expect them to push even harder on automation, now. I think that's obvious. Can't be shuttling in large numbers of workers, so get rid of the need for any workers!

 

[heltok]

How quickly we went from "flatten the curve" to "there must be no curve at all."

Our models have our local hospitals being overwhelmed in just a few days. If the number of dead doesn't skyrocket, I expect a backlash from the public. A huge number of people are out of work and this is just the beginning. The only people who will be able to afford Teslas in the near future are those working in healthcare, if this keeps up. I can't imagine life stays like this for as long as we're being told it must.

Someone did the math and all hobbyist virus experts got on the train:
Don’t “Flatten the Curve,” stop it!

One could have thought that politicians should have been able to do the math by themselves, but let’s be honest, system 1 thinking takes much less energy than system 2 thinking and our politicians are not mathematicians(unless we are talking about Singaporean politicians and the PMs in other meritocracies).

 

[AlexS]

at what time Italy announce daily corona cases?

 

[ohmman]

If this pandemic does not stress the health care system as bad as predicted...and stresses all aspects of life as it is currently doing. The backlash will be severe. IMHO.

So it's damned if we do, damned if we don't? A successful mitigation means life loss will be minimal, but conspiracy theories will be maximal. What a species we are.

 

[X Fan]

Latest Florida stats:
Total Tests: 3,254
Positive: 432
Negative:1,696
Results Pending; 1,126

I still expect cases to explode given the return to homes of University students plus the surge due to early March visitors (a peak time for us) and spring breakers. Also, until last couple of days beaches in much of the State were still open.

Another anecdote: my middle son has friends that work in NYC and live in Queens (one of the 5 boroughs). Queens caseload is second highest after Brooklyn but yet the local park was packed and the older folks were out playing bocce.

Gov. Cuomo needs to take same shut down step as California (update: he did).

 

[bkp_duke]

Limitations are increasing in Italy, but, you know what? I don't think that small gatherings are the issue.
The issue is that we closed schools in North of Italy 4 weeks ago, we shut everything else down 10 days ago and still active cases and deaths are increasing. We've not peaked yet.

This is depressing, because uncertainty is max now.
BTW, this is also why I'm flabbergasted by Musk's behavior on Twitter.
He looks at the data, but even journalists are understanding that, at least from Italy, data don't mean anything right now.
Very probably, Italy is undertested and real COVID numbers are underestimated.
Globally, I would'nt really trust Chinese numbers (from the start), or Russia numbers, or Africa numbers.
Even European numbers do have issues.
So I think it's dangerous for a guy with 32M followers to publicly downplay how dangerous this is.

I think I've figured Musk's perspective out. It's one he has rarely taken, but it makes sense.

Financially, Tesla has just turned the corner, arguably in the last 6 months, to profitability.

Just my 0.02, but his arguments now sound like a traditional CEO trying to protect his brand and the value of the company, reality be damned.

 

[cusetownusa]

Latest Florida stats:
Total Tests: 3,254
Positive: 432
Negative:1,696
Results Pending; 1,126

I still expect cases to explode given the return to homes of University students plus the surge due to early March visitors (a peak time for us) and spring breakers. Also, until last couple of days beaches in much of the State were still open.

Another anecdote: my middle son has friends that work in NYC and live in Queens (one of the 5 boroughs). Queens caseload is second highest after Brooklyn but yet the local park was packed and the older folks were out playing bocce.

Gov. Cuomo needs to take same shut down step as California.

Interesting...I live in NY but not NYC area. NY was one of the first states to make state wide restrictions. While we aren't at the California lockdown level, I am not seeing people anywhere. Seems like a ghost town around here. Parks are empty, etc. I think NYC will pose a much more difficult challenge compared to the less densely populated areas throughout most of the State. Tough to keep that many people cooped up in all of those tiny apartments.

 

[X Fan]

Interesting...I live in NY but not NYC area. NY was one of the first states to make state wide restrictions. While we aren't at the California lockdown level, I am not seeing people anywhere. Seems like a ghost town around here. Parks are empty, etc. I think NYC will pose a much more difficult challenge compared to the less densely populated areas throughout most of the State. Tough to keep that many people cooped up in all of those tiny apartments.

Well, don't forget Syracuse is in the northern tundra of NY State whereby downstate has seen nice weather return (not every day of course since early Spring).

btw: that part of Queens is mostly single family homes.

 

[bkp_duke]

That and the fact in the US we have a large segment of the population that is less than science literate.
Actually many are distrustful of the scientific "elite".
If this pandemic does not stress the health care system as bad as predicted...and stresses all aspects of life as it is currently doing. The backlash will be severe. IMHO.

Social darwinism? Seriously, all the dumbass kids licking doorknobs and toilets get what they deserve.

 

[cusetownusa]

Well, don't forget Syracuse is in the northern tundra of NY State whereby downstate has seen nice weather return (not every day of course since early Spring)

Nice weather? whats that?

 

[Causalien]

Interesting...I live in NY but not NYC area. NY was one of the first states to make state wide restrictions. While we aren't at the California lockdown level, I am not seeing people anywhere. Seems like a ghost town around here. Parks are empty, etc. I think NYC will pose a much more difficult challenge compared to the less densely populated areas throughout most of the State. Tough to keep that many people cooped up in all of those tiny apartments.

Hmm, do you have friends on wall street? Is it empty?

 

[X Fan]

Nice weather? whats that?

funny, I understand....it's June for you folks.

btw: Queens has seen 10 days so far this month mid-50's to 70.

 

[bkp_duke]

So it's damned if we do, damned if we don't? A successful mitigation means life loss will be minimal, but conspiracy theories will be maximal. What a species we are.

Exactly. I have employees and co-owners of my company that believe that 95% of what is going on is either:
A) an excuse for the governments to claim more power (i.e. these are the libertarians)
B) completely made up (i.e. the science deniers and anti-vaxers)
C) end of the world (i.e. those that see this causing the end of society)

At what grade in school did we teach the suspension of rational thought?

 

[sparcs]

Looks like even the IRS tax filing date of April 15th is now being pushed to July 15th. Not sure why they didn't do this the first time. Adds a lot more confusion.

IRS will move tax filing deadline to July 15 as coronavirus spreads, Mnuchin says

I'll wait to see the offical publication from the IRS, but it will probably happen.

 

[cusetownusa]

funny, I understand....it's June for you folks.

btw: Queens has seen 10 days so far this month mid-50's to 70.

Yeah, colder weather definitely plays a role of keeping people indoors. Although it has been warm this week and is currently 65. Hopefully people continue to be smart about social distancing.

 

[EinSV]

Caution: Pre-publication and not peer reviewed yet. Also seems to conflict with other studies so take it with a grain of salt.

With that out of the way, an analysis of Wuhan City data from Jan-Feb 2020 concludes that COVID-19 infection reproduction ratio is much higher than other studies (R0 of up to 5.2 without interventions) and that fatality rate is much lower (0.12 time-delay adjusted infection fatality rate (IFR))

Results: Our posterior estimates of basic reproduction number (R) in Wuhan City, China in 2019–2020 reached values as high as 5.20 (95%CrI: 5.04–5.47) and the enhanced public health intervention after January 23rd in 2020 was associated with a declined R at 0.58 (95%CrI: 0.51–0.64), with the total number of infections (i.e. cumulative infections) estimated at 1905526 (95%CrI: 1350283– 2655936) in Wuhan City, raising the proportion of infected individuals to 19.1% (95%CrI: 13.5–26.6%). We also found that most recent crude infection fatality ratio (IFR) and time–delay adjusted IFR is estimated to be 0.04% (95% CrI: 0.03%–0.06%) and 0.12% (95%CrI: 0.08–0.17%), which is several orders of magnitude smaller than the crude CFR estimated at 4.19%

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.12.20022434v2.full.pdf
​

Haven't had time to pick apart the methods/analysis yet.

 

[SageBrush]

Data through Mar 19

 

[Nocturnal]

The only problem with good news is that the dumb people who swore this was exaggerated will feel vindicated.