Coronavirus

[SageBrush]

I suspect this will get wide support from his base. Easy to do, not expensive and great for votes. I doubt he has much to worry about as far as the next election but this would be a huge PR score for him.

And good for Canada

 

[EVNow]

Louisiana has weird data. Their test numbers and +ve % keeps bouncing around - 6%, 34%, 14%, 8%, 14% in the last 5 days. PA has been steady around 9%.

BTW, the high # of cases in LA & FL should give a pause to anyone thinking high humidity & temperature will stop the virus.

The COVID Tracking Project

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Michigan (mostly Wayne county, Detroit) has 27% positive rate! And 2300 cases. Yikes, yikes, yikes.

They've done just 9000 tests!

EDIT: The data picture here is really confusing, actually. They seem to have multiple reporting pages. Have to look into it. But it looks bad regardless. Just too many cases and it doesn't look like a lot of test coverage yet.


Something to watch. Could easily end up being even worse than Louisiana. Hadn't noticed this before. Seems like that would be bad for the automakers who still have significant capacity in Detroit. Also bad in general for Detroit.

Colder weather up there still.

 

[Norbert]

I wasn't talking in the abstract. I'm talking about South Korea. South Korea doesn't have lockdown.

I see your point. Do you have a source on how much testing SK uses? I'd guess it also helps to start early (though later is better than never) and to respond quickly to symptoms with good tracking (especially if it can be automated with software that responds immediately).

The more you test, the more CFR is the same as IFR. So if the amount of testing increases, it becomes difficult to understand the severity of the situation based on "total cases". If CFR were defined as "percentage of those who develop symptoms", and if we knew the number of symptomatic cases, it might be easier. Regarding SK, it might be interesting to know if the level of testing changed during the last weeks.

 

[sparcs]

Another Jump in the USA

79,082 Cases Total +10,871

Active Cases at 76,075

we haven't even remotely finished the day...

 

[Daniel in SD]

I see your point. Do you have a source on how much testing SK uses? I'd guess it also helps to start early (though later is better than never) and to respond quickly to symptoms with good tracking (especially if it can be automated with software that responds immediately).

The more you test, the more CFR is the same as IFR. So if the amount of testing increases, it becomes difficult to understand the severity of the situation based on "total cases". If CFR were defined as "percentage of those who develop symptoms", and if we knew the number of symptomatic cases, it might be easier. Regarding SK, it might be interesting to know if the level of testing changed during the last weeks.

코로나바이러스감염증-19(COVID-19)
They've done 364k tests. 9,241 positive results.
Looks like they're doing 7000 tests a day now with 100 positives a day.

 

[jbcarioca]

I'll take this political bait, and, respectfully, disagree with you.

...

Thank you. I was hoping you would respond.
My fundamental point is that all governments have incentives to present their data in the manner most flattering to their interests. That is true universally. The question really is which manipulations most affect our ability to understand and develop the optimal choices.

Frankly, in my life I have lived and worked in 16 countries. I do not take any official government data anywhere as definitive. Every government will choose to exclude unflattering data and emphasize the flattering. The US most definitively does that also. In this case the question is whether the distortions will materially alter conclusions.

There is zero question that Spain and Italy have become in first place in the "what not to do contest, thus far"
The US is competing for that dubious distinction by failing to maintain/provide adequate testing, containment and treatment. The cases of Kirkland, Queens and Brooklyn, among a few others clearly demonstrate inadequate responses.

There is likewise no question that Wuhan was badly handled right at the beginning.

So what do those mean? Pretty much every one of those was the political failure to commit resources to identify and respond to unknown threats quickly and efficiently. The world is well equipped with Institutes meant to cope with such challenges. Prior to the challenge directly appearing the political will to prevent and protect tends often to be seen in a partisan light. It is not always thus.

I am now in Rio de Janeiro where the Federal and State responses are pretty decent despite the virulent objection of Mr. Bolsonaro, who takes his cues from Mr. Trump. he wanted to suppress reporting, and stop sequestration of anybody other than old people. Oddly perhaps, the government ignores him and caries on with testing, hospital bed, protective gear and ventilator distribution. He shouts but si ignored and defied.

By contrast we all can see Mr. Trump dominating US discourse and refusing to admit and weakness or errors. We even see gigantic funds being deployed that shortchange the actual core responses because we want Easter Churches packed (so much for separation of church and sate).

When MR Bolsonaro and Mr Trump want churches packed while the epidemic rages they either do not know or car that South Korea, New York State, Wuhan, Israel and Madrid all had their initial outbreaks in religious gathering. Logical, since that is where people gather freely, filled with piety and trust. So, what happens with reporting? Unless it's South Korea, with unusual trust in government, people become suspicious.

So how is China and less credible than any other government when reporting such data? Actually it probably is more or less par with many others.

I will neither doubt nor credit any government without corroboration. Too many years coping with so many distortions has that effect.

Finally if you take the trouble to actually observe the techniques used for case-level epidemiology in China and South Korea, then contrast them to those of almost anywhere else you will fidn out why I trust China data perhaps more than in many countries. Their techniques are invasive, but effective. They can quickly cluster recent contacts of a newly diagnosed patient. of course people don't trust the German data either. When one looks at their established reserves to cope with the unknown you'll see rapid response and mitigation that approaches that of teh otehr two.

In short, these countries were prepared to cope with the unexpected and mobilized to do just tact. All three are pessimists and expect the unexpected.

It is no accident that the US, Italy and Spain are the examples of dysfunction. The three specialize in political intrigue over functioning government.

 

[deonb]

I see your point. Do you have a source on how much testing SK uses? I'd guess it also helps to start early (though later is better than never) and to respond quickly to symptoms with good tracking (especially if it can be automated with software that responds immediately).

The more you test, the more CFR is the same as IFR. So if the amount of testing increases, it becomes difficult to understand the severity of the situation based on "total cases". If CFR were defined as "percentage of those who develop symptoms", and if we knew the number of symptomatic cases, it might be easier. Regarding SK, it might be interesting to know if the level of testing changed during the last weeks.

Here you go:
코로나바이러스감염증-19(COVID-19)

They test between 7k to 10k people and day - cumulative so far is 360k.

They don't need to continuously increase testing to prove that they've got nearly everybody. It can be proven from the fact that they don't have exponential growth.

 

[Lessmog]

Regarding 3D-printing of protective gear:
Today on Swedish TV4 After 5 presented some guy whose firm had developed a 3D-printed visor (not mask) and released the file. It is just the holder that goes around the top, and with an office paper hole-punch and ordinary transparent OH film every clinic can make their own visors. Not type approved, but as long as they are self-made this is OK with the regulator. Viola: Dirt cheap personal protection. Brilliant.

Alas I forget the name, but the idea as such should not be too difficult to emulate. A right in step direction!

EDIT: Found the clip and the name: Daniel Ljungstig, CEO 3D-verkstan
Efter bristlarm - de 3D-printar skyddsvisir - Efter fem - tv4.se
Jump to 1: 50
In Swedish but look at the pretty pictures ...

 

[bkp_duke]

Thank you. I was hoping you would respond.
My fundamental point is that all governments have incentives to present their data in the manner most flattering to their interests. That is true universally. The question really is which manipulations most affect our ability to understand and develop the optimal choices.

Frankly, in my life I have lived and worked in 16 countries. I do not take any official government data anywhere as definitive. Every government will choose to exclude unflattering data and emphasize the flattering. The US most definitively does that also. In this case the question is whether the distortions will materially alter conclusions.

There is zero question that Spain and Italy have become in first place in the "what not to do contest, thus far"
The US is competing for that dubious distinction by failing to maintain/provide adequate testing, containment and treatment. The cases of Kirkland, Queens and Brooklyn, among a few others clearly demonstrate inadequate responses.

There is likewise no question that Wuhan was badly handled right at the beginning.

So what do those mean? Pretty much every one of those was the political failure to commit resources to identify and respond to unknown threats quickly and efficiently. The world is well equipped with Institutes meant to cope with such challenges. Prior to the challenge directly appearing the political will to prevent and protect tends often to be seen in a partisan light. It is not always thus.

I am now in Rio de Janeiro where the Federal and State responses are pretty decent despite the virulent objection of Mr. Bolsonaro, who takes his cues from Mr. Trump. he wanted to suppress reporting, and stop sequestration of anybody other than old people. Oddly perhaps, the government ignores him and caries on with testing, hospital bed, protective gear and ventilator distribution. He shouts but si ignored and defied.

By contrast we all can see Mr. Trump dominating US discourse and refusing to admit and weakness or errors. We even see gigantic funds being deployed that shortchange the actual core responses because we want Easter Churches packed (so much for separation of church and sate).

When MR Bolsonaro and Mr Trump want churches packed while the epidemic rages they either do not know or car that South Korea, New York State, Wuhan, Israel and Madrid all had their initial outbreaks in religious gathering. Logical, since that is where people gather freely, filled with piety and trust. So, what happens with reporting? Unless it's South Korea, with unusual trust in government, people become suspicious.

So how is China and less credible than any other government when reporting such data? Actually it probably is more or less par with many others.

I will neither doubt nor credit any government without corroboration. Too many years coping with so many distortions has that effect.

Finally if you take the trouble to actually observe the techniques used for case-level epidemiology in China and South Korea, then contrast them to those of almost anywhere else you will fidn out why I trust China data perhaps more than in many countries. Their techniques are invasive, but effective. They can quickly cluster recent contacts of a newly diagnosed patient. of course people don't trust the German data either. When one looks at their established reserves to cope with the unknown you'll see rapid response and mitigation that approaches that of teh otehr two.

In short, these countries were prepared to cope with the unexpected and mobilized to do just tact. All three are pessimists and expect the unexpected.

It is no accident that the US, Italy and Spain are the examples of dysfunction. The three specialize in political intrigue over functioning government.

The (substantial) difference is that the USA and Brazil do not control their media. Sadly, I've had direct interaction with China regarding their information lockdown, just because I was involved with a Chinese company that needed China Telcom network drops put into a datacenter we were working with. The amount of control of the data is simply unprecidented.

I'm not arguing the colossal screw-up by the USA on it's response to this. I'm just saying if you presented me with the USA dataset and the Chinese dataset, sadly I would put more faith in the USA dataset. It's understated for sure, but I can reasonably trust the trendline. For the Chinese dataset, once the WHO left that country, I cannot take that dataset at face value.

Furthermore, and time will bear this out, China is the only country with a major number of cases that seems to be leveling off completely with nearly infinite doubling time. Not even South Korea, which has done by all reports a great job, is showing an infinite doubling time. Without 3rd-party corroboration of that, I just don't buy the numbers out of China.

Also, I would love to be wrong. If someone provides a LEGIT model to beat this thing, we would all be fools for not following it.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Looks like they're doing 7000 tests a day now with 100 positives a day.

They test between 7k to 10k people and day - cumulative so far is 360k.

So from that data, it looks like in order to call the outbreak controlled, we'll need to have testing capacity in the US of about 0.05% of the population per day (165k tests per day), and we'll want to drive the positive rate from that testing below 0.5%. At that point I think probably the exponential growth would be easily suppressed (assuming we don't relax the current restrictions until the numbers come down and the existing cases are isolated from the population).

Until a vaccine arrives, that would still mean 800 cases per day, which would be 300k positives per year, with 3000-4000 deaths per year.

It's likely that with that test coverage and adequate screening on incoming travelers, the outbreak would die off with that level of testing on an ongoing basis. You couldn't relax it though due to travelers bringing it in.

 

[SageBrush]

Look at the infection slope rather than absolute numbers.

I should clarify -- either calculate the doubling time, or look at a log-normal graph of total cases* and place a ruler on the slope

* or even better, covid hospitalizations

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Another Jump in the USA

79,082 Cases Total +10,871

Active Cases at 76,075

we haven't even remotely finished the day...

There's really no point in counting cases in the US. We've made no effort to stop the spread with vigilant testing and quarantine, so it'll just infect nearly "everyone". 50-100M people or so in the US.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

So from that data, it looks like in order to call the outbreak controlled, we'll need to have testing capacity in the US of about 0.05% of the population per day (165k tests per day), and we'll want to drive the positive rate from that testing below 0.5%. At that point I think probably the exponential growth would be easily suppressed (assuming we don't relax the current restrictions until the numbers come down and the existing cases are isolated from the population).

Until a vaccine arrives, that would still mean 800 cases per day, which would be 300k positives per year, with 3000-4000 deaths per year.

It's likely that with that test coverage and adequate screening on incoming travelers, the outbreak would die off with that level of testing on an ongoing basis. You couldn't relax it though due to travelers bringing it in.

Far far too late for that.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Without 3rd-party corroboration of that, I just don't buy the numbers out of China.

Also, I would love to be wrong.

Admittedly, we won't know until after the fact, but if they actually have a significant number of unreported cases, they'll quickly spiral out of control and it will become obvious to everyone.

I think China's travel and quarantine restrictions on incoming travelers are more strict than Korea's (not sure). In addition, I suspect that Korea is still doing "mop-up" of the virus amongst that secretive church and various other outbreaks that were domestically sourced. I don't know the relative proportion of domestic cases for them (Korea) and imported cases. I'd expect Korea's numbers to transition to largely imported cases over the next week or two.

But, that's all just guessing (I haven't tried to research this).

 

[SageBrush]

There's really no point in counting cases in the US

Tell that to Guinness

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

50-100M people or so in the US.

Far far too late for that.

I sure hope you're wrong about that! The market clearly thinks you are wrong!

I don't want to die. Yet.

I absolutely don't think it is too late to control the outbreak. You can control it anytime, in fact, with proper physical distancing and travel restrictions nationwide. It is too late to avoid a hospital debacle though.

 

[Webeevdrivers]

And good for Canada

I don’t know much about this kind of thing but curiosity makes me ask why?

 

[bkp_duke]

So how is China and less credible than any other government when reporting such data? Actually it probably is more or less par with many others.

Completely anecdotal here, so take it at face value. My wife's close friend here in SD has family in Wuhan. She says she doesn't believe the numbers being reported at all. She doesn't have any hard evidence for that, just what her family tells here there when they talk.

 

[dhanson865]

Like, from which side? Americans fleeing into Canada?

Well I have been seeing the name Gilead in the news a lot lately. Many Americans have tried to flee from Gilead to Canada from what I've seen and heard.