Coronavirus

[Daniel in SD]

short of leaving patients in the street

How do you propose that we prevent this? Do the numbers please.
How far off does this analysis have to be for your plan to work?
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033357v1.full.pdf

P.S. SARS CFR data?

 

[SMAlset]

Well Pres invoking act (DPA) to compel GM to produce ventilators looks pretty bad for them. They really hammered down on them during the press conference. Only company so far to be compelled, at least publically, that I'm aware of.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Germany's numbers show a .5% mortality rate. This will likely dwindle down toward .2% when all is said and done just like SARS.

Your numbers seem out of date?

 

[Daniel in SD]

The author of that model revised the number of probable dead in the U.K down to 20,000 from 500,000; a reduction of 96%.150,000 on average die worldwide DAILY. About 27,000 people worldwide have died since November. Counting from December 1st, roughly 160 days, that's about 169 people a day; .001 of the total who would have died anyway. A statistical blip. Not worth destroying the world economy, trillions in wealth and savings, and tens of millions of livlihoods. We need to get on with life.

False. Who is publishing this garbage that everyone is reading?

 

[deonb]

False. Who is publishing this garbage that everyone is reading?
View attachment 526574

Geez. Do we need to make that tweet a sticky? It seems it needs to appear on every page, or people keep bringing up the "revision"?

But yeah, I've seen that garbage plastered all over social media and various "news" sites. I would say it's the most viral thing going on right now, except... you know.

 

[jhm]

I would strongly suggest that we not get hung up on debating or trying to estimate IFR or CFR. None of us in this forum have the data or experience to do this properly. We just wind up arguing about things we can't see.

I have found in my own experience as a statistician that it is very important to stay focused on things you can actually measure and get data for. Latent variables, censored observations and missing data can easily send one down imaginative paths that lead nowhere. What we often find is the we must make many more assumptions than we can test. We ultimately impose our own subjective biases as we select which results are worth sharing with others.

The when we share this with others we can run into conflict. But we wind up arguing not about observable facts, but over all the imaginative stuff we have no data. If we had the data, we wouldn't need to waste much time arguing.

So this is a clue, if you can't resolve an argument with someone, chances are you are not arguing about somethings you can actually quantify or gather good data for, or else someone in the argument is unwilling to yield to the data which is on hand. Past a certain point you are no longer engaged in science. You are probably just wasting time.

Among the tactics of "Merchants of Doubt," propagandists who try to undermine science, is the tactic the red herring. Get people to debate non-essential things for which available data cannot resolve. Often this is used to destroy the credibility of data that would answer critical questions. It is always possible to bash data sources. You can ask millions of questions about a given source for which you can't easily resolve with other sensible data. For example, climate gas lighters love to engage people in questions about statistical adjustments to raw data. This gets most people way out of their depth in a hurry. What is sensible data cleaning and structuring to disciplined scientist doing the adjustments becomes and endless litany about "what about this issue, what about that," which just confuses and bewilders the propagandist's target. All this is wastes time, raises needless doubt, and distracts from the more important issues. It can also get the target to disbelieve the data and adopt a cynical attitude towards the scientists who produce or use the data.

But here's the thing. All data is crap. It's messy, incomplete, not fully representative. We don't make progress by dismissing data because it is messy or wishing we had better data. How we make progress is to look for consistency across lots of crappy data, especially from different sources. That is, we look for the reliable trends that can be corroborated by different lines of inquiry and different sources of data.

So please, don't get hung up on IFR or CFR. Let academics publish papers on that years from now. That should not be our focus in the present moment. What are the big trends we should be paying attention to? Stay focused on that. You'll nice that kind of charts I like to post. These usually represent what I think are the big, reliable trends that the data are actually telling us. It important to actually look at the observable data. If you are curious about death rates, I'd recommend focusing on death growth rates. This is a fast-moving, dynamic process. IFR is a non-observable end state, who cares? Actual deaths are happing right now, let's see how this is unfolding so we can make sensible choices along the way. Also if you are worried about data issues in counting Covid19 related deaths, know that these data are coming form different countries and local jurisdictions. So the methodologies, issues and biases are all over the place. That's not the issue. When we see similar dynamics emerge from different data sources, we know that we are getting a robust picture of what Covid19 can do. So don't badger the data; compare results from different data sources instead.

We need to keep our heads up and eyes open. Avoid getting lost in things that cannot be seen at this point in time.

 

[Dr. J]

Well Pres invoking act (DPA) to compel GM to produce ventilators looks pretty bad for them. They really hammered down on them during the press conference. Only company so far to be compelled, at least publically, that I'm aware of.

Finally! Somebody must have told him after his Tweet storm earlier, "Uh, Mr. President, you gave yourself authority several days ago to compel them." What a dumba**.

The orders from the President came after talks between the administration, GM and Ventec Life Systems to produce thousands of ventilators had been put on hold amid internal concerns over the timeline and price tag of the agreement.

It also came after contradictory statements from the President, who has repeatedly claimed he was or was not using the powers granted him to in the Defense Production Act, which required aides to clarify on multiple occasions that he had not actually used the Korean War-era law yet.

Defense Production Act: Trump signs memorandum requiring GM to make ventilators - CNNPolitics

 

[EVNow]

But yeah, I've seen that garbage plastered all over social media and various news sites. I would say it's the most viral thing going on right now, except... you know.

Its popular in all the disinformation sites.

Here is an interesting metapoint on this … just like evolutionary biologists and climate change scientists before, epidemiologists are being dragged through the mud.

Carl T. Bergstrom on Twitter

Every twist and turn that the pandemic takes is seized upon by one side or other to claim that some fraction of us are incompetent if not outright mendacious. Researchers are pilloried for updating their beliefs based on new information.​

 

[sparcs]

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper orders residents to stay at home order amid coronavirus outbreak

Looks like we are slowly headed to a 50 state lockdown.....

 

[SMAlset]

ABC7 News was reporting that 512 NYC police officers were confirmed positive.

 

[deonb]

This is a fast-moving, dynamic process. IFR is a non-observable end state, who cares?

Probably lost in the fog of war, but this is still an investor sub-forum. So data points like IFR is very relevant in here. Even when it's just a best-guess. Once data is firm and common knowledge, it's useless from an investor point of view.

 

[deonb]

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper orders residents to stay at home order amid coronavirus outbreak

Looks like we are slowly headed to a 50 state lockdown.....

50 individual states locked down, with air travel between them not locked down since that is federal .

 

[EinSV]

And then ignored the issue. They moved outside their error bar for CFR in 4 days! I'm sure if you backtested their analysis you would find that they moved outside their error bars the vast majority of the time. They're either idiots or being intentionally deceitful.

The Icelandic IFR was also below the low end of their error bars for their earlier IFR estimates. For some reason no one seems upset that their earlier IFR estimate was too high or accuses them of being "intentional deceitful" or "idiots" for potentially estimating IFR too high.

Their current estimates may turn out to be too high or too low, but from all appearances they are making a sincere effort to address a challenging issue that is fraught with very poor quality, rapidly changing data.

They seem to be following the old saying, "when I get new information I change my mind, what do you do?" Good for them.

Edit: I just saw @jhm's post and agree it's a waste of time discussing the gory details of this here. I personally think it is useful to factor in IFR estimates into my thinking of how things are likely to play out over the long run, and also to understand how different scientists developed their estimates. But I don't see much value in getting too far into the weeds here.

 

[Dr. J]

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper orders residents to stay at home order amid coronavirus outbreak

Looks like we are slowly headed to a 50 state lockdown.....

And not a month too soon! /s

 

[linux-works]

MIT (you know, that little school near boston?) has some ideas:

MIT E-VENT | Emergency ventilator design toolbox

I've heard MIT has some smart guys there. lets see if that's true.

 

[PeterJA]

One possible silver lining in the disaster of COVID-19 would be the public waking up to the threat — if we don’t remove the cause — of much worse pandemics from new germs with higher mortality. The bird flu of 1918 that killed over 50 million people had 5% mortality, and bird flu H5N1 has 60% mortality. But waking up would require the public to understand the cause.

Someone posted sardonically that people should stop eating bats (the likely origin of SARS-CoV-2). That is true, but only a first step. People should stop eating animals in general, or at least stop “farming” them in filthy overcrowded factories, which are efficient breeders of supergerms resistant to all drugs. Chickens can’t do “social distancing” in a barn of 10,000 birds. The next pandemic virus from poultry or pigs or cows could combine the infectiousness of SARS-CoV-2 with the deadliness of H5N1. That would really crimp your stock portfolio.

Of course you’re unlikely to hear this news from Big Ag or Big Pharma (which profit from factory farms and the drugs used in them) or from their captive media and government agencies. But the facts are explained well in this lecture by Dr Greger of NutritionFacts.org (from 10 years ago before he took his own advice and got slim).

TLDR: You can help yourself and the world by not buying animal foods from factory farms.

 

[sparcs]

50 individual states locked down, with air travel between them not locked down since that is federal .

spread out over the next month because the remaining states are in massive denial

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

They did recognize this issue (see third bullet point below).

Yeah, I know. But they didn't account for it! Fairly idiotic. I don't know anything about epidemiology, and it was obvious to me. As was mentioned, all they'd have to do is backtest their model, and they'd find it was garbage.

s we're seeing in NYC and I'm seeing in Pennsylvania, locking down is slowing but certainly not stopping spread.

It's a bit early to say. I think next week is when the effects of the shutdown in NY & NYC will become more evident.

Unfortunately it will be offset by accelerating outbreaks in several other locations.

 

[Daniel in SD]

I would strongly suggest that we not get hung up on debating or trying to estimate IFR or CFR. None of us in this forum have the data or experience to do this properly. We just wind up arguing about things we can't see.

I have found in my own experience as a statistician that it is very important to stay focused on things you can actually measure and get data for. Latent variables, censored observations and missing data can easily send one down imaginative paths that lead nowhere. What we often find is the we must make many more assumptions than we can test. We ultimately impose our own subjective biases as we select which results are worth sharing with others.

The when we share this with others we can run into conflict. But we wind up arguing not about observable facts, but over all the imaginative stuff we have no data. If we had the data, we wouldn't need to waste much time arguing.

So this is a clue, if you can't resolve an argument with someone, chances are you are not arguing about somethings you can actually quantify or gather good data for, or else someone in the argument is unwilling to yield to the data which is on hand. Past a certain point you are no longer engaged in science. You are probably just wasting time.

Among the tactics of "Merchants of Doubt," propagandists who try to undermine science, is the tactic the red herring. Get people to debate non-essential things for which available data cannot resolve. Often this is used to destroy the credibility of data that would answer critical questions. It is always possible to bash data sources. You can ask millions of questions about a given source for which you can't easily resolve with other sensible data. For example, climate gas lighters love to engage people in questions about statistical adjustments to raw data. This gets most people way out of their depth in a hurry. What is sensible data cleaning and structuring to disciplined scientist doing the adjustments becomes and endless litany about "what about this issue, what about that," which just confuses and bewilders the propagandist's target. All this is wastes time, raises needless doubt, and distracts from the more important issues. It can also get the target to disbelieve the data and adopt a cynical attitude towards the scientists who produce or use the data.

But here's the thing. All data is crap. It's messy, incomplete, not fully representative. We don't make progress by dismissing data because it is messy or wishing we had better data. How we make progress is to look for consistency across lots of crappy data, especially from different sources. That is, we look for the reliable trends that can be corroborated by different lines of inquiry and different sources of data.

So please, don't get hung up on IFR or CFR. Let academics publish papers on that years from now. That should not be our focus in the present moment. What are the big trends we should be paying attention to? Stay focused on that. You'll nice that kind of charts I like to post. These usually represent what I think are the big, reliable trends that the data are actually telling us. It important to actually look at the observable data. If you are curious about death rates, I'd recommend focusing on death growth rates. This is a fast-moving, dynamic process. IFR is a non-observable end state, who cares? Actual deaths are happing right now, let's see how this is unfolding so we can make sensible choices along the way. Also if you are worried about data issues in counting Covid19 related deaths, know that these data are coming form different countries and local jurisdictions. So the methodologies, issues and biases are all over the place. That's not the issue. When we see similar dynamics emerge from different data sources, we know that we are getting a robust picture of what Covid19 can do. So don't badger the data; compare results from different data sources instead.

We need to keep our heads up and eyes open. Avoid getting lost in things that cannot be seen at this point in time.

I sort of agree. But when people post their own estimates for IFR I'm going to call them out and have them explain how they came to their conclusions.
I do agree that focusing on the exponential growth in deaths and hospital capacity constraints is the best way to convince people this is not "fake news."

 

[SO16]

Senator Thomas Massie is a big Tesla and EV fan. Too bad his days are probably numbered.

Both parties pile on Massie after effort to force recorded vote flops