Coronavirus

[JRP3]

A month and a half ago this thread was flipping out that at a minimum 1M Americans were about to die and that doubled if we don't execute well. I would call that over-hyped.

What's the US population and what's the fatality rate if left unchecked? Do the math and then tell us it's over hyped.

 

[bkp_duke]

It's the end of April and new cases do seem to be slowing dramatically

Damn annoying when the facts get in the way of "wishes", isn't it?

I see no "dramatic" slowing there. Perhaps a "slight" downtrend, but nothing "dramatic", unless you were referring to your interpretation. Now that's dramatic.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

What's the US population and what's the fatality rate if left unchecked? Do the math and then tell us it's over hyped.

I'll let you know the fatality rate when we start a proper testing program.

My guess is that without total lockdowns we'd have seen 150k deaths. With proper testing/tracing/isolation and a semi-lockdown for a couple weeks, maybe we're.looking at 35k deaths.

 

[EVNow]

A month and a half ago this thread was flipping out that at a minimum 1M Americans were about to die and that doubled if we don't execute well. I would call that over-hyped.

Link & context ?

Let me give an example to see how it sounds.

Elon : If we don't do everything now to make model 3 production scale up Tesla will be dead.

Mule after a year : Tesla is not dead so Elon was over-hyping.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Link & context ?

Let me give an example to see how it sounds.

Elon : If we don't do everything now to make model 3 production scale up Tesla will be dead.

Mule after a year : Tesla is not dead so Elon was over-hyping.

You want a link to this thread? You're in it. Go back and read the posts from early March.

 

[EVNow]

You want a link to this thread? You're in it. Go back and read the posts from early March.

I've better thigs to spend my time on.

You can't use the outcome after intervention to "prove" the intervention was incorrect. Infact, if the cases don't go down, why are we even in lockdown ?

 

[canoemore]

And remember what he said during that Hack Club talk. I’ll paraphrase: “Question everything. Don’t just believe something because of the person who said it. Believe it when it is demonstrated to be true”.

I understand your point and I agree with the sentiment of your paraphrase. By adhering to that maxim, courageous thinkers sparked the Scientific Revolution and freed the world from a long period of superstition and blind submission to authority. Whether professionally trained as scientists or not, people who formulate hypotheses, gather data, and use those data to try to falsify their hypotheses will always provide humanity a great service as they help to slowly render objective reality. This thought tradition has redistributed power and wealth from despotic rulers more reliably than all the political revolutions in history. Tesla and SpaceX are testament to it and Elon should have his place among the historical figures who best exemplify the tradition.

However, this is not the thought tradition that Elon has chosen to amplify with his commentary on covid.

Instead, he has chosen to amplify the voices of those who scream "question everything" from atop Mount Stupid:

This is the mob who read a headline about an ER doctor saying COVID-19 isn't as bad as "the doctors and scientists" claim, and wield it as proof that the experts are lying. That only counts as "questioning" in the laziest possible sense. It is certainly not an intellectually honest or rigorous attempt to arrive at a clearer understanding of reality, and it is worse than useless when trying to craft a policy response that balances our best scientific understanding with the need to reopen the economy.

The moment strong enough policy was adopted to successfully mitigate the spread of this virus (i.e. to prevent our healthcare system from collapsing) it was inevitable that a chorus of people would emerge to denounce that policy as an over-reaction and unnecessary.

If Elon were approaching this issue from the perspective of the Slope of Enlightenment (as he does so laudably in his many areas of expertise) I think his commentary would acknowledge the possibility that a hasty mistake now could worsen the problem later. Instead, he seems to treat inconvenient projections with disdain and instead chooses to believe rosier forecasts (e.g. his now infamous tweet about close to zero new cases by the end of April) that are viewed with skepticism by those nasty, unreliable experts.

So, “Question everything. Don’t just believe something because of the person who said it. Believe it when it is demonstrated to be true”? He should follow his own advice. Elon's commentary about COVID-19 makes me sad precisely because it encourages people to believe something because of the person who said it, not because of the preponderance of evidence.

 

[JRP3]

I'll let you know the fatality rate when we start a proper testing program.

My guess is that without total lockdowns we'd have seen 150k deaths. With proper testing/tracing/isolation and a semi-lockdown for a couple weeks, maybe we're.looking at 35k deaths.

Then how do you explain 60K deaths with fairly strong lock downs for over a month? Your numbers don't make any sense.

 

[saniflash]

we TSLA investors -- of all people -- have learned and experienced -- with a lot of pain -- how the media is wrongly incentivized.

I do believe the media is adversely incentivized towards loosening the lockdown. because it would mean less eyeballs.

iow, the longer the lockdown continues the longer the abnormal amount of attention they can gain (quantitatively & qualitatively) will continue (compared to .e.g ppl going to work).

what do we take away from this? we will not read hard requests from the media to end the lockdown.

 

[EVNow]

My guess is that without total lockdowns we'd have seen 150k deaths. With proper testing/tracing/isolation and a semi-lockdown for a couple weeks, maybe we're.looking at 35k deaths.

Since you are so good at guessing - what will be the EPS that Tesla will announce today ?

 

[MXLRplus]

A thought.

Many of us get a choice whether we expose ourselves to this contagion. We decide that ourselves.
Many do not have a choice whether they lose all they worked for. This was decided by people who do not know they even exist, nor truly care. The "Covid Relief" went mostly to banks and large companies.

I'm in an odd position. Like other DoD supply chain companies, I can be prosecuted for closing up shop. All of us got a letter on or about March 20th, telling us not to close or reduce operations. I imagine SpaceX received the same letter. But I also have many medical device contracts, so it was immoral to halt operations.

Many don't see things further than a quarter at a time, or outside a small sphere of existence. Like others have said, this isn't the first contagion, and it won't be the last. Do we burn the house down each time to protect its occupants? Is it so important to protect the rich that we are willing to trample on the poor to do it? Make no mistake, it's mostly poor and middle class that are dying from C19 or going broke.

 

[JRP3]

Do we burn the house down each time to protect its occupants? Is it so important to protect the rich that we are willing to trample on the poor to do it? Make no mistake, it's mostly poor and middle class that are dying from C19 or going broke.

It's the government's responsibility to make sure the people do not go broke from doing what they are supposed to do. Unfortunately I don't have much faith the government will fulfill it's duties.

 

[blckdmp]

You want a link to this thread? You're in it. Go back and read the posts from early March.

Like this gem from March!

Have we crossed 75 corona deaths yet? Long way to go to 2018's 61,000 flu deaths!

 

[roblab]

Damn annoying when the facts get in the way of "wishes", isn't it?
View attachment 537141

I see no "dramatic" slowing there. Perhaps a "slight" downtrend, but nothing "dramatic", unless you were referring to your interpretation. Now that's dramatic.

Interesting to me that a lot of those "downtrends" happen during weekends. I would guess it's a reporting problem.

 

[Captkerosene]

From the Editorial Board of the WSJ:

Worse, it probably isn’t possible to permanently suppress R0 below 1 and have a functioning economy at the same time. Germany to date has experienced one of Europe’s lower death rates relative to population size thanks to Berlin’s relatively swift rollout of testing and contact tracing earlier in the pandemic and a strict lockdown. The upward drift in the reproduction rate now suggests that those measures may not have stopped the disease in its tracks so much as delayed the inevitable—and at enormous cost.

 

[bkp_duke]

Interesting to me that a lot of those "downtrends" happen during weekends. I would guess it's a reporting problem.

It's not so much of a "problem" as just how the medical system is designed.

On weekends, hospitals run reduced staffs (people, naturally, want the weekend off). So "critical" labs are run first and reported by the lab and everything else gets done as capacity allows. As much as people here would think a COVID-19 test is critical, it probably doesn't meet the criteria by the lab and physicians (i.e. if we as physicians have clinical suspicion of COVID-19, we are going to treat it as such, test be damned).

 

[MTL_HABS1909]

I understand your point and I agree with the sentiment of your paraphrase. By adhering to that maxim, courageous thinkers sparked the Scientific Revolution and freed the world from a long period of superstition and blind submission to authority. Whether professionally trained as scientists or not, people who formulate hypotheses, gather data, and use those data to try to falsify their hypotheses will always provide humanity a great service as they help to slowly render objective reality. This thought tradition has redistributed power and wealth from despotic rulers more reliably than all the political revolutions in history. Tesla and SpaceX are testament to it and Elon should have his place among the historical figures who best exemplify the tradition.

However, this is not the thought tradition that Elon has chosen to amplify with his commentary on covid.

Instead, he has chosen to amplify the voices of those who scream "question everything" from atop Mount Stupid:

View attachment 537139

This is the mob who read a headline about an ER doctor saying COVID-19 isn't as bad as "the doctors and scientists" claim, and wield it as proof that the experts are lying. That only counts as "questioning" in the laziest possible sense. It is certainly not an intellectually honest or rigorous attempt to arrive at a clearer understanding of reality, and it is worse than useless when trying to craft a policy response that balances our best scientific understanding with the need to reopen the economy.

The moment strong enough policy was adopted to successfully mitigate the spread of this virus (i.e. to prevent our healthcare system from collapsing) it was inevitable that a chorus of people would emerge to denounce that policy as an over-reaction and unnecessary.

If Elon were approaching this issue from the perspective of the Slope of Enlightenment (as he does so laudably in his many areas of expertise) I think his commentary would acknowledge the possibility that a hasty mistake now could worsen the problem later. Instead, he seems to treat inconvenient projections with disdain and instead chooses to believe rosier forecasts (e.g. his now infamous tweet about close to zero new cases by the end of April) that are viewed with skepticism by those nasty, unreliable experts.

So, “Question everything. Don’t just believe something because of the person who said it. Believe it when it is demonstrated to be true”? He should follow his own advice. Elon's commentary about COVID-19 makes me sad precisely because it encourages people to believe something because of the person who said it, not because of the preponderance of evidence.

Except we know for a fact that COVID-19 affects certain demographics much more than others. With this knowledge, we should focus on quarantining them and ensuring that anyone who comes into contact with them uses extreme precautions (masks, gloves, change clothing...etc.). The rest of us should be able to go about keeping our economy running. I think this is the logic that Elon is using and I think it makes a lot more sense than a blanket lockdown for everyone.

 

[FoverM]

From the Editorial Board of the WSJ:

Worse, it probably isn’t possible to permanently suppress R0 below 1 and have a functioning economy at the same time. Germany to date has experienced one of Europe’s lower death rates relative to population size thanks to Berlin’s relatively swift rollout of testing and contact tracing earlier in the pandemic and a strict lockdown. The upward drift in the reproduction rate now suggests that those measures may not have stopped the disease in its tracks so much as delayed the inevitable—and at enormous cost.

I'm not sure where the "upward drift" is coming from. Worldometers doesn't show anything new for Germany:

Germany Coronavirus: 160,943 Cases and 6,376 Deaths - Worldometer

I hope they aren't looking at the periodic component and thinking that's a "trend".

 

[EinSV]

As has been repeatedly noted on this forum, confirmed cases is a poor metric because it depends so much on how much testing has been done. Since testing has increased recently in the US, using confirmed cases as a metric tends to overstate the actual growth rate in infections.

To correct for this effect, the tracking site set up by the Instagram founders recently updated its algorithm to adjust for increased testing.

Their current estimate is that 42 states + DC have an Rt less than 1 and only 8 have an Rt greater than 1.

rt.live

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

TSLA would have to crash pretty hard in May for him to miss out on that.

Yeah, that's what makes me worry - he is panicking. I don't understand why he is panicking. He told us not to panic. What could this mean...?

A month and a half ago this thread was flipping out that at a minimum 1M Americans were about to die and that doubled if we don't execute well. I would call that over-hyped.

I guess you're reading a different thread. You might want to link to it here.

It's the end of April and new cases do seem to be slowing dramatically.

Nope. Look at the updated projections (see ML model above) for what looks reasonable for our future trajectory. 100k deaths seems very likely by the end of May, and depending on what we do, deaths could continue to pile up this year. Not necessary though. We can stop things around 100-150k I think.

“We are a ways off in terms of having a vaccine available at .. that kind of scale,” he said. “But in doses of millions, it could be available much sooner than that.”

I think Gottlieb is thinking too small here. It probably makes a lot of sense to have massive vaccine capacity developed in parallel for a few candidates, assuming the production capacity exists. The government should cover the costs to eliminate risk for the companies involved. Maybe the production capacity doesn't exist, but I don't understand how they would ever produce hundreds of millions of doses, then.

frankly being optimistic about the virus is forgivable it’s the next part which is despicable.

It's a really bad tell that he is resorting to this junk rather than constructive things such as delivering a plan to the county for evaluation regarding the reopening of Fremont in a safe way for workers & surrounding community.

Absolutely. There is a lot of peril here for his workers, and he's opening himself up to the very real possibility of being accused (rightfully) of willful endangerment of his employees.

He really should not be doubling down on his initial bad take. Instead, why not try to help fix the problem? As a business owner, he should be well positioned to see all the obstacles to re-opening safely, and ensure that the government is doing their part to provide the means of testing/tracing, etc., and anything else needed. He undoubtedly has connections to the federal government too, for whatever that is worth. Use the power you have...

Do we burn the house down each time to protect its occupants?

Nope, we definitely don't do that. We fix the problem. It's not an impossible problem to suppress the virus. That's why we're in lockdown! We're massively ramping testing/tracing resources, and cooling the epidemic so the case load is easier to manage.

Overall, I just don't understand why Elon isn't interested in solving this problem. It's not nearly as difficult (or expensive) as sending people to Mars! Let's just get to it, and then move forward. We don't have to choose between the economy and lives. In fact, the best thing for the economy will likely be to save as many lives as possible, and suppress the epidemic to the maximum extent possible!