Coronavirus

[bkp_duke]

So for you, it's completely OK to intentionally expose the young generation to a coronavirus so that they can "serve" older generation after the immunization period (14 days)? And it is OK for you that some of the young will die during this process? For the greater good...

FYI: UK had this strategy in place few days ago. Then they realize how stupid this strategy was and they will pay higher price now due to widespread epidemic.

Nope, I never said that. Don't twist my words.

I think everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE, should be on lockdown.

 

[KarenRei]

Iceland: *has never won Eurovision before*
Iceland: *finally enters a song that's the bookies favourite to win*
Eurovision: *Cancelled* :Þ

Eurovision aflýst vegna COVID-19

 

[Lessmog]

Saw this posted here yesterday and am excited to see more. Thank you for bringing valuable information to the forum. Would really think that in vivo data would be available all over the place do not know why taking so long.

I imagine it has to do with the requirement for stringency in medical studies. All factors must be controlled as far as possible in order to enable any meaningful conclusion, as I understand it. And not least, make it possible to peer review.

 

[EinSV]

Saw this posted here yesterday and am excited to see more. Thank you for bringing valuable information to the forum. Would really think that in vivo data would be available all over the place do not know why taking so long.

Yes, since these are cheap generics with well-known side effect profiles they could play a major role in saving lives and reducing burdens on the medical system since the response appears to be very fast, especially compared with the lengthy stays in the ICU so many patients experience. Even if they only work in 50-75% of cases they could play a crucial role (assuming clinical trials are consistent with the preliminary studies).

 

[traxila]

Wow, a completely new level of freakout here today. Does no one remember SARS? It was literally 2 seconds ago and the exact same thing.

SARS seemed much worse. It was contained and not an issue now. If it had been contagious and insidious like COVID, there would be a lot less of us walking around.

A lot of people seem to like that idea (not saying that TalkingMule did or even said anything of the sort), a culling for the good of everyone.

To those who like the idea I can only say - you first!

 

[Lessmog]

Iceland: *has never won Eurovision before*
Iceland: *finally enters a song that's the bookies favourite to win*
Eurovision: *Cancelled* :Þ

Eurovision aflýst vegna COVID-19

That must suck. But other things suck worse.

 

[sixela]

Wow, a completely new level of freakout here today. Does no one remember SARS? It was literally 2 seconds ago and the exact same thing.

SARS was very contagious only well after symptoms had developed (SARS-CoV-2 makes transmission easy even if only the upper respiratory system is infected, when there are only mild or even no symptoms, fairly soon after infection), and the generational time for the virus' spread was entirely different.

 

[KSilver2000]

5.7-magnitude earthquake shakes Salt Lake County, Utah
Anyone here lives in Utah?
As if the virus matter isn’t enough, they just had a large earthquake with almost a dozen aftershocks in the high 3.x.

If an earthquake was to hit CA right now, maybe time to start learning to live like the Flinstones.

 

[N5329K]

Some head-in-the-sand talk about this epidemic, you mean?

"If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population — a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis — and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000 deaths."

Without measures to slow down the rate of infection, you're not looking at infecting 1% of the US population, but 60-80%. Unless the author can point to figures that show significant pre-existing immunity in the population, that article made my bullshitometer explode. Writing "If" and then writing the following paragraphs as if your premise was true is fallacious at best.

"How can we tell at what point such a curve might stop?"

By asking epidemiologists to peer review what you write? The article is not even making a hypothesis as to why such a curve may stop (let alone a falsifiable one), it's just magical thinking, and ignores and entire field of science that experts are trained in.

Stunningly, the author is an epidemiologist, but I doubt he's going to let any of the other epidemiologists peer-review this -- it would get savaged, shredded and killed with fire.

His point about needing better data is accurate, but we can't wait until we have perfect data, and take our wishes for reality in the meantime.

"then flattening the curve may make things worse: Instead of being overwhelmed during a short, acute phase, the health system will remain overwhelmed for a more protracted period."

Again, that makes my bullshitometer explode. It engages in binary thinking, as if "being overwhelmed" is an all or nothing proposition. Given the choice, I know I'd rather be in a system that's overwhelmed and has to let 10% of the treatable people die than one that needs to pick the 10% to save...

"In the most pessimistic scenario, which I do not espouse, if the new coronavirus infects 60% of the global population and 1% of the infected people die, that will translate into more than 40 million deaths globally, matching the 1918 influenza pandemic."

That is not the most pessimistic scenario. That one is where the health services are completely overwhelmed and 7% of the infected people die.

The article first complains about the lack of data, but then makes a lot of conjectures that are *completely* unsupported by evidence, and even muses on scenarios outside of the confidence interval for the expected values for many things we can measure, albeit inaccurately (it's also untrue to say we have _no_ robust statistics. The number of deaths are an extremely robust statistic, even though it's a lagging indicator, and in Northern Italy the situation has become bad enough for the sample sizes to be large...)

For something a bit less "I just pulled some conjectures from where I should not have", and a published article instead of a shabby opinion piece, read this:

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/im...-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

Yep. Despite all his credentials, he could be totally wrong. It’s an Op Ed piece. Not a peer-reviewed paper. But I find it’s always helpful to consider the opinions of those I disagree with because sometimes they turn out to be right.
Personally, I think in this case he’s probably not right. Surely not in Italy.
Robin

 

[bkp_duke]

SARS was very contagious only well after symptoms had developed (SARS-CoV-2 makes transmission easy even if only the upper respiratory system is infected, when there are only mild or even no symptoms, fairly soon after infection), and the generational time for the virus' spread was entirely different.

The mortality rate was also very high. Viruses with high mortality rates have a tendency to "burn out" easier.

 

[Fact Checking]

I think your Australian data hasn’t been updated the last 4 days, Coronavirus Update (Live): 204,047 Cases and 8,250 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Outbreak - Worldometer has 565 cases, with 110 new cases today.

Yeah, my data source sucks, and I just found this one:

CSSEGISandData/COVID-19​

Very finegrained, curated data, updated daily, in CSV format and in a Git tree. Perfect.

 

[SageBrush]

The interest here in therapies and vaccines is understandable (if naive and uninformed), but I want to know if these people who are posting every snippet of magic bullet news are ALSO practicing public health best practices. Do they practice social distancing, use face masks when social distancing is not assured, and do they keep their hands clean ? So they self-isolate with any URI symptoms or fever ?

 

[FoverM]

It looks like Italy has peaked. Five straight days with new daily case growth less than 20%. Daily new case numbers have been flat around 3500.

France is too early to call. The daily new % has been in the 20s for nine days and is trending downwards.

The USA? Ugh, Excel draws a downward sloping linear trendline on the daily % ... but it's shallow. I guess you could make the case for a gradual decline but it's noisy. For example, Monday saw 37% growth while yesterday saw only 14% growth. If we assume that Monday's number "pulled forward" some of Tuesday's number, the average would be in the mid-20s, which fits with the two previous days. Being pessimistic, lets say we have only dropped from around 30% to 25% over two weeks. If Italy and France are any guide, it'll be a week before that number is solidly in the teens.

I'm still thinking the peak daily new cases will be around April 1st (at 5K-10K new cases per day?).

 

[SageBrush]

Question to the numbers inclined: Why are you not plotting log-normal ?

 

[gerebgraus]

John Ioannidis is among the unusual epidemiologists and doctors who are able to interpret data. His paper pretty much says the same thing in a much better supported and coherent way that I have been saying for days i.e. based on the very incomplete data we have the "cure" for the virus seems much worse than the virus.
In the coronavirus pandemic, we're making decisions without reliable data

 

[KSilver2000]

It looks like Italy has peaked. Five straight days with new daily case growth less than 20%. Daily new case numbers have been flat around 3500.

France is too early to call. The daily new % has been in the 20s for nine days and is trending downwards.

The USA? Ugh, Excel draws a downward sloping linear trendline on the daily % ... but it's shallow. I guess you could make the case for a gradual decline but it's noisy. For example, Monday saw 37% growth while yesterday saw only 14% growth. If we assume that Monday's number "pulled forward" some of Tuesday's number, the average would be in the mid-20s, which fits with the two previous days. Being pessimistic, lets say we have only dropped from around 30% to 25% over two weeks. If Italy and France are any guide, it'll be a week before that number is solidly in the teens.

I'm still thinking the peak daily new cases will be around April 1st (at 5K-10K new cases per day?).

Don’t just take the numbers at face value. A lot of factors and assumptions that go into the numbers you see.

 

[sixela]

Correct, but the number of deaths is a more robust (albeit lagging) indicator. Deaths are not usually undercounted, especially in a country with a health service like e.g. the Italian one.

 

[FoverM]

Don’t just take the numbers at face value. A lot of factors and assumptions that go into the numbers you see.

I'm going by worldometers.info. If you have better numbers, fork 'em over.

 

[sixela]

John Ioannidis is among the unusual epidemiologists

The link was posted before, and that opinion piece was _really_ poor (and not an article that will be peer reviewed). Scroll back a few pages...

You're darn right he is "unusual", though.

 

[FoverM]

Correct, but the number of deaths is a more robust (albeit lagging) indicator. Deaths are not usually undercounted, especially in a country with a health service like e.g. the Italian one.

Deaths appear to lag new cases by a week or two, so I look at new cases to see when the peak infection spread occurred. That gives you an idea of peak death date.