Coronavirus

[AlanSubie4Life]

Elon is less pessimistic.

It's true, Elon is well known for his accurate read of situations. He has not once been accused of being too optimistic. Note he was not including New York (that is a big deal...I was including it, obviously...I guess China looked pretty good too, if you ignored Hubei province).

I guess we'll see! Obviously I hope I'm wrong. Let's check back in and compare numbers next week around this time!

laughs at randomized double-blind controlled clinical trials.

But..but...I listen to Dr. Greger.

 

[bkp_duke]

Elon is less pessimistic.

Elon Musk @elonmusk
C19 testing in the US over the past week has grown much faster than C19 positive cases. I think we may have passed the inflection point for US cases (excluding NY) already.
12:17 PM · Mar 25, 2020
Elon Musk on Twitter

I tend to trust his grasp of the situation more than someone who posts unsupported numbers and laughs at randomized double-blind controlled clinical trials.

History shows that when Elon is wrong, he goes wrong BIG.

This is one of those times.

 

[X Fan]

FL testing backlog looks to finally be clearing up (which is showcasing how case count is skyrocketing)....almost 24K tests to-date.

Up 35% vs. yesterday's PM report.....Miami-Ft.Lauderdale-Palm Beach area are over a thousand positives or 52% of the total. Since hospitalizations seem to be tracking at 17%, it won't be long before Florida has acute issues (particularly SE FL).

Similar to NC, the state's physician group is calling for a state-wide stay at home instruction. Here in SW FL we have 100 cases which although relatively lower, it is much higher than earlier in the month.

Florida has become another hot state, particularly when you focus on SE FL.

California and others...step up your testing!

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

California and others...step up your testing!

Gavin Newsom on Twitter

Looks like California has done 67000 tests (was a surprise to me). However, I think a LOT of those are pending results - like 50k tests are pending. It is pretty odd. I hope those people are instructed to quarantine themselves completely!

I'm glad they have run the tests, but the backlog is pretty inexcusable.

As far as Florida goes, those % positive results are pretty discouraging. Not a good sign. Still, the faster they can get more testing going, the faster they can remove people from the (still moving) population.

My guess is that Louisiana will end up worse off than Florida, but I guess we'll see. We can hope that warming temperatures help in both places.

 

[SMAlset]

My local news just ran a story that data from China shows that 20% of hospitalized survivors show evidence of heart damage from the infection.

Indication that survivors of this CV may have costly medical problems down the road, from heart and from other news reports I've heard from lungs as well.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Testing.

Why Germany's Coronavirus Death Rate Is Far Lower Than In Other Countries

Yet Germany's fatality rate so far — just 0.5% — is the world's lowest, by a long shot.

"I believe that we are just testing much more than in other countries, and we are detecting our outbreak early," said Christian Drosten, director of the institute of virology at Berlin's Charité hospital.

Korea and Germany are doing it right and haven't needed to lean on total lockdowns.

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

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

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

The Mule is back!!!

This is definitely an excellent thing that Germany is testing a LOT. I agree that with massive testing capacity, it would not be required to rely on lockdowns - in fact, it's the only way we'll be able to exit this crisis. Keep shorting the market until there is evidence that we're actually trying to establish a good testing infrastructure (might want to wait until just before the stimulus bill finally passes, obviously that is a nice pretty object the market will enjoy).

And it's an excellent datapoint to show true mortality rate.

However, your claim about the 0.5% mortality rate is just wrong. You realize the number is going the wrong way, right? A few days ago, the mortality rate in Germany was 0.3%. This is 100% expected, of course. It's just that deaths lag cases, so in the presence of an exponential ramp, you'll always see an artificially low mortality rate. You have to wait for the curve to level off a bit, and then wait about 1-2 weeks.

It looks like Germany has started to bend their curve significantly, so check back on their mortality rate in about 2 weeks (assuming they actually continue to flatten the curve in the next couple days). It'll be about 1%.

For example - look at March 24th's deaths of 159. That can be aligned roughly (it is just approximate) with March 18th's 12k cases. That's 1.3%.

EDIT: One thing that is interesting in the worldometer data is that Germany claims to only have 23 critical cases. I kind of don't believe that data, unless they have some sort of miraculous therapy for the disease. Especially given that 160 people have died already.

 

[linux-works]

Indication that survivors of this CV may have costly medical problems down the road, from heart and from other news reports I've heard from lungs as well.

any 'stimulus' package won't deal with down-the-road health problems.

again, guys, please - we need universal health care. what is it gonna take to convince y'all ?

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Testing.

Why Germany's Coronavirus Death Rate Is Far Lower Than In Other Countries

Looks like WaPo did a better job of reporting accurately and thinking about the facts than NPR, in this case.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...ce18e4-6d05-11ea-a156-0048b62cdb51_story.html

“At the beginning, when we had relatively few cases, when it came to finding them and isolating them, we did quite well in Germany,” said Reinhard Busse, head of the department of health care management at the Berlin University of Technology. “That’s the major reason.”

South Korea, which has been praised as a model for responding to the outbreak, has a death rate of 1.2 percent. Busse credits Germany’s lower rate to timing.

“In South Korea, there’s been a longer duration of infections, so we can’t really compare,” he said. “We have lots of newly positive cases. They didn’t have the chance to die yet.”

This is not complicated.

 

[dw4ngg]

We need more testing! I’m starting to think everyone I run into has covid-19, including myself...

 

[deonb]

This is weird. From:
https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/Coronavirus

"The state's notifiable conditions database is currently experiencing a slowdown because of a 10-fold increase in the number of lab reports received. Our IT team is working to correct the issue."

Ok, they've had 34000 tests before. 10 times that is 340000 (which, no... but let's humor them). What on earth database are they running that crumbles under 340000 records? dBASE IV?

 

[MXLRplus]

My local news just ran a story that data from China shows that 20% of hospitalized survivors show evidence of heart damage from the infection.

I wonder if this has anything to do with it. A single patient case study (China?) about C19 causing viral heart infection, which in this case they treated successfully with cortisones(?).

Coronavirus Fulminant Myocarditis Case Review - American College of Cardiology

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

We need more testing! I’m starting to think everyone I run into has covid-19, including myself...

It's absolutely essential. Everyone should know their status. Also, the President said anyone who wants a test can get a test. I want a test. I'm not working until I get one and everyone in San Diego gets one.

 

[Norbert]

South Korea's daily new deaths over the last 3 days (including today's incomplete number) are as high as ever.

Draw your own conclusions.

 

[BerkshireEV]

USA is just starting. NY was testing more last week than anyone and is over 100k tests on its owns. About a third are coming back positive and there is no reason to think NY's experience won't be similar elsewhere. If you want to watch it day by day, use this site which aggregates: United States Coronavirus: 68,203 Cases and 1,027 Deaths - Worldometer

I have been checking this daily for nearly two weeks. As a country about 53k cases yesterday when I went to bed. Tonight? 66k plus. 13k in one day. This is just starting to accelerate. We are doubling in under 3 days right now.

 

[BerkshireEV]

And no, you can't just get a test. NY is running out of tests already, again. We had months to prepare and did squat.

 

[linux-works]

more corruption, ICE (not gas cars, the guys who are fearful of all foreigners) are asking for ten's of thousands of masks that could be going to HOSPITALS.

Coronavirus: ICE requests 45,000 N95 masks despite dangerous shortage in U.S. hospitals

yeah, right - border agents come first over doctors.

did I wake up in backwards-land, today?

 

[EVNow]

This is weird. From:
https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/Coronavirus

"The state's notifiable conditions database is currently experiencing a slowdown because of a 10-fold increase in the number of lab reports received. Our IT team is working to correct the issue."

Ok, they've had 34000 tests before. 10 times that is 340000 (which, no... but let's humor them). What on earth database are they running that crumbles under 340000 records? dBASE IV?

They recently upgraded to FoxPro

I guess they mean 10x more than what they got before covid-19.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

About a third are coming back positive and there is no reason to think NY's experience won't be similar elsewhere.

It'll definitely be different in California and Washington. There's no reason to think we'll ever see that high a positive rate here. NY City is a giant sh**show since the virus was allowed to breed undetected (there were probably quite a few deaths that were due to COVID-19 that were not detected in the early going) for weeks, with multiple starts from international travelers. Haven't seen any phylogenetic analysis of the early cases there, but probably they were introduced prior to the travel ban, in January. With additional introductions from Europe later.

It also suffers from high density and public transport. There's just a lot of a very contagious virus wandering around.

It's going to be a disaster of epic proportions in NY. I hope I am wrong. I expect a minimum of 10k deaths in NY, and I would not be surprised at 20-30k.

66k plus. 13k in one day. This is just starting to accelerate. We are doubling in under 3 days right now.

Yup. A big part of that is due to increased testing. It's just showing cases we have had but didn't know we had. We're around 200k cases in the nation right now, most likely (a lot will never be identified of course - though they will spread to others).

Over 1000 deaths in the US now, as expected.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

The Mule is back!!!

This is definitely an excellent thing that Germany is testing a LOT. I agree that with massive testing capacity, it would not be required to rely on lockdowns - in fact, it's the only way we'll be able to exit this crisis. Keep shorting the market until there is evidence that we're actually trying to establish a good testing infrastructure (might want to wait until just before the stimulus bill finally passes, obviously that is a nice pretty object the market will enjoy).

And it's an excellent datapoint to show true mortality rate.

However, your claim about the 0.5% mortality rate is just wrong. You realize the number is going the wrong way, right? A few days ago, the mortality rate in Germany was 0.3%. This is 100% expected, of course. It's just that deaths lag cases, so in the presence of an exponential ramp, you'll always see an artificially low mortality rate. You have to wait for the curve to level off a bit, and then wait about 1-2 weeks.

It looks like Germany has started to bend their curve significantly, so check back on their mortality rate in about 2 weeks (assuming they actually flatten the curve in the next couple days). It'll be about 1%.

For example - look at March 24th's deaths of 159. That can be aligned roughly (it is just approximate) with March 18th's 12k cases. That's 1.3%.

Everyone is certainly welcome to draw their own conclusions. I don't think it's a coincidence the only two countries that tested properly are inducating a mortality rate on par with the .2% we ended up with for SARS. Everyone spouted 2-4% just like SARS, then it ends up 1/10 of that.

All these other countries are varying degrees of chaos, with us about the worst. You can fill in that chaos with whatever conclusions you like, but the two properly tested countries are telling a clear story.