Coronavirus

[Daniel in SD]

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.

I completely disagree. They are making zero effort. I'm just as upset over their analysis of the Iceland data. There is plenty of information about incubation periods, time from infection to death, demographics, and they are using none of it. It is not a serious analysis. This is what a serious analysis looks like:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033357v1.full.pdf

 

[linux-works]

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

it does not matter what 'products' he buys.

he wanted to endanger lives for political reasons.

he should be removed from office immediately for pulling such a juvenile stunt.

(in fact, jail is too good for him).

make an example out of him. lawmakers LOVE to make examples. come on!

 

[EV forever]

Elon Musk on Twitter

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

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 agree that debating it is kind of pointless.

My thoughts...
Back in mid-January, I started looking at CFR & trying to understand the IFR. And then I continued to look at Korea in February. Motivation? On a personal level, I wanted to assess the risk of this disease, personally, to me and my loved ones. So I was looking at rates of death by age, etc. Sometime in February, I came to the conclusion that it was a unacceptable danger to me, a healthy 42-year-old male, and I needed to be careful about exposures (both financially and more importantly my health exposure), starting immediately. At some point that month I also came to the conclusion or read somewhere that it took a long time to die and that's why Korea's numbers were initially so low. So I found no solace there. I worried about going to the ISSCC conference in San Francisco in mid/early February (and was relieved by the travel ban, but worried about the Korean exposure - not because of anything about their nationality - I just knew they were higher risk (though the risk was still fairly small)). I brought hand sanitizer, gloves, and a mask, just in case. They had a no handshake policy at the conference and I was careful about washing my hands. Fortunately this conference did not appear to drive any community spread.

Anyway, perhaps it's this selfish thinking that partially drives people's interest in CFR/IFR. And I certainly understood that the IFR was impossible to determine - but for my personal risk I had to determine worst case.

However, regardless of CFR, it has always been clear to me that this was a huge danger - if the virus shut down the modern, sophisticated health system in Hubei province completely, it had to be really, really bad, and I knew it would destroy our system as well if nothing was done (also unacceptably risky to me in the event of some accident, my family members needing routine or critical medical care unrelated to the virus, etc.). So for that I didn't need to know the CFR.

 

[uujjj]

Here in late March, with the USA at over 100,000 confirmed cases, and the world well over 500,000 (who knows how many real infections), reading page 1 of this thread is something trippy. Exponentials are scary things.

 

[Dr. J]

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

I guess he got a battlefield promotion from Representative to Senator? From the sound of it, he's also fairly reckless, endangering lives and all.

 

[EVNow]

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

US has more deaths than China - at this same point in their pandemic. NYC is probably the reason.

BTW, UK, Germany & France are following the same path as Italy.

ps : One of the things I see is that at state level - # of total fatalities now is > # of total cases 14 days back. What happens in the next 2 weeks is difficult to figure out.

 

[ggr]

A friend of mine was in the US for work, and flew back to Australia Wednesday of last week (18th), arriving Friday morning. None of the people he had contact with in the US have become sick, so at this point we're all assuming he caught it at LAX, on the plane, or at SYD. Australia had already mandated 14 day quarantine for incoming passengers, so he went home and dedicated one of the kids rooms and bathroom to his use, while wife and kids used the rest of the house, and they feed him by leaving plates outside the room. Every few days they open the dishwasher and retreat, he comes out and stacks the dishwasher, and they come back and turn it on. Good thing they did all this... over the weekend he had a splitting headache for two days, started coughing Monday and got tested, got the result early Wednesday: Positive! He seems to be recovering now, but has hit an interesting problem. No-one can tell him when he can come out! There's no provision for a second test, as far as he can figure out, and he certainly doesn't want to come out too early. What's the rule in the US, does anyone know?

 

[Dr. J]

Maybe some good news? Looks like social distancing/lockdowns also reduces flu.



Source: US Health Weather Map by Kinsa

 

[jhm]

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.

No, I'm not looking at this from an investor viewpoint. That's irrelevant.

Cases and deaths are mounting in real-time. Right now, can we know what the ultimate number of cases or deaths will be? If we knew this, we could take the ratio and get CFR. So we'll know that eventually, but right now it is hard enough just predicting cases and deaths 30 days ahead. But this is not merely a prediction problem; it is a problems of action. How we reacted to the pandemic as it unfolds will make a difference in ultimate cases and deaths. So why do we pretend like CFR is some sort of intrinsic property of Covid19? It is not. It is simple a way of describing and end state of a process that depends on our collective response. So what really matters are processes that lead to more cases and more death and how we react to them in the present moment.

What this debate is really about is a political question: Shall take active measures to minimize both infections and deaths, or shall we simply hope that IFR turns out small regardless of what we do? Fair enough, that is a political choice. Political passions are driving this debate, not intellectual curiosity. Politics frequently pushes us to fixate on things that cannot be well quantified with data because it is about our values, our choices, our will, science be damned.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I found this webpage today, seems pretty interesting. I guess we'll see how well the model holds up. I haven't read through all of their assumptions. Obviously, depending on what is done to restrict travel between states, it will dramatically impact the results even at this point. (I don't know whether their upper and lower bounds account for some of this uncertainty - which is huge.)

Looks like peak deaths on ~April 14th, with integrated deaths around ~81k. Lots of nice plots you can scroll around, etc. Also has state by state breakdown so you can see the delays on peaks in different states. I should note that I've seen models showing a much more optimistic model for Oregon, for example - so I hope that this is all way too pessimistic.

IHME | COVID-19 Projections

All pretty horrifying. I hope they are wrong, though these numbers were within my expectations. Aligns fairly well with my wild guess of a few days ago of ~10,000 deaths by the end of next week. I'd say peak fear will probably show up next week!

Seems very unlikely that the lockdown will be able to stop until the end of May - and then only in some states. Note that practically, the upper and lower bounds don't make much difference (maybe 1-2 weeks) to when we can "stop." (Whatever "stop" means.) I guess the good news is we should have plenty of time to plan the exit strategy! "Plenty" when it comes to this administration may not be enough time though.

 

[SO16]

I guess he got a battlefield promotion from Representative to Senator? From the sound of it, he's also fairly reckless, endangering lives and all.

Haha...whoops. I wasn’t praising what he did with the vote.

 

[EVNow]

No-one can tell him when he can come out! There's no provision for a second test, as far as he can figure out, and he certainly doesn't want to come out too early. What's the rule in the US, does anyone know?

In UK it is one week after the symptoms start.

But I'd say to be safe, one week after the symptoms stop.

Oh yes, there seems to be a lot of people who catch the virus in the airport and in the plane. That accounts for very large % of people who come from say China or Italy to be positive - after a few days (but not when entering the country).

ps : clinically 2 consecutive -ves to declare case over.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

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

he's also fairly reckless, endangering lives and all.

Probably would have been one of those guys using a nag defeat device, anyway. Bye bye.

 

[traxila]

But that doomsday scenario of 120M infections and 2% death rate has been completely disproven. We're now looking at 120M infections and something south of .2% death rate.

Don't understand this at all. What has been disproven? The only myth I see being dispelled lately is that this is only a senior citizen problem.

Please come back in two weeks and say the exact same thing. I am very willing to say that you were right. Am hoping for it.

 

[Daniel in SD]

No, I'm not looking at this from an investor viewpoint. That's irrelevant.

Cases and deaths are mounting in real-time. Right now, can we know what the ultimate number of cases or deaths will be? If we knew this, we could take the ratio and get CFR. So we'll know that eventually, but right now it is hard enough just predicting cases and deaths 30 days ahead. But this is not merely a prediction problem; it is a problems of action. How we reacted to the pandemic as it unfolds will make a difference in ultimate cases and deaths. So why do we pretend like CFR is some sort of intrinsic property of Covid19? It is not. It is simple a way of describing and end state of a process that depends on our collective response. So what really matters are processes that lead to more cases and more death and how we react to them in the present moment.

What this debate is really about is a political question: Shall take active measures to minimize both infections and deaths, or shall we simply hope that IFR turns out small regardless of what we do? Fair enough, that is a political choice. Political passions are driving this debate, not intellectual curiosity. Politics frequently pushes us to fixate on things that cannot be well quantified with data because it is about our values, our choices, our will, science be damned.

IFR can be quantified and it is a function of the intrinsic properties of COVID-19 and medical care. R0 changes with our behavior, there is no evidence that I'm aware of to support IFR changing over time for COVID-19. My understanding is that they don't think it's mutating fast enough for that to happen.

 

[jhm]

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."

That sounds reasonable to me. We all benefit from checking each others work and learning how to do better. I post all sorts of stupid mistakes and appreciate when someone helps me sort that out.

 

[Dr. J]

I found this webpage today, seems pretty interesting. I guess we'll see how well the model holds up. I haven't read through all of their assumptions. Obviously, depending on what is done to restrict travel between states, it will dramatically impact the results even at this point. (I don't know whether their upper and lower bounds account for some of this uncertainty - which is huge.)

Looks like peak deaths on ~April 14th, with integrated deaths around ~81k. Lots of nice plots you can scroll around, etc.

IHME | COVID-19 Projections

All pretty horrifying. I hope they are wrong, though these numbers were within my expectations. Aligns fairly well with my wild guess of a few days ago of ~10,000 deaths by the end of next week. I'd say peak fear will probably show up next week!

Seems very unlikely that the lockdown will be able to stop until the end of May - and then only in some states.

View attachment 526599

I guess this means churches won't be packed on Easter? I don't think even Evangelicals are that....um.....reckless.

 

[EVNow]

Maybe some good news? Looks like social distancing/lockdowns also reduces flu.

View attachment 526598

Source: US Health Weather Map by Kinsa

Not just flu, traffic accidents are down too.

 

[jhm]

I agree that debating it is kind of pointless.

My thoughts...
Back in mid-January, I started looking at CFR & trying to understand the IFR. And then I continued to look at Korea in February. Motivation? On a personal level, I wanted to assess the risk of this disease, personally, to me and my loved ones. So I was looking at rates of death by age, etc. Sometime in February, I came to the conclusion that it was a unacceptable danger to me, a healthy 42-year-old male, and I needed to be careful about exposures (both financially and more importantly my health exposure), starting immediately. At some point that month I also came to the conclusion or read somewhere that it took a long time to die and that's why Korea's numbers were initially so low. So I found no solace there. I worried about going to the ISSCC conference in San Francisco in mid/early February (and was relieved by the travel ban, but worried about the Korean exposure - not because of anything about their nationality - I just knew they were higher risk (though the risk was still fairly small)). I brought hand sanitizer, gloves, and a mask, just in case. They had a no handshake policy at the conference and I was careful about washing my hands. Fortunately this conference did not appear to drive any community spread.

Anyway, perhaps it's this selfish thinking that partially drives people's interest in CFR/IFR. And I certainly understood that the IFR was impossible to determine - but for my personal risk I had to determine worst case.

However, regardless of CFR, it has always been clear to me that this was a huge danger - if the virus shut down the modern, sophisticated health system in Hubei province completely, it had to be really, really bad, and I knew it would destroy our system as well if nothing was done (also unacceptably risky to me in the event of some accident, my family members needing routine or critical medical care unrelated to the virus, etc.). So for that I didn't need to know the CFR.

Thanks. What I like about your response is that you are focusing on how these studies lead to actionable information. That is exactly where the attention should be. My guess is that it was a variety of issues that led you to formulate your basic response. So this is getting the big picture, the overall pattern.

What you didn't do is get hung up on some narrow range of issues that can't be nailed down with exacting certainty. Stay adaptive!