Coronavirus

[SageBrush]

The Santa Clara study should be dumped completely.

Agreed,and the Los Angeles Country one also.
I can completely ignore the sample methods, and just discount the studies based on the test used and the low prevalence.

 

[Daniel in SD]

My thought seeing the floor plan was were the occupants at the white desks tested or are the blue desk occupants only those that came down with symptoms so got tested and then recorded? Could the people at the white desks be asymptomatic and still carriers?

They tested 1,143 people. The Koreans aren't messing around, that's how they're now only getting case from overseas.

Of 1,145 PUIs, we tested 1,143 (99.8%) for COVID-19 (922 employees, 201 residents, and 20 visitors) and identified 97 (8.5%, 95% CI 7.0–10.3) confirmed case-patients

We defined a patient under investigation (PUI) as one who worked at, lived at, or visited building X during February 21–March 8, 2020.

I have no idea what the 95% CI means for 8.5% number. PCR tests basically don't have false positives so how could 7% be possible? I think people just run any two numbers they have through a confidence interval calculator and call it a day. That, in fact, does appear to be what they did. It's exactly the confidence interval for a sample of 1143 people with 97 positives. You don't do that when you're not sampling! C'mon people...this is very disheartening.

 

[RobStark]

Local ABC affiliate story about factory workers that make base material for N95 mask and surgical gowns working a 28 day shift. They did not go home,visit family or leave the factory for 28 days.

https://6abc.com/video/embed/?pid=6115737

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

You don't do that when you're not sampling! C'mon people...this is very disheartening.

That's hilarious. Good catch though - I think I tune out these confidence intervals when I'm reading papers, so I probably would have totally missed this.

Now, I guess it would have been reasonable to put some confidence interval limits on this 8.5% value, based on the false negative rate of the PCR test (wouldn't it?), but those limits presumably would not be nearly that wide, and the values used here do appear to come straight out of a standard calculator; they're not a reflection of false negatives.

I'm getting dizzy thinking about this. With such a large number of tests with low rate of identification, I guess actually it would just take something on the order of a 3% false negative rate to get this spread on the positives? Anyway, doesn't seem like that's what is the source of this quoted CI.

 

[dfwatt]

The Santa Clara study should be dumped completely.
Ray Bhattacharya’s wife recruited people for the study on a school listserv (Ray Bhattacharya claims he did not know). She told people the test was FDA approved (it is not) and that it would provide "peace of mind." It's really quite shameful. His wife is a doctor, she should really know better.
Coronavirus: Email From Stanford Professor’s Wife Claimed His Antibody Study Would Prove If You Were Immune

Second dose of gasoline and a second match lit on his scientific reputation.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

"The Great Recession produced, famously, a phenomenon of decreases in life expectancy in the United States for the first time since World War II. A very large-scale economic collapse - that produces bad health outcomes. That, I think, is firmly established fact." - Dr. Jay Bhattacharya

What are facts, really? Now, I am not an expert, so I don't know whether the above statement is true. Cursory Google searches suggest that this is not a true statement (but it seems like it would be difficult to determine until decades later what the effect was...not sure how life expectancy is exactly measured...obviously there would be reduced mortality in the short-term for various reasons...).

How Antibody Tests Can Inform Public Policies To Mitigate Coronavirus Pandemic

Broadly speaking, he sounded reasonable in the interview until that statement.

I'm not sure what to think of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya's reputation. He used to be at the Hoover Institute. He definitely seems to be leveraging this whole thing to his advantage, in terms of visibility, though. I guess it helps to have a contrary opinion.

 

[Daniel in SD]

That, I think, is firmly established fact.

In his defense, he only "thinks" it's a fact (it's not).
Life expectancy has been decreasing in the US since 2014 (after the Great Recession!).
https://static1.squarespace.com/sta...ife+Expectancy+1959-2016+Woolf+JAMA+11-19.pdf

 

[Norbert]

In his defense, he only "thinks" it's a fact (it's not).
Life expectancy has been decreasing in the US since 2014 (after the Great Recession!).
https://static1.squarespace.com/sta...ife+Expectancy+1959-2016+Woolf+JAMA+11-19.pdf

Defense: Firmly established deniability. Not.

Also this Nature article from January 2019:
How the next recession could save lives

 

[davepsilon]

It would appear that IHME have underestimated future deaths. It often happens that elaborate models have no better predictive accuracy than much simpler models. The elaborate models often require lots of assumptions for some set of humans to supply. These assumptions are not always updated in a timely manner as new data come to light. Simpler models can efficiently work with available data as it comes in and avoid tossing in a bunch of other assumptions (that are probably wrong, but believed to be sensible at the time). Another way to look at this is in terms of the objectives of models. Elaborate models often are trying to a causal description correct at a detailed level. That's useful for testing causal theories of scientists. Simpler models may be focused more on efficient predictive inference. Causal models often do a poor job at predictive inference, while predictive models make all kinds of simplifications on causal mechanisms. Causal models tend to overfit the data to accommodate subtle causal effects that are not forecastable or significant, while predictive models eschew overfit because it destroys predictive accuracy. Both approaches have their place, and serve different purposes.

at the risk of being blunt both your and IMHE models don’t have the right shape for the fall off in deaths. So they are both poor models imo. Maybe one of you captured peak deaths well. I don’t think that’s the most interesting thing to predict. I want to know when cases will be low enough to trace.

Neither your nor IMHE models, in the fall off from the peak, look like Italy. They look like Wuhan. US is much more likely to look like Italy. We’ll drop in daily deaths but slowly while in lockdown. That is my best guess “model”

 

[Daniel in SD]

at the risk of being blunt both your and IMHE models don’t have the right shape for the fall off in deaths. So they are both poor models imo. Maybe one of you captured peak deaths well. I don’t think that’s the most interesting thing to predict. I want to know when cases will be low enough to trace.

Neither your nor IMHE models, in the fall off from the peak, look like Italy. They look like Wuhan. US is much more likely to look like Italy. We’ll drop in daily deaths but slowly while in lockdown. That is my best guess “model”

I think your "model" is better than the Dumb-Ass model and the IHME model (which somehow is even worse than the Dumb-Ass model).
Right now it's not looking like cases will ever be low enough to trace. We're starting to "open up" and if that causes cases to go up at what point, if ever, will the political will exist to increase restrictions? How can a model possibly incorporate that? No one can predict that and it's going to be different for every state!

 

[TEG]

From beginning of April:
Czech government implemented a face mask requirement to help combat Covid-19
Czechs get to work making masks after government decree
Should We All Wear Face Masks? Check the Czech Republic - MedicineNet Health News

( from Czech Republic (Czechia) Coronavirus: 7,352 Cases and 218 Deaths - Worldometer )

Every American should wear a face mask to defeat Covid-19 - STAT

 

[TEG]

Local ABC affiliate story about factory workers that make base material for N95 mask and surgical gowns working a 28 day shift. They did not go home,visit family or leave the factory for 28 days.
https://6abc.com/video/embed/?pid=6115737

Sort of random, but video quality on that web player was amazing as seen on my PC. I think it was doing 720p@60fps...

 

[dhanson865]

I don't know if this is accurate but it seems plausible. (humorous if nothing else)

https://i.redd.it/517yba4oj1v41.jpg

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Right now it's not looking like cases will ever be low enough to trace.

Such a pessimist.

Looks like the 57-year-old woman in Santa Clara who is currently the first known death who was mildly obese (BMI 31) but had no atherosclerosis died from a heart explosion (left ventricle rupture). I don’t know how common this type of heart failure is, maybe medical professionals here could comment:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/file/607/2/6072-Dowd_Patricia_Cabello_-_Autopsy.pdf

 

[Mike Smith]

Singapore races to build beds for COVID-19 patients as cases surge

'Authorities are also trialing a four-legged robot dog built by Boston Dynamics at the facility, which they said could be used to deliver medicines to patients or take their temperature.'

 

[RobStark]

Front page of New York times today

 

[RobStark]

Washington Post Deaths reported per 100k population, most recent

 

[OPRCE]

Germany is listed here as having basically the same number of recovered cases as the US and about 1/10th the number of deaths with about 1/6th the number of cases. What gives? Difference in criteria for "recovered" or more successful medical care?

View attachment 535816

Several distinguishing factors:
1. Germany had from the outset many more hospital/ICU beds per capita than USA.
2. Germany rapidly mass produced the WHO RT-PCR test kit, developed in 10 days by Charité University Hospital Berlin from the genome published online by China on 9th Jan, without even needing a live sample of the virus, and did not tit around like the US CDC with "superior" tests which failed to work and needed redesign in the heat of battle.
3. After an initial well-isolated cluster in Ingolstadt (seminar given to engineers by a visiting asymptomatic Chinese auto-supplier), Germany started seriously gearing up on PPE, testing, tracking + tracing. This helped when the second wave arrived from their skiing holidays in N.Italy.
4. Germany proactively deployed med students in taxis to test/follow up with all suspected/confirmed cases isolating at home, which largely seems to have eliminated the problem of people dying there due to not wanting to over-burden the hospitals.
5. I suspect the German population is on average slightly healthier than in USA (re. diabetes, obesity, hypertension, etc).
6. And last but not least, Germany is not being run into the ground by a Mango Mussolini, rather they have an actual qualified scientist in Merkel (1986 Ph.D in Quantum Chemistry & worked as a research scientist until entering politics in 1989). Thus COVID-19 was taken much more seriously, rather than just being swept under the rug while bloviating loudly about the amazing stock market.

That said, the German response was far from perfect, e.g. they should have closed borders to non-essential travel and moved to mandatory social distancing/masks on public transport at least 14 days earlier than they actually did, leading to probably a 66% reduction in the case-load they have in fact seen.

 

[renim]

http://ncirs.org.au/sites/default/f... COVID_Summary_FINAL public_26 April 2020.pdf

Report: COVID-19 in schools – the experience in NSW

Summary of findings

• In NSW, from March to mid-April 2020, 18 individuals (9 students and 9 staff) from 15 schools were confirmed as COVID-19 cases; all of these individuals had an opportunity to transmit the COVID-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2) to others in their schools.
• 735 students and 128 staff were close contacts of these initial 18 cases.
• One child from a primary school and one child from a high school may have contracted COVID-19 from the initial cases at their schools.
• No teacher or staff member contracted COVID-19 from any of the initial school cases.

 

[renim]