Coronavirus

[eevee-fan]

One of the interesting details about virus is that they do not eat and so they do not starve. So long as they do not degrade from heat and/or desiccation they hang around.

It comes down to the lipid outer covering being degraded, right? So heat, UV-C, dryness, soap and alcohol (70% or higher).

Then, what's with the claim that high humidity inactivates the virus?

 

[SageBrush]

also, genuinely losing a ton of respect for Musk through this

Musk, like the good Dr. Erickson, do not understand test performance, specificity, and prevalence.
Erickson in particular surprised me by committing a schoolboy reasoning error. In the first couple minutes of his show he said that because 39% of those tested in NYS are positive, it implies that 39% of the NY population is infected.

I couldn't watch any further.

 

[SageBrush]

Then, what's with the claim that high humidity inactivates the virus?

Latent heat

 

[shinytop]

I hear you about behavior being more important than testing. The only two daily briefings I see daily, living in Florida, are Trumps's and Cuomo's. Cuomo does say they need more testing but his message has never wavered from the most important thing being behavior. His message about testing is that is what they need to begin talking about opening the economy.

 

[Norbert]

I find this obsession with testing by the authorities to be quite annoying and short sighted.
The obsession is similar to antibody testing. It is presumed to have some embued magic that will solve our Covid problem.

The foundation has to be reducing infectivity via social behavior changes. The testing is just accounting.

We should have a poll: how long will it take for the health authorities in the USA to change their message to behavior ? I say during the second wave.

Wait a minute.

Testing by itself is a diagnostic tool, but testing combined with contact tracing and quarantine is the tool which allowed South Korea to stop the spread. In addition to mitigation, of course, but once contact tracing works, some forms of mitigation can be relaxed accordingly.

Contact tracing does require a high level of testing capacity in a situation like the US, higher than we currently have. Also, testing as such will allow for better separation of positive cases.

Testing capacity is in fact crucial.

 

[StrawbrryField]

It comes down to the lipid outer covering being degraded, right? So heat, UV-C, dryness, soap and alcohol (70% or higher).

Then, what's with the claim that high humidity inactivates the virus?

The virus lipid bilayer has solubility in water. Heat increases this.

 

[Norbert]

I don't know why she is so busy projecting hope and excuses, when it seems that people are losing the sense of urgency when it comes to mitigation such as wearing masks outside. The only thing that will improve our chances of opening up sooner (in a good way) is better mitigation.

I meant: The only thing to be done currently, while test & trace is being established. And while treatments & vaccines are being developed.

 

[FoverM]

Positivity = % Positive.

I’ll have to grab the positivity data from the site later and plot it. My understanding from recent data is that both the number of positive results AND the % of tests positive do not have the right trends. An increase in the number of tests should increase the number of positives, but should also reduce the positivity % a bit. The mentioned states are where this is not really happening, which is a sign of outbreaks that are less under control.

If you mean ( new_positives / new_tests ) then here's the graph for PA:

Looks like it peaked around 10 days ago. I'd ignore the recent wild swings.

You want to have positivity under 5%, preferably 2-3% or lower (obviously there is no hard and fast rule since it depends on criteria and the number of excess tests). Empirically though, that seems to be a good threshold.

We don't even know who's being tested, so I think it would be impossible to come up with a good threshold.

 

[Beltsbear]

Unfortunately Elon has responded to a Covid virus denier on Twitter. Now this tweet shows up on the top of Elon's feed for me. On this board I have to say it, I am a stock holder and an very bullish on Tesla, but Elon's behavior can suck sometimes.

An0maly on Twitter

 

[SageBrush]

testing combined with contact tracing and quarantine is the tool which allowed South Korea to stop the spread. In addition to mitigation, of course, but once contact tracing works, some forms of mitigation can be relaxed accordingly.

The American approach is putting the cart before the donkey.
You will see ... testing ad nauseum without universal changes to public behavior will be a very expensive failure.

 

[SageBrush]

Cuomo does say they need more testing but his message has never wavered from the most important thing being behavior. His message about testing is that is what they need to begin talking about opening the economy.

Agreed, and he is wrong.

NYS currently has about 1,200 new admissions a day. That works out to ~ 20,000 -- 30,000 new infections a day with their current closed economy. There is no way in hell contact tracing leading to quarantine is even feasible let alone effective unless the infectivity rate is markedly suppressed.

The notion that NYS can follow the SK model ignores the difference in scale, and it ignores the fact that SK has a smart and compliant populace that follows public health directives (read: follows social distancing and wears face masks) and is at baseline a hygienic society. It is not enough to take one facet of the SK model; the state will have to become SK. You see that happening anytime soon ?

 

[FoverM]

Positivity = % Positive.

I’ll have to grab the positivity data from the site later and plot it. My understanding from recent data is that both the number of positive results AND the % of tests positive do not have the right trends. An increase in the number of tests should increase the number of positives, but should also reduce the positivity % a bit. The mentioned states are where this is not really happening, which is a sign of outbreaks that are less under control. You want to have positivity under 5%, preferably 2-3% or lower (obviously there is no hard and fast rule since it depends on criteria and the number of excess tests). Empirically though, that seems to be a good threshold.

Here's a graph for IL:

I guess you could say that the positivity is falling slightly towards the end ... but the gigantic increases in tests makes everything questionable.

 

[Chocochip]

I find Elon’s attitude perplexing. He’s an individual with an above-average intelligence as well as with enough experience in data analysis to understand what the positivity and mortality rate numbers indicate*, and yet his personal bias against the lockdown is so strong that he goes for these “it’s just like the flu” theories and even promotes them publicly. I get that he’s frustrated and feels held back operationally — and possibly financially — by the lockdown, but I’m seriously annoyed by his attitude throughout this whole thing.

*The doctors in the YouTube video he shared earlier made such basic errors with their assumptions for extrapolating the mortality rate that I didn’t last beyond the first 10 minutes of that video. But I can see why “the people” would hear that stuff and become convinced the whole lockdown thing is pointless.

 

[eevee-fan]

... or maybe Musk feels 2% of the population is not a big deal - big picture wise.

Remember, Trump thought it was no big deal until he found out that a billionaire, esp one in his circle, can catch it too.

BTW, Las Vegas Mayor thinks it's no big deal and volunteers Las Vegas and its residents as a 'control group'... as long as she is not in that control group.

 

[deonb]

The American approach is putting the cart before the donkey.
You will see ... testing ad nauseum without universal changes to public behavior will be a very expensive failure.

Only an idiot would just keep testing and testing and then not take the data as an input to make some substantive changes.

Oh... wait...

 

[FoverM]

Here is IL daily new positives and tests:

 

[SO16]

I find Elon’s attitude perplexing. He’s an individual with an above-average intelligence as well as with enough experience in data analysis to understand what the positivity and mortality rate numbers indicate*, and yet his personal bias against the lockdown is so strong that he goes for these “it’s just like the flu” theories and even promotes them publicly. I get that he’s frustrated and feels held back operationally — and possibly financially — by the lockdown, but I’m seriously annoyed by his attitude throughout this whole thing.

*The doctors in the YouTube video he shared earlier made such basic errors with their assumptions for extrapolating the mortality rate that I didn’t last beyond the first 10 minutes of that video. But I can see why “the people” would hear that stuff and become convinced the whole lockdown thing is pointless.

I don’t find Elon’s attitude to be totally complacent. He has already been through this with China. I bet he’s for social distancing measures but he thinks the deaths aren’t quite as bad as they are made out to be. It seems on the scale of 1 to 10 where 1 Is no problem (fox news and Trump) and 10 the sky is falling (CNN), I’d bet Elon is at 6. Trying to act accordingly. That being said, I wish he didn’t tweet about any of it. It’s too distracting from the mission and turns off too many people.

 

[Norbert]

Agreed, and he is wrong.

NYS currently has about 1,200 new admissions a day. That works out to ~ 20,000 -- 30,000 new infections a day with their current closed economy. There is no way in hell contact tracing leading to quarantine is even feasible let alone effective unless the infectivity rate is markedly suppressed.

I think Cuomo is well aware that the infection level has to decrease still before the economy can be opened, he just is very/overly confident that this will happen soon.

With an infection level of around 20% as in NYC, you don't need a lot of tracing to find positives, you can just test random people. I think it does help if they know they are infected, since they may be asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic, and may not stay at home and isolate yet. Even so, there is no reason to wait with tracing yet, as in absolute terms it does always help, as long as it does not stand in the way of other activity. But especially important in areas that have a lower infection level but might become hot spots if not taken care of.

 

[deonb]

I don’t find Elon’s attitude to be totally complacent. He has already been through this with China. I bet he’s for social distancing measures but he thinks the deaths aren’t quite as bad as they are made out to be. It seems on the scale of 1 to 10 where 1 Is no problem (fox news and Trump) and 10 the sky is falling (CNN), I’d bet Elon is at 6. Trying to act accordingly. That being said, I wish he didn’t tweet about any of it. It’s too distracting from the mission and turns off too many people.

The bigger problem is that he's arguing the issue, rather than embracing it and inventing and showcasing brilliant ideas of how to run the most efficient operation possible even within the bounds of social distancing.

 

[SageBrush]

I think Cuomo is well aware that the infection level has to decrease still before the economy can be opened

It can drop by 90% for all the good it will do if infectivity is not controlled via social behavior. That is the lesson we all should have learned by now.