Coronavirus

[AlanSubie4Life]

If you mean ( new_positives / new_tests ) then here's the graph for PA:
View attachment 536203
Looks like it peaked around 10 days ago. I'd ignore the recent wild swings.


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

Yeah, I guess PA & IL actually don't look too bad. But they don't look great, either. Anyway, here are some of the plots (there are some data issues in some of them (sometimes some negative numbers and such presumably due to data processing), so take them with a grain of salt, though they are pulled from the COVID Tracking site).

Source: Tableau Public

But anyway, here are IL & PA. Compare to NY. Obviously NY is an extreme case, but you definitely want to see that % positive going down. It means (in theory) that you are sucking those infected, contagious people out of the population faster than they can be produced. Another good positive example is Hawaii - that's a sign of an epidemic that is coming under control.

Here are New York & Hawaii:

A couple of other problematic ones: South Dakota & North Dakota are going to crap (South Dakota is worse due to the plant outbreak presumably). North Dakota is REALLY bad the last couple days though compared to their historical results. There were looking ok up until about a week ago but it looks like they have lost control, potentially, unless they can get more testing deployed.

 

[renim]

83% recovered, and 83 deaths

 

[Norbert]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...-latest-news/#link-Y4D6IJWHMJBX5DXO4SB6YKGCNI

BERLIN — Most federal states across Germany implemented rules on the wearing of face masks in public on Monday, amid hopes that it will allow businesses to reopen without sparking a second wave of infections.

The details differ between federal states. For instance in Berlin, face masks are mandatory on public transport, but violating the rule will not be penalized. In Munich and other cities, however, the rules are expected to be more strictly enforced with hefty fines.

 

[SageBrush]

We're all reading tea leaves here, even the "doctors",

but

I talked with my sister,

a "microbiologist"
and that is supposed to be more informative ?

 

[SageBrush]

ECDC data through Apr 27

 

[jerry33]

but
a "microbiologist"
and that is supposed to be more informative ?

It's likely to be more informative than what comes out of the media as there is at least a modicum of expertise. Not that I don't doubt the tea leaf analogy.

 

[deonb]

Jealous:

Coronavirus: New Zealand claims no community cases as lockdown eases

 

[SageBrush]

It's likely to be more informative than what comes out of the media as there is at least a modicum of expertise. Not that I don't doubt the tea leaf analogy.

I found it amusing that he denigrates "doctors" but then trots out second hand information from a "microbiologist."

 

[dfwatt]

Is that before or after the soap gets dropped? As I'm a little concerned that the "position" wouldn't be mutually beneficial. Unless I'll be well compensated for my seat-of-the-pants expertise?

These are pretty standard questions. That's why I put our psychotic Proctologist in charge of all Outreach and recruitment of potential board members. If he contacts you, run at full speed in the other direction.

 

[Doggydogworld]

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.

Let's say half (840k) of those 20% are still PCR+ today and NYC ramps way up to 100k tests per day. 100k random tests find 10k cases per day, but even under lockdown those 840k infect another 20-50k per day (100k++ without lockdown). The testing helps, but doesn't solve the underlying problem.

I don’t find Elon’s attitude to be totally complacent.

Complacent would be a vast improvement. He actively promotes denialism. Last month he told employees:

.... confirmed COVID-19 (this specific form of the common cold) cases will not exceed 0.1% of the US population.​

Of course we're only at 0.3% due to lack of testing, so maybe this was prescient /s

Moreover, I do not think, when we look back on 2020, that the causes of death or serious injury will have changed much from 2017, for example: (CDC statistic).​

Only because of lockdowns (aka "panic"). Peak NYC COVID deaths per day exceeded normal deaths from all other causes combined by 5x. Without lockdown it would have burnt out in NYC by summer but still killed more than all other causes combined for the full year.

 

[ZeApelido]

Elon liked this

John McAfee on Twitter

What a twat

 

[sparcs]

Complacent would be a vast improvement. He actively promotes denialism.

Elon has been a case of the good far outweighing the bad. I just ignore his coronavirus theories at this point. A lot of the analysis is going to be retrospective anyways. That's the only way I can reconcile it at this point.

 

[deonb]

Elon liked this

John McAfee on Twitter

What a twat

Mmm.

Japan on March 3rd:

US on March 15th:

 

[azaz]

Musk is basically an anti vaxxer when it comes to covid19. **** him.

the level of hubris as each of his predictions fail (no new cases by end of April, only 0.01 of us pop etc) is such that he's not admitting he was wrong yet seeking out further alternative sources to validate his priors. the man is now asking random people on twitter to explain mortality stats to him and John mcafee just to justify his priors. just ignoring all available evidence to seek out more and more fringe nonsense to not have to admit he was wrong.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Everyone posting in this thread was at least a degree of magnitude wrong in the other direction. What's the difference? If anything, Elon was "closer" to accurate.

 

[azaz]

Everyone posting in this thread was at least a degree of magnitude wrong in the other direction. What's the difference? If anything, Elon was "closer" to accurate.

just completely false

 

[sixela]

We came her for an argument, not for mere contradiction.

Of course it's easy to be "more correct". Given *any* disease that could kill millions when left unchecked, it's a fair bet that people will try to mitigate the effects to limit the disease's spread.

If that is successful at cutting down victims 50% (I would have to point out that as long as there is no vaccine to artificially increase herd immunity, we're not quite out of the woods yet!), then without having any knowledge at all you can safely forecast 0 deaths without any knowledge at all and be "more correct" than initial forecasts that assume no mitigation.

It's a very rational thing to do if what you want is to be proven right (but not if you are a decision maker bent on reducing human suffering rather than bent on "being right"). After all, your critics can only prove you wrong by allowing the catastrophe to unfold, and you'll easily win that game of chicken.

 

[FoverM]

I found it amusing that he denigrates "doctors" but then trots out second hand information from a "microbiologist."

I wasn't denigrating doctors. I have no idea if anyone here who claims to be a doctor actually is one so that's why I used quote marks.

Just like you have no reason to believe that my sister is a microbiologist who did (she's retired) testing at public health agencies and hospitals (WashU). Or that her husband was the same except he worked in diagnostics division at a large healthcare company. I know who and what they are and if they say a test is crap based on what they've read about it, I listen.

Anyway, one other thing she mentioned was "silent hypoxia" and surfactant :

Opinion | The Infection That’s Silently Killing Coronavirus Patients

I don't know if this is unique to COVID-19 or if other killer viruses do the same.

 

[SageBrush]

Just like you have no reason to believe that my sister is a "microbiologist"

FTFY

 

[sixela]

I don't know if this is unique to COVID-19 or if other killer viruses do the same.

It depends. Often the way in which an infection will kill also depends on the particulars of the host group most affected (and comorbidities, of course).

The Spanish flu was known to cause nasty cytokine storms, especially in younger individuals, so people ended up dead without suffering from silent hypoxia. Their immune system responded to the threat but in a lethal way.

Some older people had partial immunisation against it from earlier flu viruses and a less aggressive immune system and were relatively unharmed.

BTW, the really young that died from COVID-19 over here also seemed to to be more prone to tripping the immune system into a rapidly triggered cytokine storm, but the number of victims in that age group is fortunately low.

I think that the article isn't saying that it's the silent hypoxia that kills. I think the article is saying that detecting silent hypoxia is a way to detect asymptomatic patients (and prevent them from transmitting the disease) and to start treating people before the disease progresses and becomes more nasty, which frees hospital beds.