Coronavirus

[DrGriz]

This data doesnt mean much anything anymore and is completely inaccurate due to the widespread usage of at home tests and people no longer reporting positive cases. "Experts" estimate the real world numbers are 7-14x higher than the reported cases now. Personally, in the last 6 months i know at least of about 15 individuals in my immediate family and friends who got it and ZERO of them reported it. The implementation of the at home tests was one of the biggest mistakes of this pandemic. They should have designed it in a way were the output of the test had to be scanned or input into a web site to get the result.

You are absolutely right, in an ideal world. But no way do we trust self reporting to be accurate, either. Might capture some cases, but would also have a lot of false negs and possibly false positives. Only one member of a sick family has often been tested even in professional and reporting testing situations. And the mild cases or subclinical cases that go untested? You miss them in those totals anyway. You will always have underreporting.

I am happy people have the chance to test at home and self quarantine.

The statisticians do a pretty good job of estimating the total number of cases, and we have solid hospitalization numbers which counts for a lot.

Better to not let perfect be the enemy of good.

 

[JRP3]

This data doesnt mean much anything anymore and is completely inaccurate due to the widespread usage of at home tests and people no longer reporting positive cases. "Experts" estimate the real world numbers are 7-14x higher than the reported cases now. Personally, in the last 6 months i know at least of about 15 individuals in my immediate family and friends who got it and ZERO of them reported it. The implementation of the at home tests was one of the biggest mistakes of this pandemic. They should have designed it in a way were the output of the test had to be scanned or input into a web site to get the result.

Good points but the self tests have been available for months but the reduction in cases we are seeing is recent.

 

[yobigd20]

Good points but the self tests have been available for months but the reduction in cases we are seeing is recent.

what reduction in cases? "reported" cases have been well over 100k/day since may and haven't gone down at all. Looking at the last 90 days, case counts are UP, not down. If anything what you think you "see" is probably just people REPORTING less, but not actual cases going down.

IN FACT, deaths and hospitalizations have both been on an upward trend, and those numbers don't misrepresent. Case counts like I said are useless, but death and hospitalization counts are not. Check CDC numbers for those trends. They are all up.

 

[madodel]

Maybe we should change this thread from COVID to Pandemics. I think going forward we will be bouncing from one pandemic to another and back again. Looks like Monkeypox is being missed and underreported because it isn't fitting the classic definition of symptoms presentation.

An ER doctor says he's sick of seeing monkeypox patients misdiagnosed, only to end up in the hospital in excruciating pain

 

[madodel]

Good points but the self tests have been available for months but the reduction in cases we are seeing is recent.

I think it is also because hospitals are not being overwhelmed with severe cases and deaths. Most people I know who have had it have had it recently and haven't had a particulrly bad course and so far no long COVID. I'll continue to wear a mask. I have a meet and greet fundraiser with PA Senate candidate John Fetterman on Sunday. One of the requirements is to do a rapid COVID test that morning.

 

[Doggydogworld]

Good points but the self tests have been available for months but the reduction in cases we are seeing is recent.

I think some more states have switched to epi reporting even for cases, so there always seems to be a big drop in the most recent 10 days or so. The 7 day average yesterday, August 7, was 81k. Let's see if it's still 81k in a week or two.

 

[JRP3]

IN FACT, deaths and hospitalizations have both been on an upward trend, and those numbers don't misrepresent. Case counts like I said are useless, but death and hospitalization counts are not. Check CDC numbers for those trends. They are all up.

CDC is showing all metrics as lower for the last 7 days. Hospitalizations down 4.4% Deaths down 4.9%

COVID Data Tracker Weekly Review

The week’s key data, narrative interpretations, & visualizations.

www.cdc.gov

 

[DrGriz]

CDC is showing all metrics as lower for the last 7 days. Hospitalizations down 4.4% Deaths down 4.9%

COVID Data Tracker Weekly Review

The week’s key data, narrative interpretations, & visualizations.

www.cdc.gov

4-5% drop. It may be a delay in reporting, however. States like mine, which are intentionally underfunded to skew the data, sometimes bulk report late.

 

[yobigd20]

CDC is showing all metrics as lower for the last 7 days. Hospitalizations down 4.4% Deaths down 4.9%

COVID Data Tracker Weekly Review

The week’s key data, narrative interpretations, & visualizations.

www.cdc.gov

lol one week is not a trend. Thats just laughable. Look at the bigger picture and everything has been going up fir the last 90 days.

 

[Daniel in SD]

lol one week is not a trend. Thats just laughable. Look at the bigger picture and everything has been going up fir the last 90 days.

Do you want to make a bet? Hospitalizations will be down in two weeks. We're at the peak of the BA.5 wave, there will be another wave starting this fall. Hopefully it's just a small one driven by BA.5 and not yet another variant.

 

[JRP3]

lol one week is not a trend. Thats just laughable. Look at the bigger picture and everything has been going up fir the last 90 days.

You claimed the case count data I presented wasn't reliable. Then I showed you hospitalization and death rates that mirrored the same trend from the sources you claimed were reliable. Only time will tell if the trends continue or not but a week of data is in fact a trend.

 

[yobigd20]

You claimed the case count data I presented wasn't reliable. Then I showed you hospitalization and death rates that mirrored the same trend from the sources you claimed were reliable. Only time will tell if the trends continue or not but a week of data is in fact a trend.

We all know how this goes. I would take weekly trends with a grain of salt. The longer term trends are what matter. Going from 120k cases/day to 115k cases per day is not a downward trend. Thats like saying the case drops on weekends is a downward trend but low and behold every monday they shoot back up. You have to look wider to see the trend and overall its still going up not down. Over 2 years into this and most ppl are still blind to the trends. The infections go in waves across the states. We are nowhere near going in the right direction on this yet. My only hope is the omicron booster makes a dent. The longer this thing musters the more chances we are giving it to make a variant that ends up being more relentless and deadly. But when you take into account the 30 some cross species documented infections its not like the vaccine is stop this. Cant vaccinate the animal populations. My outlook on this tends to be grim.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Looks like long COVID may be associated with herpes virus reactivation (specifically VZV and EBV (herpes, and EBV is associated with mono (and MS!))) and low cortisol levels. Interesting work, and hopefully provides the start of answers for some people. Not sure what therapies might be possible:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1557391752889307138

 

[dgatwood]

We all know how this goes. I would take weekly trends with a grain of salt. The longer term trends are what matter. Going from 120k cases/day to 115k cases per day is not a downward trend.

Agreed. Not even close. Heck, a lot of states only give numbers every two days these days, so you can get more skew than that just from those states having four reporting days in one week and three in the next week.

One week of data isn't nearly enough to say that the numbers are trending downwards, particularly with only a 4% drop. From June 10 through June 23, the case count steadily dropped from a 7-day average of 110,430 cases per day to 97,849, which is more than an 11% drop. Then on June 24, the 7-day average spiked up to 105,177. Looking at the graphs, it looks like case counts might be trending *slightly* down since about July 21, but really, the counts look pretty much level since late May. The number of times it has recently dropped by a much larger amount and then gone back up means that such small changes are more likely to be noise than signal.

Normally, we talk about things like this with a seven-day moving average. One week of data is essentially a single data point. A drop from one point to the next is not a trend. Call me when you've seen at least four or five consecutive weeks with maybe 10% drop per week. That's when the wave is over.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Agreed. Not even close. Heck, a lot of states only give numbers every two days these days, so you can get more skew than that just from those states having four reporting days in one week and three in the next week.

One week of data isn't nearly enough to say that the numbers are trending downwards, particularly with only a 4% drop. From June 10 through June 23, the case count steadily dropped from a 7-day average of 110,430 cases per day to 97,849, which is more than an 11% drop. Then on June 24, the 7-day average spiked up to 105,177. Looking at the graphs, it looks like case counts might be trending *slightly* down since about July 21, but really, the counts look pretty much level since late May. The number of times it has recently dropped by a much larger amount and then gone back up means that such small changes are more likely to be noise than signal.

Normally, we talk about things like this with a seven-day moving average. One week of data is essentially a single data point. A drop from one point to the next is not a trend. Call me when you've seen at least four or five consecutive weeks with maybe 10% drop per week. That's when the wave is over.

Didn’t the cases drop because the BA.2 wave was ending? Then they went up because the BA.5 wave took over? This is not a stable system. Level cases without any new variant means case will fall until we get a new variant or seasonality causes another wave. I guess we’ll see.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Didn’t the cases drop because the BA.2 wave was ending? Then they went up because the BA.5 wave took over? This is not a stable system. Level cases without any new variant means case will fall until we get a new variant or seasonality causes another wave. I guess we’ll see.

Yeah, hoping we get below the lows of March/April, and that mobility is not substantially different enough and the virus more contagious enough that this new 100k cases a day is going to be the new normal.

 

[wdolson]

Looks like long COVID may be associated with herpes virus reactivation (specifically VZV and EBV (herpes, and EBV is associated with mono (and MS!))) and low cortisol levels. Interesting work, and hopefully provides the start of answers for some people. Not sure what therapies might be possible:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1557391752889307138

My partner has long COVID and she pre-COVID she had elevated EBV titers and essentially zip cortisol. COVID just made it worse..

 

[jerry33]

Tesla Service Centres restarted touchless service this week, closed the lounge.

 

[scottf200]

Anecdotal ... back from a long road trip where we went through 13 states and 4 provinces (map below to see which parts of the state) and we'd estimate 1 out of 200 people were wearing masks in public enclosed places that we were in (stores, grocery stores, visitor centers, businesses, hotels, etc). It was probably less if you counted groups of people ... ie. if one person in the couple or family was wearing a mask then they all were. -- that is to say a significant part of the public were done with mask.

 

[JRP3]

I spent a week at the Jersey shore and almost no one wore masks, seems as if covid doesn't exist. I stuck to outdoor venues as usual.