If it was designed in a lab to kill as many people as possible, why do half the people infected in Iceland have no symptoms? That would be rather counter productive if half the people never got sick.
that was always my strategy with the game. Make it not that lethal but everyone gets it. Then once the whole world is infected, mutate the shit out of it and blindside them.
Before this whole thing started in this country, the flu had killed 20K people in the US this year. No one batted an eye....that's pretty much normal. We're not keeping track of how many people are infected with the flu, so it's kind of hard to judge how different the rate of infection is with COVID 19 other then the media hype. It's quite possible that there is information that's not being shared with us. I don't know. That's pretty much how I think of the whole thing...we don't know. Possibly we're not being given all the information, perhaps we're being kept in the dark to prevent a full blown freak out by the populace...who knows? I'm not treating it lightly, but I would love to know what the true story is. The reaction seems a bit extreme for something that doesn't have a fatality rate equal to the flu yet.
Total fatalities is a function of fatality rate and total infections. Ebola has an incredibly high fatality rate, but never achieves high numbers of total infections because it's not airborne and people tend to stay away from those bleeding from the eyes. The flu (which frankly I think we don't take as seriously as we should; our vaccination rates are embarrassing) has a high number of total infections (15-60 million the US annually) but a low fatality rate (0.1% on average). Coronavirus sits in a morbid "sweet spot" of being highly infectious (predictions range from 150-250 million infected in the US if allowed to run rampant), while also being more deadly than the flu (~1% fatality rate, higher without medical intervention). A worst case scenario for coronavirus is about 2 million dead in the United States, whereas both Ebola and the Flu would cap out in the five figures (Ebola because it would be effectively contained, the flu because it runs through the population and burns out).
Pretty good chance we'll have over 100k dead in the US by the end of the year. A lot of experts are saying the death toll could go over a million. Yes, the common flu can kill people too, but look at the numbers coming out of places like Italy. 10% of reported cases have resulted in fatalities. Sure, a lot of the cases probably weren't reported, but the common flu isn't going to have a death rate nearly that high. If you factor in that most of those dying are in specific higher risk groups, it looks like the people in those groups have a fairly high chance of not making it if they catch this, especially if the hospitals are overwhelmed and they can't get quality treatment.
The death toll we are seeing is on a bit of a lag. Couple possible reasons for that: we didn't do enough testing for folks coming into the hospital system, so when they pass away they are tested for Coronavirus and there's a delay in getting that test result back. Another is death reporting in general isn't immediate, especially nationwide figures. Another reason is it takes a while to die from this, and we have weird comorbidities that other countries don't have. So, our confirmed cases are higher than the deaths and that won't even out until we get more testing coming back, the exponential spread slows down (slope angles right), and the time it takes to verify cause of death shortens. We're at almost 86,000 cases as I write this, with about 1300 dead. 1300/86000= .015 mortality rate. So, for every 1000 people confirmed, 15 die. The number of exposed people (ie, your future infected) is anywhere from 7x-20x your confirmed cases. Keeping it on the low side, 86,000*7 is 602,000. So, magically if nothing else happens, the 86,000 confirmed cases expose 602,000 people. Assuming a magically low 50% infection rate (the real one we THINK is much higher), that's 602,000 exposed (7x your current confirmed cases) 301,000 people who will become confirmed cases in the next month or so, and 4500 dead. Now....we are pretty sure we: A) are not containing this well so the 86,000 cases we have now will spread MUCH further than 602,000. Think of the confirmed cases as the evidence of the spread, not as the group responsible for the spread. The population spreading it right now is likely....everyone violating quarantine for the past month. So, pick a growth rate and work backward from 86,000 cases for two weeks. Yeah, it's scary as fuck. B) will have no short-term solutions (vaccine, etc.) magical or otherwise to slow or halt the spread. C) will see a higher death rate than 1.5% when the hospital systems get overwhelmed. We expect to see "death by displacement" where people die because they couldn't get access to treatment due to local healthcare providers being overwhelmed and folks who go to get healthcare and are infected by providers or other patients (death by doctor's office visit). D) don't know the real recovered folks. The recovered rate is terrible because there's little data to close the loop, and it will take a month for someone to be considered "recovered, not infectious". So, get used to seeing the deaths higher than recovered. It's kind of silly but there isn't a mechanism for saying "hey, I got it and I didn't die" and the healthcare providers would be too damned busy to take that phone call anyway. So, 100k dead by 2021 is an extremely conservative number, just assuming 13M people are exposed, and a 50% infection rate. Taking those same assumptions (50% infection rate, 1.5% mortality), and assuming current trends continue, potentially impacting entire US population of 330,000,000 you're at over 2m dead by May. Considering we will go from 86,000 cases to 100,000 today and from 100,000 to 200,000 by Tuesday, and from 86,000 today to well over 500,000 by this time next week, it's logical to assume 100% exposure in the next few months for the entire US population. If we assume the ratio of 1 confirmed case=7 exposed people, 100% of US population will have been exposed when we reach 48m cases. We are on track to hit 48 million cases April 19, or in just over 3 weeks. Again the assumptions are low and terrible: 50% infection rate (it could be higher, we don't know, but it's unlikely to be much lower). 1.5% death rate (it will get higher as the spread hits harder, faster and more vulnerable populations) 14% exposure rate (1 confirmed case=7 exposed people, it could be higher, it's unlikely to be lower because this is literally 1 person, coming into contact with 14 people for up to 25 days. Think about every doorknob you touched in the past month, the likelihood that 14 other people touched it is extremely high). We keep sounding the alarm because quite frankly this is worse than people think.
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 Congrats, you now know what the government knows within a day or two. Play with those numbers and let me know if you think this is overblown. This is not the flu. The rate of infection is not hard to judge compared to the flu. The flu killing 20k people is a big fucking deal to public health, thus a pretty historic campaign for getting flu vaccines in an above-average flu season. We do keep track of how many people get infected with the flu, but most folks with it don't even go to the doctor, so the vast majority of cases are not tested. The only reason for the discrepancy now is the lack of testing. 35 million people get the flu each year, about 350,000 get testing and 35,000 die. For Coronavirus, if 35,000,000 get it, that's around 400,000 dead best case scenario. We're still not able to fully test at scale. The media hype? Dude, you think they cancelled 30% of the entire fucking economy and spent two TRILLION dollars due to some hype? Flavor Flav doesn't have that kind of power. I am literally sitting inside the federal response to this. There is no intent from anyone of the thousands of people working on this to withhold information from the public that might result in lives saved. I would immediately fire anyone who indicated such withholding. You are not being kept in the dark, you are either willfully ignorant or not trusting the information being provided. Or do you just see a conspiracy in anything with a number? Why would ANYONE be saying "no, don't take this seriously"? People already panicked and caused shortages. We are not afraid of the population freaking out, most of it already has, we are afraid of millions of them dying.
Being alert for the symptoms has driven home just how shitty I feel every day. I’m an overweight out of shape guy in my mid 50s. Not infrequent hangovers and poor sleep don’t help. I I’ve been coughing and wheezing nearly my whole life due to allergies and now asthma. Over the last year or so I get hot flashes or feel flushed for no reason at all. Shit hurts in general every day. About a month ago I was getting low grade headaches every day for about a week. Idiopathic I’m told. So do I feel hot for no reason or is this a fever coming on? I’m coughing again- please tell me I’m hacking something up - ah there it is, some phlegm. Am I achy or just old? The last few days have been a roller coaster of anxiety.
Oh, the stupidity. https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1234801752156835840 'I was at a hospital where there were a few #coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody' says Boris Johnson.
So you start from the premise we don’t have the means to do proper testing ie sample selection is biased because we only have the capability to test only people with more serious symptoms. I get that we have to run with the data we have and plan for the worst hope for the best but for the people not involved in government planning focusing all day every day on the worst case scenario is not healthy on a individual psychological level. Outside of that if we had perfect testing ie 100% tested say weekly, and antigen testing for a better historical data point, you really think the case fatality rate would be at 1.5%? Dude I’m right with you brother. I forgot to take my allergy medications last Saturday and was wheezing and coughing something terrible by that night. I started freaking out and near tears thinking I’d have to call the owner of my company and call off and how many I had effected in sickness terms and economics terms as a positive case would shut us down. I medded up the next day and stated taking my temperature I calmed down.
Click this link: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 Click "Italy" 80,589 cases, 8215 dead. 10.1% Click "Spain" 64,059 cases, 4858 dead. 7.5% I would quote you China's numbers, but the Chinese stopped talking to the CDC, so we have no way to independently verify those numbers. Germany is the only one of the countries at the top of that list with a lower mortality rate than 5% and ours, due to the testing delay. 1.5% fatality rate for the US is optimistic. We have a worse healthcare system than those countries, we are generally less healthy than those populations, and we still have a large percentage of the country not following CDC guidance on how to contain the spread. You tell me why 1.5% is "worst case scenario" and what cause we have that it'll be 1.4% or less when we get to 100k, 1m, 10m, and 100m cases. I'm all ears. We will never have the ability to do 100% testing, and statisticians and epidemiologists who do this shit for a living (combined 40 years experience in one email chain) know how to adjust for that, based on the live data we're seeing. We are getting better and our understanding of how this thing spreads is improving day by day, hour by hour. The worst case scenario that is plausible is 5 million dead. The current trajectory is over 2 million dead. Psychological health is not our priority, I'm not protecting people's feelings from the truth of the situation we're in now, as we currently see it. I am praying to any God you can think of that 1.5% isn't the rate, but that's what the best estimate is right now, albeit at a delay.
538 just interviewed a bunch of experts and very few even had their high end estimate at 2 million dead. Only 3 out of 20 and that was at that the tip of their worst case scenario. That number is definitely not the consensus trajectory.
Just to shed some clarity on things... I reached out to @downndirty last week and asked him what his job was. When he told me I got on a call with him, because my company specializes in big data, machine learning, AI, visualizations, simulations, web/mobile app development, etc, and I wanted to know if we could help. He accepted. The dude is in the thick of it. Y'all have no fucking idea. As a result of his position and contacts, we're now dealing with data scientists and senior leadership at FEMA, CDC, Red Cross, Team Rubicon, and others. We got on a multi-hour call and came up with the concept of a shared data platform and toolset that they say would save hundreds of thousands of lives. That's not hyperbole, those are national leaders from Red Cross and Rubicon. As a result I have put together a SWAT team of data scientists and developers to work on a new tool to help display current info, predict shit, provide data so that local people (city/state or emergency response) can have solid decision making intel, by analyzing and visualizing huge data sets from multiple sources, all at a local state/province/county level of granularity. We are also now working with members of Health Canada and a team of epidemiologists and data scientists from UBC and SFU. All being funded by the CDN Government, because it's a global solution to a global problem. (We pitched the idea and got funding within 24 hours). Microsoft and Unity have given us unfettered access to any and all resources that we need to do what we're doing. I say all that to say this... when the dude makes a comment, he's not just making shit up. He's solidly in the know, and is living and breathing this stuff as it happens. I'm in constant communication with him multiple times a day. I encourage you to ask him questions and learn from him as you WILL NOT find a better, more informed resource on the subject, period. But if you start coming in and refuting what he's saying because you don't believe it or some other uninformed position, I suggest you give your fucking head a shake, because you're acting like an anti-vaxxor nutjob who "did their research". Just sayin.
I have access to FEMA and CDC predictive models and their accuracy so far, and they are lower than reality at this point. The numbers that you are quoting are low.
I wasn't calling him an idiot, or saying he doesn't know anything. He might have very good reasons for believing that that trajectory is what the current data suggests. But that is an outlier. I'm basing it on the opinions of experts, not some random guess I just felt like stating. https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...worsened-but-the-trajectory-is-still-unclear/ As you can see the estimates are kind of all over the place, but saying 2 million dead isn't the consensus right now isn't being an anti-vaxer. Only one of those experts has their best estimate at over 500k. Now, downndirty may well end up being right, but I'm just saying that isn't the consensus.