Oden's point seems to be this: We made some assumptions about the impacts felt as the virus spread. The spread isn't tracking the model and those assumptions need to be updated. I agree. One, the assumption about the relationship between confirmed cases to actual cases really needs to be re-assessed. We assumed we could quarantine and slow or end the spread. We instituted these measures thinking we could prevent folks from getting it, but it seems we are not able to fully contain the virus. Two: we assumed a much better ability to track deaths, hospitalizations and other impacts alongside the spread of the virus. We're still in the early phase of this, and the data tools we were using at the beginning are starting to be outgrown. Three: there is an economic cost and a human cost. For every day the quarantine measures are in place, the economic cost rises. We initially assumed we could contain it, and that the virus would fizzle out. At over a half million confirmed cases, that assumption may need to be reviewed. If we assume that we can't contain the virus anymore, and that over the next few months we will all be at least exposed to it, then the economic cost can't be justified as easily because we're all going to get it and the question is just when? So, we're crashing the economy to buy time: Time for hospitals to prepare. Time for stockpiles to be built. Time for research to be done. Time for potential treatment to be researched. Time for a potential vaccine. The things that are likely to prevent someone from getting sick are not likely to come about in the next few months, far longer than we have the appetite to continue the quarantine. So, what we're assessing is the likelihood of deaths due to an overwhelmed hospital system versus the continued economic pain. Thus far, we've seen these systems stressed but not broken. I disagree that this is an indication of success, or an indication that we overreacted, mostly because I think we are still in the early stage of this outbreak. Simply put, we still have a LOT more people that could get infected than have already been infected and we still don't have great mitigation or countermeasures to prevent infection. We're also not seeing great indicators that this outbreak is slowing based on what we're doing. In a little more than 7 weeks, this has gone from "hoax" to outbreaks in all 50 states. All it takes is a SINGLE person to infect dozens. The critical assumption there is that with our current actual cases, the spread will continue. Public health experts disagree on this. The reality of the spread continuing is terrible, because we're not seeing much evidence that suggests the death rate is less than 1.5% for a given population we can confirm got the virus, and we've barely scratched the surface of understanding the recovered folks with lasting damage. Think of it at an individual level. Right now, each person with the virus would have to infect 330 people (assuming 1m actual cases) within 25 days to infect all of us. There's a decent chance we can quarantine that person for two weeks and they infect 0, and there's a much higher likelihood that the person quarantined infects less than 330. If the spread continues exponentially, and we have 10 million cases, each one of those has to infect 33 people. Still a shot, but unlikely that quarantine will cause those 10 million cases (150,000 deaths by the way), to completely fizzle out before they infect 33 people, especially given the window of infection. So, the question is...do we think we'll see 9 million more cases before we lift quarantine? I think we can assume that 10 million cases is the point of no return, by which it becomes impossible to contain. There are a ton of models out there, because exponential growth curves are easy, and there's a ton of data out there. Actual epidemiologists tend to work differently, but we are straight up not seeing anything that suggests we are off the exponential track. Personally, I'm of the mindset that the economy has a better chance of recovering the more of us that are alive to participate in it. We are already shut down, we can take additional measures to shut down further and have a better chance of things resuming in a healthy way. Limping along with outbreak after outbreak seems to have a higher likelihood of long-term economic damage.
It's dropped because the data merited it. In the beginning the models estimated mortality of 3% based on any random population being infected. Now, they think it's closer to 0.6%. That mortality rate drops or skyrockets depending on the demographic being examined as more data comes in. It makes sense to me, I don't think they're doing that because they want the economy to recover, demands from the administration, or any other ulterior motives. r0 is 5-6x higher than the flu, but still dropped relative to the earlier models (assuming hospitals are not operating beyond capacity).
Where are you getting this? That's how you keep the curve flat of the infection rate down, and the economy doesn't follow that in a parallel line. If you want to reduce the downturn's length that's really easy. Take off all the restrictions, send everyone back to work, and infect as many people as possible. The hospitals are flooded over the next 3 months. Our elderly population is so decimated social security is declared stable for the next 50 years. Having killed so many people with pre-existing conditions jobs in the medical field get hit harder than anywhere else. Some hospitals close down. Morally, this would be a horrifying thing to do. With only economic considerations in mind the sooner we can get people back to work the better. They're working very hard to nail down the timelines for which Covid-19 guidelines are appropriately to implement when and where. I just hope the current administration listens to them.
So basically "we're going to have 1 million+ dead over the next 18 months whether we go slow or we go fast, so let it ride"? Fuck that's grim.
What else can we do though? If you look at countries that put on way more strict restrictions than we did they're only serving as delaying actions and the virus continues to spread. Germany has handled the outbreak phenomenally, but are still seeing exponential growth. To be clear, I think this is a good thing to do, and it will save lives, especially as treatment methods improve over the next year. The sad fact is though, if there was a clear way to stop the spread someone would have succeeded by now. Except for China who did it perfectly! And everyone with half a brain totally believes their numbers...
NY just added 3700 people to the death toll, including some untested but presumed to have died due to Covid. Holy fuck.
Just watched it in NBC news, although they worded it differently, leaving out the “would”, on there unlike the article here does: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/heal...irus-news-n1183181/ncrd1183936#liveBlogHeader Here’s the tv report I was watching as I posted that previous comment. Report begins at about 2:05:https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2498363310426810&id=114288853688&anchor_composer=false
1) How harmful are idiots like this with 300,000 followers? 2) Would anyone care to wahoo this YouTube thread?
Did I read this right? They have 6589 deaths and they want to add 3778 to that body count because, although not tested or confirmed, COVID-19 is listed as the cause of death?
They have 3,778 bodies where COVID-19 is the best fit for the symptoms the patient had that lead to their death, but they were never tested for the disease.
On the 88th day of COVID, my POTUS gave to me.... Three fights with governors One ultimate authority No more WHO Funding 3700 new dead New Yorkers...... AND A PARTRIDGE IN A....FUCK THIIIISSSS....... One real quick solution to the data problems we're having is to issue guidance to healthcare practitioners to count as COVID patients they see with COVID symptoms with at least 2 exams/appointments. We will have to get there, if the testing doesn't start to catch up. Two outcomes: people stay the fuck at home, and those that are currently infected do not spread (ie, the virus fizzles out in the host, without passing to a new host). OR people don't, the virus spreads and the march continues. With the added risk of a new strain emerging, death rates varying and hospitals being overwhelmed. One thing on the ventilators: yes, they are a constraint. However they are a very specific medical intervention, and as it pertains to COVID, often the LAST medical intervention. It's not a great proxy for the level of hospitalization or how close they are to being overwhelmed. People can "live" on a ventilator for quite a while, but I'm seeing anecdata that people are unlikely to recover once placed on one. That means using the ventilator count isn't a great constraint.
These make me wonder. What do the death trend lines for heart disease, stroke and pnuemonia look like since February and how does that compare to 2019 at this time? What is happening with flu diagnoses right now? Are they holding steady or dropping off a cliff. Also, I wonder how they are coding people dying in hospice care right now. If you are in hospice and die coded as COVID-19, is that a COVID death if you are already dying? Finally, how does reimbursement differ based on coding, is there an advantage to COVID coding right now? Let me put it this way. I have no faith in humankind to be honest and forthright. EDIT: Separately, the chorus is going to start gettting really loud soon. https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/we-never-needed-to-flatten-the-curve.php
Sports Illustrated did a really cool article on the logistics of sports coming back. It also includes a bunch of good info that isn't just sports related, an example:
New York City in March 2020 had more deaths-above-average than it did in September 2001: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/10/upshot/coronavirus-deaths-new-york-city.html
This link is fun! 1. My opinion is better than your expertise. 2. The best thing to do with a new virus is to let it run as rampant as possible. 3. "COVID-19 was grossly over-estimated" because it's all over with now, right? And we didn't have poignant examples in other countries of how bad it could get? No way thousands of Americans died thanks to a totally preventable outbreak. And we totally, never once, revised the models when we started getting new information. NOPE. 4. The hospitals were never overwhelmed (yet......except in NY, CT, NJ, where 14,000 people died, oh and in MI, MA, and PA....and parts of LA, and hell, also in MD). No thanks to the massive, coordinated effort of state, local, federal organizations, billions of dollars worth of donations, and a widespread unified effort. No, sir, no indication that any of that helped. The models were wrong, so we never should have done any of this! 5. "The point of flattening the curve is to prolong the epidemic". Because everyone knows the best thing to do is just let it wash over the entire population and see what happens. The CDC fags want the virus to spread as slowly as possible, not because that's how we avoid spreading it to millions, and that's literally how viruses die without spreading to new hosts, but because...they wanted to make Tiger King memes for a whole month! It's why when we have a flu outbreak we tell people to still go to work when they are sick, and why medical professionals who treat contagious diseases do this with no masks or gloves, and they try to wear as little clothing as possible. It's so they prolong the epidemic! The whole point is to make the virus party last as long as possible! Fucking medical professionals and public health experts making this last longer! God, back in my day we just let people die! All of this because MODELS ARE WRONG and MATH IS HARD, STATS ARE HARDER, AND BIOSTATS CAN GO FUCK A STUMP. What did I expect from a site where a link in the sidebar suggests "Does Liberalism Cause Mental Illness?" Playing devil's advocate for a moment: If we knew the quarantine and containment measures we've implemented over the past 2 months were going to fail eventually, and all they did was buy us some (precious, I cannot stress this enough PRECIOUS) time, should we still have done them? Answer: YES. As opposed to doing nothing at all? Yes. A lot of this sounds like the chorus of nonsense on 9/12: if all that defense budget spending didn't keep us safe on 9/11, why should we even bother? Put another, simpler way: we didn't know quarantine would fail (we still don't, there is still hope the spread is slowing) when we implemented it, and our other alternatives were worse. Also, a flu hospitalization in most cases is less than 48 hours....that's why it can go from 100k-900k without breaking the back of the US healthcare system. How many symptomatic COVID hospitalizations are less than 48 hours? Mostly, just the ones that die.
I give it 4 more weeks before people who aren’t old or immunocompromised just start saying, “fuck it” and stop their quarantine measures. At a certain point they’re going to see the possibility of having serious complications with the virus as an acceptable risk to take, especially if they’re unemployed. To be quite honest, I found myself almost thinking that way yesterday.
almost started thinking that way myself too. And I have a paycheck, a very comfort area to quarantine, and a regular supply of groceries I don’t need to go get myself (thank you delivery service!) When you’re cooped up with not much else to do, you start justifying a lot. “Oh I’m sure I already got it and just couldn’t tell.” It’s a dangerous trap to fall into, and it’s going to kill a ton of people. All because our minds are playing tricks on us and wanting to return to a “normal” we logically know will never be the same.
And what will this accomplish? Their employers are still under quarantine orders; they can't go back to work.