3-30-20 Covid-19 open thread/snowflakes
Lol, this is stupid.
Well. My grandpa tested positive on Friday, and it killed Joe Diffie, so FUCK YOU COVID-19
This is one of those classic conundrums - I don't want to upvote, but also don't want to downvote...
Sorry to hear about your Gramps, man, hope he makes it through okay.
Thanks, I really appreciate it. He's a fighter, but at 80 with diabetes, it's scary as hell. He's like a second dad to me and I'm not ready to lose him!
They just announced a Michigan state rep died from it. He was only 44.
March 30th, 2020 at 10:42 AM ^
Isaac Robinson. He was a good friend of one my friends who described him as a “selfless badass”. This is all just so unnecessary.
No shit man. Who the hell didn’t paint something John Deere green back in the 90’s because of this guy?
If I get the rona, I’m giving it to everyone.
Cool story dumbass
So I can shoot you if you try to approach me?
March 30th, 2020 at 10:03 AM ^
This is considered a threat to public health dipshit.
March 30th, 2020 at 10:32 AM ^
Hilarious! Do you perform stand up comedy? If not, you should. You have real talent.
March 30th, 2020 at 11:02 AM ^
Not even funny man
They're charging people with serious felonies for spreading it intentionally
March 30th, 2020 at 11:16 AM ^
Uradumfuc.
March 30th, 2020 at 12:12 PM ^
Careful with giving it to the giys in the Pen when you get there, no telling what they will give you back.
Seek out something that'll make you smile today!
The Scientist Whose Doomsday Pandemic Model Predicted Armageddon Just Walked Back The Apocalyptic Predictions:
tl;dr:
British scientist Neil Ferguson ignited the world’s drastic response to the coronavirus when he published the report predicting 2.2 million Americans and more than half a million Brits would be killed.
But after restaurants, bars, and businesses closed, Ferguson is now retracting his modeling, saying he feels “reasonably confident” our health care system can cope when the predicted peak of the epidemic arrives in a few weeks. Testifying before the U.K.’s parliamentary select committee on science and technology on Wednesday, Ferguson said he now predicts U.K. deaths from the disease will not exceed 20,000, and could be much lower.
There was a separate thread about this yesterday where it was extensively discussed.
I was thinking more like find a funny meme, or watch a youtube video. Maybe master a recipe for the first time.
But you do you.
Thanks for sharing. I didn’t See the article or yesterday’s discussion.
models have assumptions, and assumptions are just that, assumptions. I use this approach to keep me sane.
day by day
March 31st, 2020 at 12:11 AM ^
Walking back doesn’t sound like a fair characterization. Sounds like his model was based on little or no social distancing. Thank god people have taken action. That said, best case scenario is still tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands dead.
Friend of mine has it. It's political, but it's also personal.
A global virus is political? Hum, education where?
…No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all their efforts to search it out, no one can discover its meaning. Even if the wise claim they know, they cannot really comprehend it.”
March 30th, 2020 at 11:50 AM ^
You’re right, it’s not political, it’s obviously entertainment for the president. Just ask him about his ratings
His two biggest strengths are on display here, his ability to drive a can't lose organization into bankruptcy and his reality TV skills.
Day has just begun, we will see what happens throughout the day just like every other day. I am interested to see if we get the 8th straight day of U.S. flattening today.
UPDATED 4:38 PM EST - we now have 8 straight days
You keep saying this. Could you explain what metric you are basing it on?
Basically the percent of new cases each day is going down. A week ago we were increasing somewhere around 35% every day. Yesterday was closer to 20%. If you look at a log plot of cases by day you can see the slope of it decreasing. I personally think this is more about what is happening in NYC than the nation as a whole though. When one location has half of the total cases, a change in the growth rate in that location can have an outsized impact on the growth rate as a whole.
The main problem with the numbers is that they're almost pure fiction. America has not undergone nationwide, random, mandatory, unbiased sampling of the population at any point. It's been largely left up to the states and the implementations have varied wildly, in great part due to politics.
The only thing we do know is that total cases are being undercounted like crazy. We don't even know to what extent.
Agreed. I still am hearing reports from around of people who are sick, their doctor thinks that have the virus and yet they cant get tested. The implemented a no referral required drive thru testing site in Memphis, but you need to have symptoms and you need to schedule an appointment. As far as I know there has been zero random testing to determine the background level of infection. Without this information its impossible to determine appropriate containment actions.
March 30th, 2020 at 12:37 PM ^
I don’t understand the logistics needed to accomplish this but what would really help is nationwide testing to understand what percentage of our population has already had Covid19 and recovered. It would certainly assist in strategic decision making.
At the very least we can double the number of cases given the information from the Diamond Princess, Iceland and Vo regarding asymptomatic infected.
The Diamond Princess and Utah Jazz examples are the ones I prefer when thinking this through because they were bot 100% tested and show about a 15% infection rate. I believe DP, despite population skewing much older, only had 10 deaths to date with another 15 in critical condition. Add the full 15 to total deaths and you have 25 total out of 3,700 population - 0.68%.....and again, this population skews much older than the US at large.
Also, Spain and Italy have seemingly turned the corner with new infections rate with 4 days of flat or down number of new infections.
The only thing we know for sure is this is VERY bad for the elderly or those with comorbidities. Quarantine them for 90 days and lets get everyone else back to work.
March 30th, 2020 at 10:14 AM ^
This is 100% the case - but it's also possible for models to account for the massive under-reporting of cases to determine what might be going on. Several independent data sets are suggesting that it takes 10-14 days from the start of a regional shutdown to hit the peak in reported new cases. That correlates well with the decline in rates of new infections that is also seen. It probably also explains why Fauci said yesterday that he thinks the U.S. should be at the peak around April 8.
March 30th, 2020 at 12:51 PM ^
I work at a major hospital in SE MI. While in-house, we hear “anesthesia STAT to room ___ for intubation” about once per week. I’m keeping track today, so far I’ve heard that called out 6 times in less than 5 hours. One was cancelled about 90 seconds after it was announced.
There is no doubt the numbers are being criminally understated.
March 30th, 2020 at 10:47 AM ^
Is log scale flattening actually considered flattening?
March 30th, 2020 at 11:22 AM ^
Yes it is. Thats exactly what the goal is. A log scale leveling off corresponds to a lower percentage increase each day. A linear line on a log scale corresponds to a constant percentage daily growth. To put it into perspective over a period of 2 weeks, at our current 15% daily growth rate in two weeks the number of cases will be 7x larger than today or around 1 million people. If the growth rate was what it was a week ago, around 30% daily, in two weeks there will be 39x more cases, or 5.7 million. That flattening in the log plot corresponds with 4.7 million fewer cases in 2 weeks.
March 30th, 2020 at 11:53 AM ^
Yes, I understand how exponents work. My point is flattening the curve implies keeping case load below a threshold that's manageable. Even if you have linear rate of growth, it's still hugely problematic when the daily rate of increase tens of thousands a day. Also, it should be noted the flattening is probably just NY and maybe surrounding areas as that epicenter runs it's course. There are lots of population centers across the US that are very much still primed to be the next NY.
I don't want to be a downer, this is definitely good news. I just don't want people to get the impression we're winning the battle when we're very much still on the back foot.
March 30th, 2020 at 12:41 PM ^
If you’re talking about the total number of cases yes, flattening along the log scale is sufficient. But for the daily growth we’re hoping to see an actual decrease in absolute numbers. Italy is inching toward that.
Agreed. That is the next step of the process. First the overall curve starts to flatten and has a period of sustaining. Then, some time later you will see new daily cases actually start to drop. We aren't at that point yet.
True- but the very first, and main, metric we have all been told you look at is the flattening of the curve. It is all we heard about for a week or two. We need to flatten, and we need to see it. But somehow, when it starts happening, it's meaningless. I agree there are likely better metrics and ALL of the metrics we have are flaws. But this is what we have been told matters A LOT.
If you look at total new cases in the logarithmic scale, you see the curve starting to flatten out.
Percentage increase by day:
3/22: 38.9% more cases than day before
3/23: 30.3%
3/24: 25.3%
3/25: 24.3%
3/26: 25.3%
3/27: 21.9%
3/28: 18.7%
3/29: 15.3%
If you're looking for a silver lining, this might be it. And new cases on 3/29 actually grew by a smaller number (18,882 new cases) than it did the day before (19,452 new cases). Could be that social distancing is starting to help out a bit.
[edit] just want to add that I'm not sure if numbers still get added to days that have past or not. Do positive tests get added to the day the test comes back positive? or the day the test was conducted? IIRC testing takes 3-5 days for results, so we may be 3-5 days even better in terms of lower percentage of increase.
But if you look at places like Florida and Texas, it’s just getting starting. So there’s every chance it’s going to take off again.
Yeah, I in no way think it's time to start relaxing and get back to normal. Just spelling out the justification of the OPs message using the world-o-meter numbers. If it helps someone get through the day today, then great! We all need a bit of positivity to cling onto. For all I know, Trumps been suppressing testing slowly over the past week to show improvement or some crazy shit like that. Nothing would surprise me.
They are downplaying taking tests, but I don’t think it is to suppress numbers. I think it is genuinely because there is limited value to individuals knowing whether they have it or not. Better to assume and stay at home and not waste ppe and risk more exposures.) That will change when we start opening things up again. Then more testing and contact tracing will be extremely important.
i could argue that as we start to open things up we should see an increase in positive tests as we hopefully are testing people with less severe symptoms.
March 30th, 2020 at 12:52 PM ^
Yeah, there are two big confounding factors here:
1) Different regions are on different curves. The whole national curve will probably have lots of little peaks and valleys as a result.
2) Testing standards massively differ from one state to the next. This needs to get fixed ASAP so we can have a clearer idea of what is really going on nationwide.
I just received word last night that a friend's wife and brother got their positive test results back ... after 10 days! He is still waiting for his results, but assumes positive. Luckily they are all doing well now, and they had been self-isolating during those 10 days.
I was also under the impression results would come back in ~4 days, and maybe that is the case now that testing has ramped up? Who knows anymore.
March 30th, 2020 at 12:44 PM ^
Wife's positive results came 8 days after her test. No testing ordered for me or my 2 adult kids home from college.
There were fewer cases reported in the US yesterday than the day before. Not a significant difference, but something positive.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Cases is such a bad metric. So many confounding things going on. Testing ramping up, inconsistencies in who gets tested etc.
I wish we could see hospitalizations because I think that would be a much better metric. Deaths is useful but has significant lag. That did have a significant drop from off from Saturday. Hopefully the start of a trend, not an anomaly. Would be very good for days for doubling of deaths to move from 3 to a significantly higher number. That is the metric I am personally following most closely (days for number of deaths to double).