Now is a Great Time to Self Quarantine

[MikeOH]

9 hours ago, Shadrach said:

We do not know the mortality rate here, in Italy or anywhere else. We do not know haw many have and or had the virus.  That is not going to change...  Being skeptical of the numbers reported or how they are being reported does not equal not taking the virus seriously.   Media headlines are written to generate clicks. Conspiracy bloggers and youtubers often do the same.  Italy has some unique issues. It has the second oldest population of any country in the world. Northern Italy has also had a regular stream of immigrants both legal and illegal from Wuhan since the nineties.  The death rate in Italy in 2019 was 1.06%.  A meaningful number would be to remove the noise of COVID19 mortality rates and see how Italy is tracking this year.  I certainly expect the rate to be  higher. I do not expect it to meet the hysteria.   Also worth noting headlines suggest that cases are growing by X number.  A truer statement is that the number of positive test results are growing by X number.  The number of actual new cases could be more or less.   Ask your self why none of those articles include the percentage of negative test results?    

Seasonal flu is deadly for older folks and those with comorbidities. Covid19 is indeed more significantly deadly than the seasonal flu. Exactly how much more is yet to be seen.  However, the response to COVID19 far outpaces the response to anything we've ever seen.  

If you want the best available data, the link below is the most comprehensive that I have seen.  Note that each state gets a data grade and that they are all over the place.  Well organized and easy to read. Raw data available in .csv format. No clickbait.

https://covidtracking.com/data/

Thank you!

[MikeOH]

8 hours ago, Hank said:

Thanks for trying to bring sanity to the discussion. But like the talking heads, the doom-and-gloom crowd is emotionally overwhelmed and not listening to anyone or anything. 

Oh, many may well be soon....after they realize their retirement savings/investments are wiped out and won't be recovering anytime soon, or they lose their job due to the destroyed economy.  But, hey, they can revel in their suffering since they'll still be alive; unless they become one of the 20,000 to 40,000 dead in the US every year from the 'ordinary' flu!

[MikeOH]

7 hours ago, flyboy0681 said:

Conspicuously missing from your assumption is that while flu does kill 40,000 Americans per year, if left to spread on its own we could see well over a million Americans dead in the first year with COVID, not 40,000.  Also add to the mix what we are seeing going in Italian and Spanish hospitals. We may very well see that even if the curve is flattened, and Americans will be horrified. You may very well find your scenario play out very soon as the president is starting to backpedal on the scientists approach, suggesting that we should come out of hibernation in a week. And reports are that Fauci is on the outs with the administration because he won't clamp down on leveling with the American people and constantly correcting the president.

 

 

SIGH...I've said MULTIPLE times that I am NOT advocating doing NOTHING and letting it "spread on its own."  I think we have over reacted and are doing long reaching economic damage because of it. That's all.  I'm actually advocating a MORE scientific approach, rather than the emotional driven actions. Again, see the Stanford professor's article.

I covered, and so did Shadrach, the reasons why Italy is a rather poor data set to be using to predict what will happen in the US.

Sadly, the rest of your post smacks of political bias...

[McMooney]

sigh, damn corona messing with my flying.

anyone think i can shoot some approachies into iah and hou this weekend ?

[bradp]

Every physician I know with a few exceptions (surgeons anecdotally but I’m not sure if that’s a valid obs) are the ones who are most concerned about making sure we are adhering to the more severe end economically damaging versions of what epidemiologists are advising. It might destroy the economy for the near future but it might save 10MM lives. If unchecked the virus might destroy the economy anyway.  Which scenario is easier to rebound from?  Probably the version thats self inflicted. 

So what’s practical? Social distance, wash hands, don’t go to work (if there is still a job) if you’ve had risk of exposure or have any symptoms. People are confusing social distancing / self isolation from true enforced by law quarantine.  For folks with symptoms / presumed positive cases should be quarantined in their homes.  Most localities lack the social support structures to provide food and health checks to quarantined patients.. so we’re back to this altruistic poorly enforced or executed middle ground. 

Hopefully some paid sick leave and direct financial support to workers will come out of the negotiations.  I like what the Dutch are doing by supporting/subsidizing companies to not fire workers.   
 

Smoke em if ya got em.  

[ragedracer1977]

9 hours ago, Shadrach said:

I love and have close ties to Italy.  The problem is that I could believe or disbelieve almost any information coming out of the country.  Corruption is the rule not the exception.

Let's not forget that, per Italian doctors, all deaths are being coded as Coronavirus.  

It doesn't matter what killed you, if you tested positive, you died of Coronavirus.  Freak motorcycle accident, but you had asymptomatic Corona? You're in the stats....

[MooneyMitch]

Out of something bad, comes something good.

Many good things will too come from all this .

[Ibra]

8 hours ago, ragedracer1977 said:

It doesn't matter what killed you, if you tested positive, you died of Coronavirus.  Freak motorcycle accident, but you had asymptomatic Corona? You're in the stats....

All reported deaths Italy or elsewhere are for those tested positive (not just showed symptoms, but could be that the tests are low quality who knows ?) 

If one is tested positive and had a death in 3 weeks it is high likely it is related to the virus no?  If I test positive, what is the chance of dying in a motorcycle accident? I don't think I have 3 weeks before I crash...my guess there has been no road accident in Northern Italy in the last 3 weeks 

Italy has more deaths as 1/ the number of those infected is higher than those tested, the virus was circulating long from Dec/Jan, this is also the case of France & Switzerland, the source is probably the ski season (I have been myslef there early February), the Alps does mix 200million people from all around the world in small rooms, few of my work contacts caught the bug there after one week vacation before the whole place is shutdown, there is no way they could have been tested when back and some turned sick later 2/ Italy reports deaths for anyone dead while tested positive, for comparaison France only reports those in hospitals (not at their homes or a retirement house), the real number of deaths is way bigger but again the number of those infected is also higher as only few are tested, but France/Italay fatalities are still between 1%-7% depending on how one plays with the methodology but still a huge number and does not seem to go down yet after 4 weeks, even if "real virus deaths" in Italy deaths now is 1000 for 2 weeks, it still not a healthy number, just about the medical capacity...

Long story short, even with my skeptical thinking that this is initially a “passing new flu”, as early data had time lag noise and usually inflated but things now are getting more clear than weeks ago, we should start to give it more seriousness as behind the scenes for “worst-case scenarios on pandemic parameters” mortuary spaces and change of practice are now getting arranged all over the place in Italy, France, Spain, UK, US…

The gold standard for this epedemic and medical care data is South-Korea, even there fatality and infection rates are not that promising neither after 6 weeks, they had free transmission rates of 1-to-2 and 0.5% fatality rates, that will still have chilling numbers for any country, still 5 times more deadly that an flu with 30% population base, without a reliable treatment for symptoms (maybe 2 months?) this will mean a heavy cost to normal life and economy in this first year round/season (vaccine, favourable mutation and group immunity may help on the next year round) 

 

Edited March 25, 2020 by Ibra

[Shadrach]

8 hours ago, ragedracer1977 said:

Let's not forget that, per Italian doctors, all deaths are being coded as Coronavirus.  

It doesn't matter what killed you, if you tested positive, you died of Coronavirus.  Freak motorcycle accident, but you had asymptomatic Corona? You're in the stats....

This is why the year over year death rate will tell us more.

[Shadrach]

Let’s take a break from trying to calculate mortality rate with speculative numbers and look at two actual numbers.

709 and 6,000,000,000,000

the first number is the number of deaths in the US as of this morning. The second number is the aid package that’s being proposed. 

Here’s another interesting number   8,462,623,413

Almost 8.5 billion per death as of this morning. This aid package will be financed with debt. World economy is shut down. Who is going to buy the bonds?

Edited March 25, 2020 by Shadrach

[Ibra]

35 minutes ago, Shadrach said:

709 and 6,000,000,000,000

This aid package will be financed with debt. World economy is shut down. Who isgoing to buy the bonds?

That is huge and scary, not even in 150years or during world wars   

Surely, that debt buys lot of time but for what exactly? I guess no one has any clue yet...

[Hank]

2 hours ago, Ibra said:

 The gold standard for this epedemic and medical care data is South-Korea . . .

Sure, Japan doesn't count, because they locked it out of their country in a way that no ine else did, in a manner that appeared too laissze faire for Western scientists. But it worked. Their economy is still working, too.

No one ever mentions Japan in these discussions . . . . .

[bradp]

9 hours ago, ragedracer1977 said:

Let's not forget that, per Italian doctors, all deaths are being coded as Coronavirus.  

It doesn't matter what killed you, if you tested positive, you died of Coronavirus.  Freak motorcycle accident, but you had asymptomatic Corona? You're in the stats....

I’m calling a spade on that one.  They may have a positive test but in no world would a blunt head injury from a motorcycle crash be falsely recorded as severe ards due to viral pneumonia on a death certificate.  Epidemiologically It is useful to know that motorcycle crash victim was corona positive - but tests are not like water here or there and are reserved for sick pneumonia patients to be able to make PPE conservation the driver for knowing. 
 

Now things like a myocardial infarction might very well be listed on a death certificate with corona as a (causal) factor.  If you have fever / sepsis and a HR of 140 that causes an MI - yes the virus would be listed on a death certificate, at least here. 

[Ibra]

4 minutes ago, Hank said:

No one ever mentions Japan in these discussions . . .

Yes true Hank, Japan is an outlier but there is surely more to it than just "medical exception" and I am skeptical to the numbers published so far or it is just a miracle? Or policy sucess? 

On data side, this may change now that the Olympics are delayed...

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2020/03/21/commentary/japan-commentary/japan-still-coronavirus-outlier/#.Xns_yeDTU0P

Edited March 25, 2020 by Ibra

[Yetti]

I am just tracking Texas and Houston.   I have found some pretty serious data lags in the John Hopkins ESRI map.  Local news is reporting 23 recovered and the JH is reporting none recovered.  I reported it to them.

That said here are the Flu Deaths for Texas

Table 8: Texas P&I Deaths Occurring Sept. 29, 2019 – Jan. 29, 2020* by Age
Age Category (years)	Number of P&I Deaths+	Mortality Rate (per 100,000)
0 - 4	<10	0.37
5 - 17	13	0.24
18 - 49	180	1.36
50 - 64	439	8.46
65 +	2010	52.41
Overall	2650	8.85

And then we find that maybe just maybe we should be using a different model for SARS-2     Someone got the denominator wrong.

https://www.ft.com/content/5ff6469a-6dd8-11ea-89df-41bea055720b?fbclid=IwAR2gbPLWjGhtoypYEbhXDbm4PzN5SfzGFw1y2cApyt3W1SZK2RtOPVxpcDE

 

And then we have that people tend to ignore what is working in France and China.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1232869/

 

 

 

[Hank]

47 minutes ago, Yetti said:

And then we have that people tend to ignore what is working in France and China.

Of course they are! It doesn't feed the panic or support their own fears. "We're all gonna get infected and millions are gonna die!" is all that many (even here) can think, support or listen to.

[Yetti]

4 minutes ago, Hank said:

Of course they are! It doesn't feed the panic or support their own fears. "We're all gonna get infected and millions are gonna die!" is all that many (even here) can think, support or listen to.

Someone wanted to argue with me about flu deaths and Pneumonia and if they should be tied together.    I said that would be like arguing if you died in a auto accident or blunt force trauma.

I will give it to some people though.   I generally thought that  5 days of panic was all that most people could handle.   People have been able to extend their panic ability to 7 to 10 days.

 

Edited March 25, 2020 by Yetti

[GeeBee]

The reason why Japan, Taiwan and to a lesser extent South Korea were successful is because they were deeply scarred by SARS. They rebuilt their health systems in the expectation that China would deliver another virus. They were spot on.

 

[Shadrach]

1 hour ago, Ibra said:

Yes true Hank, Japan is an outlier but there is surely more to it than just "medical exception" and I am skeptical to the numbers published so far or it is just a miracle? Or policy sucess? 

On data side, this may change now that the Olympics are delayed...

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2020/03/21/commentary/japan-commentary/japan-still-coronavirus-outlier/#.Xns_yeDTU0P

Something else that’s not being mentioned is the Japanese cultural proclivity towards cleanliness and hygiene. 

[Shadrach]

1 hour ago, Ibra said:

That is huge and scary, not even in 150years or during world wars   

Surely, that debt buys lot of time but for what exactly? I guess no one has any clue yet...

We could just crank up the printing presses. Why not devalue the currency to compliment the market losses.

[ragedracer1977]

This is an interesting chart from the CDC.  Have we already passed the peak?? 

 

[HRM]

4 minutes ago, ragedracer1977 said:

Have we already passed the peak?? 

Hard to tell, but I am betting we are close. What complicates this is the major metro areas, which are just so dense that social distancing is difficult and the amount of movement (goods, services) is huge just to maintain a minimum living standard, not to mention the burden on the healthcare system.

This is why the lockdowns need to be localized and the more locked down an area is, the more restrictive travel in/out needs to be.

Also, release of the lockdowns needs to be controlled carefully. Once you tell a city that the lockdown is over people will pour out of homes like crazy after being cooped up, and that will just start everything all over again.

[Yetti]

Total cases is meaningless without a)how many cases need some care b)how many cases need acute care c)total and rate of recovered cases.   increased testing means increased number of cases.  But no one is getting tested if they have had it and already recovered.    For Reference there are 45,000 cases of confirmed flu in TExas.  There have only been 12,000 SARS tests given.  And the pre screening is going to have a higher rate of confirmed cases for SARS-2

[Marauder]

I don’t normally post anymore and if you read some of the threads on this site lately, you know why.

 

I would like to give you a perspective from someone who manages people in Singapore, Spain, Denmark, Italy, China, the United States and few other places in this world.

 

The reason China, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea are fairing better is they have a disciplined culture. Of course some of that discipline is placed on them. But none the less, they took this situation seriously from the start and reacted accordingly. Taiwan was the role model in this pandemic but Singapore’s DEFCON approach also was solid.

 

China is opening back up for business. I have an employee in Singapore who’s spouse is traveling to China for business. What discipline is applied? Upon arrival in China, they are sequestered, go through a medical screening and if okay, they are handed a barrier suite, mask, gloves and are bussed to a hotel where they are isolated for 2 weeks. After the 2 weeks and they are clean, they can conduct business in China. Upon their return to Singapore they reverse the process. My employee is pleased they will see their spouse in 42 days. That is a discipline. Hell, in this country we can’t even get Hank to buy into ADS-B, how well do you think this discipline will be accepted by Americans?

 

I was on a briefing last night on China. Wuhan’s Hubei is still locked down but other provinces are relaxing restrictions. Wuhan only reported 1 new case last week and it is expected their restrictions will be relaxed shortly. This is a country that has been in lockdown mode since before the beginning a year. They have flattened the curve but are standing on top of that curve.

 

As for Italy comments, wow! The reason Northern Italy was hit hard was not only because of an elderly population (oldest population behind Japan) but because Northern Italy is a favorite ski resort for people all around the world. And by the time they recognized what was happening, it was already entrenched and soon overwhelmed the medical capacity. My Italian employee’s father is a physician. They certainly are not attributing all deaths to the virus, in fact they need to know the cause to help determine whether untested deaths are virus related.

 

And for you, it’s a “normal flu” people. You don’t convert ice rinks to morgues in a “normal flu” season.

 

This is a “novel” virus. There ain’t no cure (asked the guy who died taking chloroquine phosphate thinking it could ward off the virus). The best we can hope for is containment until we have good treatments and a vaccine (and let’s pray it doesn’t mutate too many times).

 

And for you members of Darwin’s Club. Please, by all means, go out with Lt. Governor Patrick and get yourself infected. The rest of us monkeys will be watching from the trees.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

 

 

[Andy95W]

18 minutes ago, HRM said:

. Once you tell a city that the lockdown is over people will pour out of homes like crazy after being cooped up, and that will just start everything all over again.

And Tinder will blow up and we'll have those diseases to contend with as well.