Covid-19

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

solely.

You've just made the same mistake as Zara.

Social distancing saves zero lives. It slows the spread, that's it. Both of you bought into the panic, got scared by the word, "pandemic", and refuse to consider that this isn't a very fatal bug, no matter how contagious it is.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Social distancing has slowed the spread so much that Quest Diagnostic, whose locations currently handle 40% of testing, is freezing hiring, ending all overtime, furloughing temporary employees, and cutting hours.

JH global numbers: 1,930,780 cases with 120,450 deaths--skewed by the fact that China is no longer reporting numbers--for a 6.2384% overall mortality rate.
JH United States numbers: 547,627 cases with 21,662 deaths for a mortality rate of 3.9556%. The new map shows cases by county; if you look at it then corona is a problem only in large urban areas where the population density is highest, which is to be expected.
In both cases, the percentage of people with active cases + those who died + those who have recovered is not even anywhere near 1% of the total population.

Reporters are getting more aggressive with Trump at the daily briefings. If they don't settle down he may change it from a press briefing to an address and invite no one.

Corona beer is still the number one selling import beer in the United States despite the fact that I saw a blurb last week that they were stopping production. They will probably file and reorganize under a new name.

[SoulBiter]

solely.

You've just made the same mistake as Zara.

Social distancing saves zero lives. It slows the spread, that's it. Both of you bought into the panic, got scared by the word, "pandemic", and refuse to consider that this isn't a very fatal bug, no matter how contagious it is.

I disagree. Of course it saves lives. Unless of course you believe that no one else would have caught the virus had there not been social distancing. Just because social distancing worked and the Hospitals for the most part were not over-run does not mean it doesn't work or didn't work. In fact it means that it did exactly what it should have done. Less people were infected all at one time = less hospitalizations due to the virus = more ability for the hospitals to save lives. Simple as that. But its not a one to one. There are other factors involved that have helped.

Consider this. US highway crashes that require hospitalization. Typical numbers are that for every 1 fatality there are 18 people that require hospitalization. What do you think happened with those numbers with the sequestering? Crazy enough fatalities are up due to higher speed from less congested roadways, but regardless of that hospitalizations are down 73%.
38,800 deaths last year, 698,400 hospitalizations, 58,200 per month. That means that instead of 58,200 per month its now 15,714 per month. Amazing how much space was cleared up in hospitals just due to that alone. Add those back into the mix and you are back to over-running the hospital systems.

[TheFallen]

solely.

You've just made the same mistake as Zara.

Social distancing saves zero lives. It slows the spread, that's it. Both of you bought into the panic, got scared by the word, "pandemic", and refuse to consider that this isn't a very fatal bug, no matter how contagious it is.

Obi, that's a misleading statement and SB is bang on right.

First off, regardless of whether coronavirus's true mortality rate is 50% or 0.005%, preventing cases of infection will result in reduced deaths. I am sure you'd agree with that statement solely on the basis of grade school maths alone.

Now, slowing the rate of growth of infections will also result in reduced deaths if doing so ensures that existing healthcare resources can cope with the extra demand placed on them by incoming cases requiring hospitalisation and fit for purpose treatment.

I am aware that this is where you say "But there's no sign in general of hospitals being overwhelmed" at which point I'll say "And why do you think that is?" Back to my previous smallpox vaccination analogy...

You're basing your whole position on the unknowable - the outcome of the path not taken. As am I, but I'm not pretending that I know that unknowable.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Social distancing on its own was sufficient to slow the spread. All those "non-essential" small business did not have to be force-closed by the government--that was the incorrect response.

I know what you mean re: auto accidents--they are based on volume, not speed. I did once work a job for about 6 months as a property&casualty actuarial analyst.

[Ur Dead]

Interesting factoid.
If you add all who survive plus all the deaths.
Then this virus has a 20% kill rate.

The pastor that defied the ban has died from the virus.
Gerald O. Glenn

Got word yesterday my nephew has contracted the virus.
Look like he might recover but I'm hoping for the best.
He's in his mid 40's

[TheFallen]

Okay as this is all about predictions and projections, let's look at some previously made... (gee, there's a bold move)

Looking back at predictions made - which I am happy to do, including my own - Hashi stated on 3rd April that he expected to see a continuing rise in US cases of infection for the next 12 days, then plateauing over the next 5, then starting to fall by April 20th.

So what's your best guess Hashi? How many more days before we move out of this nigh on linear rise phase and start nearing the narrow crest of the bellcurve?

12 days, then 5 more days to move past the peak.

He wouldn't give any hard numbers on this, so I did for him, predicting back then that there'd be about 750k of identified COVID-19 infections within the US at the end of those 12 days, so by April 15th.

Looking at those numbers now, I may have fractionally overcalled them, but only by a couple of days or so. I also continue to believe that Hashi is just plain utterly wrong about the US going over the crest of the hill by the 20th of April - but we'll see soon enough.

I still stand by my estimates of at least 33k US COVID-19 caused deaths by the end of this month (and it'll almost certainly be nearer 50k than 33k), at least 100k US COVID-19 related deaths by the end of 2020 and at least 1 million global COVID-19 related deaths by the end of 2020.

Those three predictions will all of course eventually be entirely truth-testable.

Right, with the benefit of some more hindsight...

It's early days, but Hashi's assertion that the US will reach the peak rise in newly identified cases of infection some time between April 15th and 20th now looks like it might hold water. Including yesterday, the US has had two consecutive days of reporting new cases under the 30,000 level. It looks like we may be able to score one for Hashi there (though of course the argument will still rage as to why this peak has been surpassed, presuming it has).

I never asked Hashi to put a number on the amount of identified US cases by the middle of April, so unsurprisingly he didn't. I however did - on 3rd April I reckoned there'd be 750k identified COVID-19 cases in the USA by the 15th. I now think I'll be a week out regarding that threshold being crossed. Which still makes me miles more accurate than the IHME - I'll get it wrong by a week, whereas they got Italy wrong by more than 100 days - but sure, I did indeed overcall this slightly.

As to my prediction of 33k US coronavirus deaths by end April? I'm still standing by that.

As to my prediction of 100k US coronavirus deaths by the end of the year? I'm still standing by that too - I fully admit this again flies in the face of the IHME endlessly revised projections, but I've proven entirely to my satisfaction that any projection they've issued so far has been completely inaccurate. Ironically but unsurprisingly, having dropped this figure by 25% (around a 20k decrease) on April 7th, the IHME has now quietly increased its US cumulative death projections by early August from 60,415 (Apr 7th) putting it back up by some 14% to 68,841 (Apr 13th).. Seriously, the IHME numbers go up and down faster than a hooker's panties... they're a joke.

And my prediction of a million global coronavirus deaths by the end of the year? Yep I'm still standing by that as well, even ignoring all the COVID-19 deaths that have gone, are going and will go unlogged - and further ignoring the extremely high probability that China's already under-reporting its coronavirus deaths by a factor of 30 or so.

We're already over 120k deaths, globally speaking and we've barely seen the start of figures coming in from non-Western nations. Frankly, India alone could rack up a million deaths all by itself.

[SoulBiter]

Social distancing on its own was sufficient to slow the spread. All those "non-essential" small business did not have to be force-closed by the government--that was the incorrect response.

Possibly. My only response to that is that if there were more places open, people would ignore social distancing more. Yes its their life to risk, but its also mine when they wont do as they are told, and for some reason poking people with 10 feet poles went out of style after the very early 80's LOL

[Hashi Lebwohl]

My argument with TheFallen was only about his insistence upon using linear extrapolation for projecting. My general disagreement with the numbers officials were using was because too many early models relied heavily on Chinese numbers and the instant we realized they were lying all those models became unusable. That report, full of scientific rigor, which used an "educated guess" to put the R at 2.4...yes, that report was wrong because they settled on 2.4 based on Wuhan.

There was an Easter party in Florida attended by over 100 people, none of whom were "social distancing" or wearing masks.

There was a party in California which attracted 400 people; it wound up with 6 people being shot.

A violent offender in New York--jailed at Rikers for assaulting his girlfriend--was released on 28 March over concerns about corona. He waited until last Tuesday, 7 April--only 1.5 weeks after getting out--before deciding to rob a bank. I thought released prisoners would refrain from committing crimes and engage in social distancing? You mean they still choose to break the law in spite of coronoa?

I do have to agree with reporters on one thing--the corona response and reopening States are up to the governors, not Trump, despite the Federal laws in effect which do give him broad economic power at this time.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

solely.

You've just made the same mistake as Zara.

Social distancing saves zero lives. It slows the spread, that's it. Both of you bought into the panic, got scared by the word, "pandemic", and refuse to consider that this isn't a very fatal bug, no matter how contagious it is.

I disagree. Of course it saves lives. Unless of course you believe that no one else would have caught the virus had there not been social distancing. Just because social distancing worked and the Hospitals for the most part were not over-run does not mean it doesn't work or didn't work. In fact it means that it did exactly what it should have done. Less people were infected all at one time = less hospitalizations due to the virus = more ability for the hospitals to save lives. Simple as that. But its not a one to one. There are other factors involved that have helped.

That is a by-product of distancing, and the whole point of trying to flatten the curve. You're high risk if you're an 80-year-old obese smoker whether you're exposed to it now or 6 months from now.

Outside of NYC there haven't been overrun hospitals. It's entirely possible, no matter how much anyone argues the point, that's due to both social distancing and the fact that the lethality of COVID-19 was drastically overstated at the outset.

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

lethality of COVID-19 was drastically overstated at the outset

I don't recall anyone claiming that it would be as bad as Captain Trips (or the Black Death), say. I don't remember an apocalyptic claim like that. I remember the worry was millions of deaths, which sounds extreme but in relation to large populations is pretty small. Given the death rate so far in evidence (whatever the range may be), it seems totally possible that a much larger number would have died had a much larger number gotten infected. With billions of people on Earth, it would be easy to get 10,000,000 global deaths in that kind of case. Or more, even, or less, but at some point we have to be direct and ask ourselves if we are really utilitarians at the end of the day, and then if so, of what kind, and to what effect in this case? Are people going to die because their businesses collapsed? Did we save a lot of lives by reacting the way we did (depending on how we reacted)? Will those people be put back in death's path if there's a second wave of infection?

[Zarathustra]

Both of you bought into the panic, got scared by the word, "pandemic", and refuse to consider that this isn't a very fatal bug, no matter how contagious it is.

No, I keep telling you that I didn't buy into any panic or get scared. I originally thought that this was overblown just like you. I compared it to the flu and dismissed it, just like Trump. But then a friend of mine who is a surgeon informed me of dangers that go well beyond the death rate. As I've said over and over, I'm not as concerned about the deaths as I as with overwhelming the health care system.

I am going to work every day, 50 hours a week, and interacting with the public. I haven't changed my life one bit. I'm not wearing a mask. I'm not scared or panicking. You can continue to use these words if you wish, but they are your own fantasies, disconnected from reality, I assure you. It's a caricature of your own making.

It's only absurd when you make up my position. I said upthread that it wasn't a binary choice between "less fatal" and "flatten the curve". I've repeatedly said that both things can be true, and that it's quite clear that both are.

Jesus christ . . . then why do you insist that my position has been "totally proven wrong" when you still allow for my position as one possibility?? And not merely a possibility, but "quite clear" that it's true??

You have not said this "repeatedly." You haven't said this until just now. You accuse us of getting your position wrong, when you've been downplaying the success in flattening the curve in order to emphasize that the virus was less fatal.

Lethality has never been the issue. People can require hospitalization even for things that aren't lethal. You are conflating two issues with this "it's not a binary choice" business. Even if this disease didn't kill a single person, it would still require the measures that have been taken if it had the potential to overwhelm the health care system. Health care is finite. Surpassing that limit is the same as taking health care away from everyone else--which is intolerable.

So it doesn't matter if you think the threat was overblown, because your assessment is based on a metric that is irrelevant to the goal of the actions taken. You're right: it wasn't to save lives (at least not directly; that's a corollary benefit). Therefore, you can't prove it was overblown by asserting that it wasn't as lethal as advertised--an assertion which you can't prove anyway, regardless of its logical worth or lack thereof.

And the reason you can't prove this assertion: if (as you admit) both factors could be in play, then you have no idea how much each contributes to the reduced projections. Indeed, what evidence do you have that it was "less lethal" at all, if that assertion is entirely dependent upon numbers of infections that are lower than expected? It's entirely possible that the virus was every bit as lethal as we thought, but the social distancing worked better than projected. You keep saying that social distancing was already cooked into the numbers, as if that shields you from this counter point, but this was a projection, too. That could have been the factor that was underestimated, instead of the lethality. Indeed, lethality doesn't even factor into the projections of how many people were going to get it in the first place. (Bringing us full circle with the points above.)

Your argument is a circular reasoning, logical fallacy. Pure feels.

[TheFallen]

My argument with TheFallen was only about his insistence upon using linear extrapolation for projecting.

To be fair to myself, I knew from the get-go that in the mid-term any linear projection would be totally nonsensical - however it had a place in the very short term, while we were all going along the sharp (and temporarily effectively linear) upcurve. And some nations - Russia and India to name but two - are just starting to trace that path.

My general disagreement with the numbers officials were using was because too many early models relied heavily on Chinese numbers and the instant we realized they were lying all those models became unusable. That report, full of scientific rigor, which used an "educated guess" to put the R at 2.4...yes, that report was wrong because they settled on 2.4 based on Wuhan.

I absolutely agree that any modelling based on any data supplied out of Beijing is going to be a crock of horseshit - but anything based even in part on that data is going to come out with seriously low-balled projections about coronavirus. Precisely because the CPC has lied from day one about this pandemic and mammothly undercalled the effects that COVID-19 has actually had within the People's Republic of China. Garbage in... garbage out.

I have to note with wry amusement that, whatever methods I have utilised to come up with my own projections (basically pretty elementary maths and the application of not at all remarkable levels of common sense... it's not rocket science) are so far at least proving me to be way WAY more accurate than those glorified cretins at the IHME, whose inane and massively ever-changing projections are relied upon to inform US government response and policy.

Now THAT truly is scary...

[Hashi Lebwohl]

I have to note with wry amusement that, whatever methods I have utilised to come up with my own projections (basically pretty elementary maths and the application of not at all remarkable levels of common sense... it's not rocket science) are so far at least proving me to be way WAY more accurate than those glorified cretins at the IHME, whose inane and massively ever-changing projections are relied upon to inform US government response and policy.

Now THAT truly is scary...

You may have a future career as a modeler--not modeling clothes but numbers.

[TheFallen]

You may have a future career as a modeler--not modeling clothes but numbers.

Coming from someone who I know to have far more mathematical smarts than I, I'd normally and quite delightedly take that as a significant compliment...

...except...

...I then realise that a chimp given a numeric keypad to bash and prod at as it liked could come up with at least as accurate projections as the "heads firmly up their own asses" boffins at the IHME have been to date.

So perhaps I won't decide to go for a major career change and become a data modeller. After all, I don't like bananas that much.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

...I then realise that a chimp given a numeric keypad to bash and prod at as it liked could come up with at least as accurate projections as the "heads firmly up their own asses" boffins at the IHME have been to date.

If you think they are trained chimps try corporate IT for a change. "Yes, ma'am, I reset your password eee eee oooh oooh aaahhh ahhh AHHHH AHHHH".

[Savor Dam]

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Your argument is a circular reasoning, logical fallacy. Pure feels.

This is how I know you're too bullheaded to reason. Nothing in my argument is circular. Since you haven't been paying attention, let me repeat myself again.

- The initial predictions were way off. I made an educated guess that was the case.

- "Social distancing" was called for. I never said a word against it. My position was misinterpreted several times, and I've clarified repeatedly that I take no issue with social distancing.

- The government began to infringe on our rights. I came out clearly and strongly that that was unacceptable, and that there would have to be a far more significant danger with a far more substantial death toll for me to be okay with those limitations in rights. Literally the opposite of "feels", as I'd rather have 10,000,000 Americans die from this rather than see the government take our rights away.

- As more and more data has come in, it has become apparent that social distancing is doing what it was meant to do, and that this virus was never going to kill as many people as initially thought.

- My argument has been based on cold, hard numbers, as well as the principles this nation was founded upon. Your argument has been, "oh noes, pandemicz!" Which, to be honest, was not an unreasonable position 6-8 weeks ago.

You can continue to dance around it as long as you like - and to be fair I've used a bit of hyperbole to skewer you over it - but whether or not you like it, you've said that it's acceptable that the government has abrogated these rights. That's not a caricature of your position, nor is it disconnected from reality. You staked out an - to me - indefensible position. I've called you on it. You keep trying to wriggle out of it, and in the process have lashed out at me for pointing out the outrageousness of your position.

You hold the bizarre position that you haven't changed your life one bit, you're not wearing masks, you're interacting with the public, but.....this virus is so severe that we have to legally impose social distancing and the government's justified in imposing lockdowns.

You're trying to play both sides and failing at both.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

A set of cables from the U. S. State Department raised concerns about the Wuhan Institute of Virology Lab back in 2018, citing concerns over safety protocols and the research they were doing on coronaviruses as follow-up on SARS. The idea that it originated in that lab is no longer a fringe conspiracy theory even though there is still no hard proof. Deliberately released? No. Accidentally released through sloppiness and/or carelessness? Plausible.

That puts a new spin on the Party's response to the doctors who initially identified it and did initial research on it--they sure did map its genome sequence pretty quickly.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

... eee eee oooh oooh aaahhh ahhh AHHHH AHHHH".

Ting tang walla walla bing bang.