The Coronavirus, not the beer

[Tw]1243186044478132224[/tw]

Almost as if the ability to control your border matters.

Who would have thunk it?
 
[Tw]1243186044478132224[/tw]

Almost as if the ability to control your border matters.

Who would have thunk it?

Lol, really? After everything you said about China, the dramatic rise in Pneumonia cases amidst a respiratory pandemic doesn’t have you curious?
 
Lol, really? After everything you said about China, the dramatic rise in Pneumonia cases amidst a respiratory pandemic doesn’t have you curious?

Sorry man...I'm not following you here. What does that have to do with this article?

Is there something else to reference?
 
Sorry man...I'm not following you here. What does that have to do with this article?

Is there something else to reference?

The article is discussing Russia’s tremendous response to the Pandemic, but this is Putin’s Russia. If you think Xi’s government covered everything up, why on Earth would you take Russia’s numbers at face value?
 
The article is discussing Russia’s tremendous response to the Pandemic, but this is Putin’s Russia. If you think Xi’s government covered everything up, why on Earth would you take Russia’s numbers at face value?

Fair point but despite how bad of a person Putin is there is much more freedom in russia on comparison to China. Information would flow if this was demonstrably false.
 
Governor Cuomo said on Thursday that as patients were staying on ventilators longer, more were dying from complications caused by the novel coronavirus.

More than 385 people have died in New York — 100 up from 285 yesterday.

Mr. Cuomo said the increasing death rate is partly a result of older and weaker people staying on ventilators for longer, from 20 to 30 days, without recovering, leaving fewer ventilators for new patients.

The number of virus patients hospitalized jumped by more than 40 percent in one day to over 5,300, appearing to reverse a trend where hospitalization numbers were growing by around 20 percent per day in recent days.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage
 
I personally think we are much closer to the peak then we have been told. Its important that we were told that to scare people into social distancing.

The virus is too contagious for it to not have been exposed to a large percentage of the nyc/nassau county area.
 
It's hard to reconcile all the facts together to align on a coherent narrative

Fact #1: COVID-19 is highly infectious
Fact #2: Hundreds of thousands traveled in and out of Wuhan November - January
Fact #3: It is inarguable the scale of COVID-19 has increased dramatically outside of China starting in March as evidenced by the hospital overwhelming in Italy/Spain/New York

Conclusion #1 (Optimistic - Restart economy sooner): Based on Facts #1 & #2, this disease likely spread en masse outside of China starting in December, which should imply a very high number of cases prior to the lockdowns, which itself further implies a significantly lower fatality rate than the reported fatality rate.

Conclusion #2 (Pessimistic - Expand lockdown protocols): Fact #3 clearly shows the situation rapid accelerating which itself implies that communities are now just becoming impacted.

The only way to understand the scope of the problem is wide scale serological testing, which won't be available anytime soon. If we could confirm Conclusion #1, then we should all be championing reopening businesses. With Conclusion #2 as a real (even if unlikely) possibility, there's simply no way we can justify ending lockdowns.

The focus needs to be on testing, testing, and more testing. That's the cleanest way to beat the pandemic and save the economy.
 
Conclusion #1 (Optimistic - Restart economy sooner): Based on Facts #1 & #2, this disease likely spread en masse outside of China starting in December, which should imply a very high number of cases prior to the lockdowns, which itself further implies a significantly lower fatality rate than the reported fatality rate.

Not so fast. We don't know how many coronavirus deaths have been written down as flu deaths before awareness of the coronavirus became very high. This has been a worse than average flu season.

I was in a Middle Eastern country for a couple weeks in December. My hotel had a very large number of Chinese tourists milling around everywhere. When I got home around Christmas I didn't feel right for a few days. At the time it didn't cross my mind it might be coronavirus.

The lack of early awareness argument cuts both ways. Many people may not be aware they contracted it. But also some people died of it without the cause of death being properly assigned.

The data I would focus on now are the number of deaths and number of people in intensive care. The early spread of the disease is interesting to speculate about but it's going to add much to what the death and ICU data tell us.
 
Last edited:
Not so fast. We don't know how many coronavirus deaths have been written down as flu deaths before awareness of the coronavirus became very high. This has been a worse than average flu season.

I was in a Middle Eastern country for a couple weeks in December. My hotel had a very large number of Chinese tourists milling around everywhere. When I got home around Christmas I didn't feel right for a few days. At the time it didn't cross my mind it might be coronavirus.

The lack of early awareness argument cuts both ways. Many people may not be aware they contracted it. But also some people died of it without the cause of death being properly assigned.

The data I would focus on now are the number of deaths and number of people in intensive care. The early spread of the disease is interesting to speculate about but it's going to add much to what the death and ICU data tell us.

I understand what you are saying and yes it does cast more shade on the fatality rate (though I’m sure we agree the bias in the denominator is far greater than the numerator).

But in this scenario you (along with millions of others) have already been infected and recovered (which is great news!). What good does quarantine do if you already have the antibodies? Anecdotally speaking, your experience supports ending the lockdown sooner.

I agree with you on which data points we should focus on. But to understand the peak projection for deaths and ICUs, we need to understand where we sit on the curve. Is this just the beginning or are we approaching the peak? The data out of China and Korea suggests that we will reach the peak within April and not May/June. This is the critical question we need to answer when we debate when to reopen schools and businesses.
 
I understand what you are saying and yes it does cast more shade on the fatality rate (though I’m sure we agree the bias in the denominator is far greater than the numerator).

But in this scenario you (along with millions of others) have already been infected and recovered (which is great news!). What good does quarantine do if you already have the antibodies? Anecdotally speaking, your experience supports ending the lockdown sooner.

I agree with you on which data points we should focus on. But to understand the peak projection for deaths and ICUs, we need to understand where we sit on the curve. Is this just the beginning or are we approaching the peak? The data out of China and Korea suggests that we will reach the peak within April and not May/June. This is the critical question we need to answer when we debate when to reopen schools and businesses.

New York is 2-3 weeks behind Italy.

The rest of the country is 2-3 weeks behind NY.

Assuming daily fatalities are peaking now in Italy it would put the peak in the country in late April/early May.
 
Don't discount what stress can do to the human body. Now that people are aware of the virus they behave differently but also the worry can weaken their overall immune system.

I'm not trying to say that this isn't a serious virus but we may all have to consider that its been around for a long time and any population center that has high volume flights to and from China will have been exposed for 3-4 months by now. while the confirmed case mortality rate is high you are unable to extrapolate that to the remainder of the population that you think will contract the virus as many already have and never needed a hospital visit.
 
New York is 2-3 weeks behind Italy.

The rest of the country is 2-3 weeks behind NY.

Assuming daily fatalities are peaking now in Italy it would put the peak in the country in late April/early May.

Possible. But again you don’t know the curve because you don’t know the beginning. That’s my point entirely. We can make assumptions about the peak based on samples from individual countries, but you’re projecting enormous amounts of noise into the data doing so.
 
What do you think the US Death rate is?

How many people do you think have or have contracted the virus so far?

I don't know the death rate and I think your confidence in your "hunch" that the most optimistic outcome is the right one is worrisome. Based on the "math" you've laid out in this thread, you expect the actual death rate to be something like 0.06% (50% infection in US; 100k deaths). I don't see any actual experts saying that, so I'm inclined to think it is higher even under perfect conditions. It will certainly be higher if we "just let it happen" and the hospitals get completely overwhelmed. The fact that you are not worried about the conditions where your hunch is wrong is short-sighted at best, and immoral at worst.

I know that in NYC, where I live, like one in 1 in 250 people have already tested positive based on the normal population of the city, but that hit rate is likely even higher now considering how many have fled the city. That numbers is only gonna get worse. I know that ~ 1 in 70 of those who have tested positive here have died. I know that more of the current positives will die. I know that people who have yet to test positive will die. I know that a youngish guy I was in a room with in early February is currently in the ICU fighting for his life. I know that no credible expert is saying what you are saying. I know that not even the optimistic experts you've cited to in this thread are even saying what you are saying.

I know that if you are relying on maga tinfoil-hatters for your general information rather than actual doctors and epidemiologists, you are doing yourself a disservice.
 
Back
Top