Coronavirus

[Lord Liaden]

21 hours ago, unclevlad said:

That's why I don't measure against world numbers.  China?  Who doesn't think they're deliberately not reporting?  India, Brazil?  Kinda doubt they'd deliberately under-report, but their detection capabilities are suspect at best.  If you take out those 3 countries, that's 3 billion people.  Leaves ~ 4.8 billion, so the US is about 7%.

 

I have concerns about Brazil's reporting. As of Monday, Brazil had completed nearly 338,000 virus tests over the past three months, with another 145,000 backlogged. Germany does almost that many tests every week. President Bolsonaro has been denying the seriousness of COVID-19 with a fervor that makes Donald Trump look prudent. All along he's compared it to a common cold or 'flu and has been urging Brazilians to continue to engage in social and sporting events. He's also been openly quarreling with Brazilian state governors who have imposed lockdowns, urging them to reopen the economy. Bolsonaro just issued a presidential decree to classify hair salons and gymnasiums as essential services, to legally exempt them from lockdown.

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

Dr. Fauci on the accuracy of reported coronavirus death tolls

 

This is why I like Dr. Fauci. He gives straight, honest answers to questions to the best of his ability, while avoiding either hyperbole or understatement. Almost all controversy surrounding what he said has been the result of either taking it out of context, cutting parts out for the sake of a punchy headline or sound bite, or because he doesn't conform to what someone else wants him to say.

[Old Man]

[unclevlad]

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

I have concerns about Brazil's reporting. As of Monday, Brazil had completed nearly 338,000 virus tests over the past three months, with another 145,000 backlogged. Germany does almost that many tests every week. President Bolsonaro has been denying the seriousness of COVID-19 with a fervor that makes Donald Trump look prudent. All along he's compared it to a common cold or 'flu and has been urging Brazilians to continue to engage in social and sporting events. He's also been openly quarreling with Brazilian state governors who have imposed lockdowns, urging them to reopen the economy. Bolsonaro just issued a presidential decree to classify hair salons and gymnasiums as essential services, to legally exempt them from lockdown.

 

There may be more high-quality doctors, hospitals, labs, etc. in a single German major city than in practically all of Brazil.  And hey, look at the backlogs that've been reported *here*.  

 

2 countries have been particularly highlighted as disasters waiting to happen, due to large populations and very poor medical infrastructure:  India and Brazil.

 

It could well be that you're right, mind.  WaPo suggests this is a radical right-wing *militarist* whackjob they've got.  The truth may well be at the intersection...the reporting is completely accurate, BUT this guy is *still* throwing up roadblock after roadblock.  Imagine if Trump had fired Fauci and Birx, and continued the whole "it's no worse than the flu" line even now.  Tests????   If they're never executed then no one has it right?

 

Ohhh...lemme quote one point, from dw.com, a German international broadcasting company:

Quote

"Brazil is only testing people who end up in the hospital," said Domingo Alves, one of the authors of a study published last week that estimated the real number of cases in the Latin American country was 15 times higher than the official figure.

 

And this with a country with a poor, city-concentrated healthcare system but a fairly spread-out population.  So I suspect the truth is very much the combination of factors.
 

Not gonna be pretty down there at all.  

[Cancer]

Chronicle of Higher Education's list of colleges & universities and what they are planning on doing this fall

[Badger]

Still hearing about places checking employee temps everyday.  Still, not seeing he point (too late by then)*

 

*kind of wondering how that would affect me, if they did it with me, since I usually seem to register about .3 to .5 higher.

[ScottishFox]

Texas is reaching the two-week open point.  We recently moved on to the 2nd stage of re-opening so we may see another spike upward in another 7 to 10 days.

 

So far, not great, but not a disaster either:

 

Texas Rt number:

 

I find it interesting that the Rt was on the way down before the shelter order, but continued to drop for quite awhile once sheltering officially started. 

I suspect a lot of people started social distancing before it was mandated.  I also suspect that the essential workers and mass gatherings at grocery stores and other places prevented the Rt from dropping lower.

 

Fortunately, not a massive swing up after the shelter order ended.  Anecdotally I can say about 1/2 the people are wearing masks and 1/2 are not and traffic is about 1/2 way between pre-shutdown and shutdown levels.

 

We're still clocking in at just under 3 deaths per 100,000 in my area so I'm still 15x as likely to be murdered or die in some sort of accident.

 

On a morbid lark I looked up the death rates of dangerous jobs and... they are massively higher than this. 

The guy who does my yard (who is awesome, btw, graduated college recently and owns his own business now) is 7x more likely to die just doing his job.

 

Police, fire, construction, roofing, farming, transportation and a host of other jobs have death rates in the 15-30 per 100,000 range.

 

And yet, I still wear my ninja mask and treat other people like they have the plague.

[Lord Liaden]

Deleted for belaboring the obvious, Sorry. 😔

[Ternaugh]

7 hours ago, Badger said:

Still hearing about places checking employee temps everyday.  Still, not seeing he point (too late by then)*

 

*kind of wondering how that would affect me, if they did it with me, since I usually seem to register about .3 to .5 higher.

 

My work now uses a thermal imaging system, and it will also be used on patrons as they come in when we reopen. The goal is to keep sick people separated from the healthy, and it's apparently had some success in other locations, like South Korea. You'd probably be fine with the process, as it's set to report temperatures that are over 100°F.

[Hugh Neilson]

I wonder about the re-opening trend lines.  Given how long COVID-19 is asymptomatic (2 weeks is the last I recall), we should not detect a rise until we've been mingling more for those two weeks.  That seemed pretty on-pace with the German chart someone posted yesterday.

 

That also means the line would logically keep trending upwards for 2 weeks after any measures are re-imposed.

[ScottishFox]

2 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

I wonder about the re-opening trend lines.  Given how long COVID-19 is asymptomatic (2 weeks is the last I recall), we should not detect a rise until we've been mingling more for those two weeks.  That seemed pretty on-pace with the German chart someone posted yesterday.

 

That also means the line would logically keep trending upwards for 2 weeks after any measures are re-imposed.

 

The guys doing the ( https://rt.live/ ) website show the statistical modeling they do to account for the average delay between exposure and testing and it very quickly reminds me that I did 1 year of statistics in college and am not a statistics major.

It gets arcane.

 

I saw an article based on CDC numbers which sums up as :

According to a recent reportTrusted Source, more than 97 percent of people who contract SARS-CoV-2 show symptoms within 11.5 days of exposure. The average incubation period seems to be around 5 days.

 

 

[ScottishFox]

And in the "doing it wrong" category we have laid off 1.4 million healthcare workers (121,000 hospital staff among them).

 

That's how you brace for wave 2 apparently.   

 

https://www.npr.org/2020/05/08/852435761/as-hospitals-lose-revenue-thousands-of-health-care-workers-face-furloughs-layoff

[Lawnmower Boy]

Just spitballing here, but have you guys considered nationalizing your healthcare industry?

[TrickstaPriest]

8 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

Fortunately, not a massive swing up after the shelter order ended.  Anecdotally I can say about 1/2 the people are wearing masks and 1/2 are not and traffic is about 1/2 way between pre-shutdown and shutdown levels.

 

We're still clocking in at just under 3 deaths per 100,000 in my area so I'm still 15x as likely to be murdered or die in some sort of accident.

 

Low traffic is good.

 

The real problem with tracking a pandemic is twofold - exponential growth is dangerous, because even during direct observation it will begin to tick up dramatically.  The problem with a pandemic (especially this one) is, as has been stated, the spread ability will happen almost two weeks before you'd see major indicators (such as hospitalization or death).  The doubling rate is estimated to be about 5 days (it was 3 for NYC). 

 

So in two weeks you'll be three doublings behind while watching major indicators, with the knowledge you are observing something for signs of exponential/explosive growth.

[ScottishFox]

35 minutes ago, TrickstaPriest said:

 

Low traffic is good.

 

The real problem with tracking a pandemic is twofold - exponential growth is dangerous, because even during direct observation it will begin to tick up dramatically.  The problem with a pandemic (especially this one) is, as has been stated, the spread ability will happen almost two weeks before you'd see major indicators (such as hospitalization or death).  The doubling rate is estimated to be about 5 days (it was 3 for NYC). 

 

So in two weeks you'll be three doublings behind while watching major indicators, with the knowledge you are observing something for signs of exponential/explosive growth.

 

Yeah, I'm somewhere between cautiously optimistic and I hope we don't all die.

 

So far with the places that have been open for two weeks or longer (Texas, Georgia, Florida) things are looking pretty good.  I think Georgia had their lowest hospitalization and respirator rates for the last couple months though in my head having 900 people on respirators seems like a f*cking nightmare.

 

Texas overall is doing good and the area I'm in (suburbia) is doing fantastic.  Let's hope it stays that way.

 

Today's outing, again purely anecdotally observed, shows that virtually everyone has given up on masks.  They are vanishing quick.  I saw one person that wasn't me wearing a mask at the store.  Yikes!

[Old Man]

[csyphrett]

Forsyth started climbing even though most businesses are still locked down. Reached the four hundred mark. I don't remember what the number was statewide, but it's climbing too

CES

[TrickstaPriest]

7 minutes ago, csyphrett said:

Forsyth started climbing even though most businesses are still locked down. Reached the four hundred mark. I don't remember what the number was statewide, but it's climbing too

CES

 

Yeah.  That 'disease is incredibly effective against human nature' problem.  It's very hard for human beings to maintain the diligence necessary to keep something like this down.

 

Alternatively, it could be more people are coming forwards with being sick, or testing availability has increased.

[Cygnia]

[unclevlad]

2 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

So far with the places that have been open for two weeks or longer (Texas, Georgia, Florida) things are looking pretty good.  I think Georgia had their lowest hospitalization and respirator rates for the last couple months though in my head having 900 people on respirators seems like a f*cking nightmare.

 

 

The governor removed the state-level restrictions in Georgia.  DO NOT think that meant Georgia re-opened.  

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-09/coronvirus-georgia-s-fast-reopening-is-going-pretty-slowly

 

Another issue is growing, which really concerns me long-term.  We remember Trump's early "I can tell the states what to do" rhetoric;  it died on the vine.  Story today pushes this down a level:  in Texas, the state AG is claiming that the cities who are retaining their restrictions, after the governor pulled the state restrictions, are acting illegally.  Same line.  Different situation, because the governing law here would be the Texas constitution, not the US.  The Atlanta mayor is pushing back from her governor's orders and indicating she's not planning to lift restrictions until conditions warrant.  So, what we're seeing is a larger, more serious split among policymakers at different levels.  My core concern is, this seems like a fast route to even greater, sharper, more extreme polarization and even radicalization, such as this story:

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/us/coronavirus-texas-armed-militias-reopening.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

 

TL;DR:  

 

Quote

In at least a half dozen cases around the state in recent days, frustrated small-business owners have turned to heavily armed, militia-style protesters like Mr. Archibald’s group to serve as reopening security squads.

 

I don't think we've reached maximum pressure yet, either, altho we're getting closer.  The piecemeal response is going to add a fresh factor here...the tension between the re-openers and the social distancers will sharpen.

[unclevlad]

28 minutes ago, Cygnia said:

 

 

The second sign, the "my body, my choice" is so on point.  HECK NO, you freaking idiot!!!!  It's NOT JUST YOUR BODY!!!!  

OK.  Sorry.  Rant over.  Need to.....yes...go to the market.  With my mask on.  

[Starlord]

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, unclevlad said:

 

I don't think we've reached maximum pressure yet, either, altho we're getting closer.  The piecemeal response is going to add a fresh factor here...the tension between the re-openers and the social distancers will sharpen.

 

Man refusing to wear mask breaks Target employee's arm

 

Can't wait until these people are armed.  I seem to recall being told that the Constitution is not a suicide pact... but then, this is not the political thread.

[tkdguy]

2 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

Man refusing to wear mask breaks Target employee's arm

 

Can't wait until these people are armed.  I seem to recall being told that the Constitution is not a suicide pact... but then, this is not the political thread.

 

I understand your concern. Of course, that was in Los Angeles. Folks there were crazy long before the Coronavirus.

[Old Man]

8 minutes ago, tkdguy said:

 

I understand your concern. Of course, that was in Los Angeles America.  Folks there were crazy long before the Coronavirus.

 

Fixed