Coronavirus

[tkdguy]

Fair enough. I was probably letting my San Francisco biases get to me.

[Old Man]

New York investigating over 100 cases of coronavirus-related "pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome" in children

 

The illness tends to be severe, with 71 percent of suspected cases being admitted to intensive care units; 43 percent remain hospitalized, Cuomo said.

[Simon]

On 3/18/2020 at 2:04 PM, Simon said:

Not sure if it's been posted yet or not, but the paper that's likely driving a lot of the time estimates: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2EzKndfMupd6kQ4mQ7sl9aTW9XQ7p_8tsgwDkeq664mosM5OCxZw_NU9g

 

TL;DR: The current social distancing/self-isolation/school closure is likely to continue for a minimum of 3 months. If relaxed after 3 months, there would be a resurgence of cases with ICU peak being exceeded in October and an estimated 1.1-1.2 million deaths in the US. In order to minimize the impact of corona, the full suite of  measures would need to remain in place for up to 18 months (until general availability of a vaccine).

Quoting my own post...in a post-necro attempt.  Odd.

I see a lot of folks debating the validity of reporting out of various areas.  I haven't seen anyone postulating that deaths or cases are being over reported, more under-reported for various political reasons. Which got me to thinking about what we can determine from the numbers that we do have...and they're not good.

If we go with the reported deaths in the US (even if under-counted), look at the graph of deaths by day (that one that shows the exponential growth).  The area beneath the curve is the total number of deaths.  The exponential growth gave a very sharp rise.  While we've managed to flatten that curve, we haven't reached a plateau yet, much less a decline.  When we do start declining, it's not going to decline at an exponential -- it's going to go down a LOT slower than that initial rise (barring the development of some miracle cure). That dramatically increases the area under the curve before we reach the end of this...and that area is the total number of deaths that we're looking at.

 

Taking nothing else into account (under-reporting, new variations/complications/etc), if we continue to keep the curve flattened so that we can start to trend downwards (i.e. continue the social distancing and other restrictions), we're likely looking at over 250k in deaths before this is done.

[unclevlad]

5 minutes ago, Old Man said:

New York investigating over 100 cases of coronavirus-related "pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome" in children

 

 

 

 

Yeah, NYT's had stories about it in NY, and in some other places.  It's not clear yet that it's linked, but it certainly could be one of those relatively low-incidence, but very nasty, complications.  It's been a very long time, but as a kid the infectious diseases were on the retreat, as vaccines and antibiotics took over.  They weren't gone, even in the US.  Measles and German measles were still...well, not in the forefront, but still in the public consciousness.  And there were several that were usually not too bad...but had risks of permanent organ damage.  But if you're under 55 or so, stories of the direct *and secondary* threats from polio, measles, rubella, or scarlet fever were Things Of The Past, most likely.  So we've lost our fear.

 

[unclevlad]

16 minutes ago, Simon said:

If we go with the reported deaths in the US (even if under-counted), look at the graph of deaths by day (that one that shows the exponential growth).  The area beneath the curve is the total number of deaths.  The exponential growth gave a very sharp rise.  While we've managed to flatten that curve, we haven't reached a plateau yet, much less a decline.  When we do start declining, it's not going to decline at an exponential -- it's going to go down a LOT slower than that initial rise (barring the development of some miracle cure). That dramatically increases the area under the curve before we reach the end of this...and that area is the total number of deaths that we're looking at.

 

Taking nothing else into account (under-reporting, new variations/complications/etc), if we continue to keep the curve flattened so that we can start to trend downwards (i.e. continue the social distancing and other restrictions), we're likely looking at over 250k in deaths before this is done.

 

It's also not that clear the data's been flattened.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

 

Scroll down about halfway, below the state by state numbers, and you'll get to the graphs.  The last 3 weeks in particular...the graphs for daily new deaths show a consistent pattern.  Those particularly short bars?  Sunday.  (May 10, May 3, April 26, April 19...all MUCH shorter.)  Several of the Monday bars are also short.  I seriously doubt there's that much variability in the actual death rates...but it's quite possible there's distinctive delays in reporting.  So, the daily death rates are gonna be very noisy data.  You need to do some longer term work, like moving averages.  

The CDC has some week-aggregated numbers, but they acknowledge pretty significant lag in reporting.  Turns out that COVID deaths have to be coded manually and that takes, they say, an average of 7 days.  (I can believe it.  A nasty side effect of automation can be that when you are forced off the automated process, the manual one takes MUCH longer than it would have.)  THey're showing drops...but it remains to be seen whether they're real or not.

 

So...yeah.  250K deaths doesn't seem outlandish.

[Simon]

Flattened, not plateaued.  We’re not increasing exponentially, but we’re still increasing 

[TrickstaPriest]

56 minutes ago, Simon said:

Taking nothing else into account (under-reporting, new variations/complications/etc), if we continue to keep the curve flattened so that we can start to trend downwards (i.e. continue the social distancing and other restrictions), we're likely looking at over 250k in deaths before this is done.

 

My big concern.  Calculus does come in handy... just wish it wasn't in this way.

 

Also, good to hear from someone willing to spend more time with the data than I am.  (I'm trying to figure out how to start a project, maybe I should float thoughts past you sometime soon)

[unclevlad]

20 minutes ago, Simon said:

Flattened, not plateaued.  We’re not increasing exponentially, but we’re still increasing 

 

Ah, ok.  True.

 

But we're still pushing to reopen...........

[Michael Hopcroft]

16 minutes ago, Simon said:

Flattened, not plateaued.  We’re not increasing exponentially, but we’re still increasing 

Which raises the question of how flat we need to curve to flatten before picking up some of the parts of the economy that have been curtailed. I don't believe we should go in whole-hog to attempt to make things as they were. There will be permanent, fundamental change in how our economy works as this event galumphs merrily forward. The increase in telecommuting is here to stay, and dinner and a movie is likely a thing of the past, especially when people can much more easily "Netflix and Chill".

 

Today one my friends took me to McDonald's for Cokes, and the line was seven cars long. It moves quickly enough and we got our drinks, but it took a while.

 

It's not to early to ask the questions about what we want the post-COVID society to look like. Questions which will be best discussed in a thread I cannot enter, so I'll just leave it out there for you guys to wrestle with.

[Old Man]

22 minutes ago, Simon said:

Flattened, not plateaued.  We’re not increasing exponentially, but we’re still increasing 

 

Precisely.  The lockdowns barely managed to drive R0 down to about 1, with some regional variations.  It can only go up as restrictions are relaxed.

[Simon]

I’d take a cue from the CDC on that - you want to see it trending down for two weeks before -starting- to reopen

[Michael Hopcroft]

2 minutes ago, Simon said:

I’d take a cue from the CDC on that - you want to see it trending down for two weeks before -starting- to reopen

I'm not sure anyone has the patience to wait that long. Or, in many cases, the ability. Everyone needs food, most people need shelter, and the bulk of us unlucky sods need clothing.. How do we meet those needs is a society significantly less productive than we were before the virus hit?

[Simon]

6 minutes ago, TrickstaPriest said:

 

My big concern.  Calculus does come in handy... just wish it wasn't in this way.

 

Also, good to hear from someone willing to spend more time with the data than I am.  (I'm trying to figure out how to start a project, maybe I should float thoughts past you sometime soon)

 

My quarantine project (going to take a while to complete): 

 

[Simon]

5 minutes ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

I'm not sure anyone has the patience to wait that long. Or, in many cases, the ability. Everyone needs food, most people need shelter, and the bulk of us unlucky sods need clothing.. How do we meet those needs is a society significantly less productive than we were before the virus hit?

If you're suggesting that social distancing and self-isolation should be curtailed earlier, then you plan on it getting a lot worse.  That 250k becomes a joke -- you're back into the millions of deaths....and a greater impact on the economy than the shutdown.

[TrickstaPriest]

1 minute ago, Simon said:

 

My quarantine project (going to take a while to complete): 

 

 

Dude.  Your project is cooler than mine   I need to do more fun stuff...

 

I somehow got enrolled in the Stanford Coursera class on machine learning.  Been putting 3 hrs a night into it, then will start a cert soon after I get that done.

 

I have a recently built server that was for my brother that I want to start crunching some detection on, so I'm back to searching for evil code on github XD

[TrickstaPriest]

2 minutes ago, Simon said:

If you're suggesting that social distancing and self-isolation should be curtailed earlier, then you plan on it getting a lot worse.  That 250k becomes a joke -- you're back into the millions of deaths....and a greater impact on the economy than the shutdown.

 

The part that bites the most is trying to convince people of that.  I try and encourage people to argue for Rural communities, but... they have to be very rural IMO.

 

Thumbnail math puts this as bad, per capita, as the Spanish Flu at around 2 million deaths.  At 2.5 million deaths, you have every plague, pandemic, war (including civil), and terrorist event the country of america had faced (besides the Native American massacres/pandemics), but not per capita.

[Old Man]

[Simon]

I live in a small(ish) rural town (population ~3200). We have at last check 18 cases in the county. Not so bad.  Yet.  We also have a hospital that is a glorified bandaid station (no ICU), an economy focused on the service industry (tourist destination), and a large retiree population (again, vacation town...some just chose to stay).
 

Even at only 18 cases, we haven't flattened things....they're actually looking to trend up as folks from the cities get uppity and start coming out again. And we would be devastated if it hit here in earnest.

The good news is that IL has a zoned plan for re-opening.  Once cases have trended downwards for two weeks in a given zone, they can be moved onto the next phase of re-opening...gradually relaxing restrictions.  If the cases start to trend up again, they move back to previous phases.  It makes sense...and it's rankling a large number of people that want to re-open everything right now.

[TrickstaPriest]

Just now, Simon said:

Even at only 18 cases, we haven't flattened things....they're actually looking to trend up as folks from the cities get uppity and start coming out again. And we would be devastated if it hit here in earnest.

The good news is that IL has a zoned plan for re-opening.  Once cases have trended downwards for two weeks in a given zone, they can be moved onto the next phase of re-opening...gradually relaxing restrictions.  If the cases start to trend up again, they move back to previous phases.  It makes sense...and it's rankling a large number of people that want to re-open everything right now.

 

Yeah.  I've been doing my best to understand the desperation people have to re-open, but encourage the question of 'how' as much as I can.  I appreciate the context, and data.

[Old Man]

Preliminary serology results show that total number of infected is lower than originally thought

[TrickstaPriest]

2 minutes ago, Old Man said:

Preliminary serology results show that total number of infected is lower than originally thought

 

I will have to see how that goes - that would certainly change my thoughts on this a lot. 

 

Maybe I've been unknowingly caught up in that narrative - even if you don't explicitly believe something, it can still change your impression on subsequent information...

[Simon]

5 minutes ago, Old Man said:

Preliminary serology results show that total number of infected is lower than originally thought

That's why I was referencing deaths -- infections have too many variables. Deaths caused by COVID-19 are (sadly) more straightforward. 

[Old Man]

3 minutes ago, TrickstaPriest said:

 

I will have to see how that goes - that would certainly change my thoughts on this a lot. 

 

Maybe I've been unknowingly caught up in that narrative - even if you don't explicitly believe something, it can still change your impression on subsequent information...

 

No, I was the same way--once we found out it could be transmitted by asymptomatic carriers, we all assumed there was a background of undetected transmission in the population.  This suggests that it may be less contagious (which is good) but the odds of serious symptoms is higher (which is not).  It also kind of blows another hole in the herd immunity argument.

 

Here's a related link (Google Translated from the original)

[TrickstaPriest]

4 minutes ago, Simon said:

That's why I was referencing deaths -- infections have too many variables. Deaths caused by COVID-19 are (sadly) more straightforward. 

 

Just now, Old Man said:

No, I was the same way--once we found out it could be transmitted by asymptomatic carriers, we all assumed there was a background of undetected transmission in the population.  This suggests that it may be less contagious (which is good) but the odds of serious symptoms is higher (which is not).  It also kind of blows another hole in the herd immunity argument.

 

Yeah, I should apologize in general - I've been looking/listening to more possible indicators that the rate was probably higher than believed (I got sick twice, in Jan and in March, but I shouldn't have assumed either one was related).

 

The article still doesn't direct me with much information, I will just try and go back to 'neutral' as much as I can until I get better information.

[Old Man]