COVID-19

[Admin]

Speaking of social distancing. Ukraine - Poland border.

So when you guys decide to criticize your government, think twice.

 

[Stumpy]

Thanks, Anatoliy!

Bringing partisan-politics into the conversation is decidedly divisive and serves absolutely no useful purpose to where we are now.

I wouldn't want to be making decisions in ANY national level position now, or recently, given the paucity of information on constructive ways to deal with the pandemic.

Casting stones............

 

[rogerdodger]

March 29- US growth rate in cases continues to rise faster than the other countries with major outbreaks, notice in the top right where I added the 200K and 500K lines.

 

[rogerdodger]

How do we know that count is dropping because they took the virus under control, not because everyone got infected and virus just can't find new bodies to infect?

Anatoliy- found a good article on this, common term is "Herd Immunity" and it almost always requires immunizations to achieve, unless the death rate from the disease is very low. It also depends on mutation and reinfection rates, plus how easily the disease spreads. Measles requires >95% immunity.

"Research so far suggests that the coronavirus has a lower infection rate than measles, with each infected person passing it on to two or three new people, on average. This means that herd immunity should be achieved when around 60 percent of the population becomes immune to COVID-19."

60% of the US population and a 1% death rate would mean roughly 2 million deaths.

The U.K. backed off on herd immunity. To beat COVID-19, we’ll ultimately need it.

 

[Admin]

Thanks, Roger. I was searching exactly for that type of information.

 

[rogerdodger]

I'm hoping for some good data to post soon...in the meantime, I think it's worth reminding people that the whole process of social distancing and limiting contact is not a selfish attempt to reduce your chance of catching a disease. Social Distancing is a proven societal technique of slowing the spread of a pandemic and 'flattening the curve' so that medical facilities and staff are not overwhelmed, which leads to unnecessary deaths and excess trauma for the medical heroes.

Social distancing by otherwise healthy people is about reducing the rate of spreading a pandemic disease by reducing the number of interactions between people because you spread it before you have any symptoms.

FYI- if you are looking for some really good, sometimes really technical medical info on the virus, including a look at some of the rapidly developing research, and publications, the MedCram updates on Youtube are great, some of it easy to understand, but also some highly technical medical info.

here is their explanation of the SARS lung symptom that is a key part of the higher mortality and why a shortage of ventilators results in excess deaths:

 

[rogerdodger]

finally some good news, at least for Oregon. If you heard something on the news about improved outlook for Oregon, with cases peaking sooner and less expected fatalities, it came from the IHME center of excellence at UW:

US:
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-americaOregon:
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/oregon
I am watching the "deaths per million residents" data as a way to compare different states.
As of April 7, the US is at 33 fatalities per million (8 states and DC are higher than this, the rest of the states lower, Oregon is currently at 7 per million).
This data is from a column on the right side of this chart:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
So back to the IHME predictions, at 171 fatalities in Oregon, would be 40.7 per million people. Not good but here are the predictions for a few other states:
Washington: 84 per million.
California: 45 per million.
Florida: 308 per million.
Georgia: 319 per million.
New York: 805 per million.

For comparison, based on 2019 data, auto fatalities in the US were 114 per million people.

Stay Home. Stay Safe. Save Lives. Protect our Medical heroes.

 

[rogerdodger]

 

[Admin]

So I'm looking at https://www.worldometers.info/ that @rogerdodger mentioned, and something is not right...
If US in 2020 was under deadly pundemic attack and people were diyng like creasy, how come I can't see it in this yearly poopulation table?

 

[rogerdodger]

I believe this is the data of interest, weekly death rates in the US.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive...dttkJE5Gbbs4NT70z7Gyfua_kPpl6P3ByDLTHE-rzHOp8

 

[Admin]

thanks, roger!
see, this picture instead of clearing it up, raising new questions. at a first glance, the picture makes it obvious - covid stroke and a lot of people died because it's a deadly virus. but on a second glance... US population were increasing about 2m a year last 4 years and 2020 was not an exception. If US had 400k more deaths than normal in 2020, then US also had 400k more births. Otherwise, the population yearly change in 2020 would be 1.6m, not 2m as usual. If that's the case, why they don't tell us about that?
or... there were no extra births as well as extra deaths in 2020?
it's not like I'm a "covid dissident", it's just what that "Population of the United States" table tells me.

 

[rogerdodger]

The answer is in the data sources.

The Worldometer table is 'Data based on the latest United Nations Population Division estimates.'
I do not see any notes that this model has been updated for COVID, so it is based on outdated methodology. (Bayes theorem has been violated)

The weekly data source is:
"Total death numbers are estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which are based on death certificates counted by the centers and adjusted to account for typical lags in the reporting of deaths. Coronavirus death numbers are from the New York Times database of reports from state and local health agencies and hospitals. Covid-19 deaths include both confirmed and probable deaths from the virus."

So the weekly data, based on actual death certificates and state reports of actual deaths, is going to be superior to estimates from a model, especially if that model has not been updated for a significant change in what is being modeled.

 

[Admin]

The answer is in the data sources.

Yeah, I wish to peek into real data sources.

 

[Troutski]

Funny how the regular flu season is almost nil compared to the last ten yearsat the same time. It appears to me that there might be a mass hysteria due to the symptoms being so very close to each other, very hard to fight hysteria. Each time I cough or have a symptom in line with Covid my mind leaps to a conclusion ... Hard to fight this.

Chuck

 

[rogerdodger]

Funny how the regular flu season is almost nil compared to the last ten yearsat the same time. It appears to me that there might be a mass hysteria due to the symptoms being so very close to each other, very hard to fight hysteria. Each time I cough or have a symptom in line with Covid my mind leaps to a conclusion ... Hard to fight this.

Chuck

Did you consider that the steps being taken to control COVID would also limit the spread of colds and the normal flu? Early on in this pandemic, there were many epidemiologists that predicted this exact outcome.

 

[rogerdodger]

Yeah, I wish to peek into real data sources.

Did you look into the NYT article I linked? They include the state-by-state weekly death rates which are fascinating due to the staggered timing of when the pandemic blew up in various places.

 

[Admin]

Did you look into the NYT article I linked? They include the state-by-state weekly death rates which are fascinating due to the staggered timing of when the pandemic blew up in various places.

Yeah, I did. And again, more new questions. How come that the number of infected people now 10 times more than in the beginning, but people die several times less? The virus became 20 times less deadly?

 

[DOKF]

Yeah, I did. And again, more new questions. How come that the number of infected people now 10 times more than in the beginning, but people die several times less? The virus became 20 times less deadly?

The medical teams have really learned how to treat the new disease. Plus the virus is now spreading amongst lower aged people who tend to be more capable of fighting it off, and most of the remaining older people have learned to respect the threat and act appropriately.

 

[Admin]

The medical teams have really learned how to treat the new disease. Plus the virus is now spreading amongst lower aged people who tend to be more capable of fighting it off, and most of the remaining older people have learned to respect the threat and act appropriately.

Valid points.
But still... They told us that covid is 10 times deadlier than flu. And if now covid kills 20 times less infected people, it would mean that now flu kills 2 times more people than covid.

The information about this covid pandemic is just not "mathematic friendly".

 

[rogerdodger]

The medical teams have really learned how to treat the new disease. Plus the virus is now spreading amongst lower aged people who tend to be more capable of fighting it off, and most of the remaining older people have learned to respect the threat and act appropriately.

Almost exactly what I was going to post, Vitamin D is a good example, a deficiency makes your COVID outcome much worse, that wasn't known right OFF. It seems logical that a novel virus can be much more deadly during the first 6 months to a year...once best practice treatments are identified, perhaps the death rate drops to be similar to seasonal flu.