Not with a Bang, but with a Sneeze?

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Post by LarsMac »

Well, in just a few days, the US has taken the #3 slot with nearly 10% of the total confirmed cases.

I estimate probably a little 0ver 200,000 actual infections in the US.

My state, Colorado, reported 476 confirmed cases as of today.

Two of our nieces, and a family friend just decided that they will postpone their trip to hike La camino de Santiago for a year. May is not looking like a good time to make that trip.
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Post by spot »

We just had an address to the nation by the Prime Minister.

I'll not be going out though I might sit in the sunshine out the back now and then. I'm allowed to go to the shops occasionally but I don't think I'll do that a lot either. Other than that, I'm at home until at least late August.

One can only hope that the advisers are better at prediction than I am. Yes the daily increase in confirmed UK cases took a major drop over the weekend. The question is whether the NHS can in fact cope if we all do as we're told. I don't believe it can but I'm obviously going to stick within the guidelines.

I suspect the daily confirmed UK cases total drop was massaged, too. There weren't enough days between the change of behavior and the drop for the figure to be credible. I could be wrong about that too, but it smells.
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Post by spot »

spot;1530471 wrote: Elsewhere, "IOC insists Tokyo Olympics will go ahead despite coronavirus ".


"I proposed to postpone for a year and [IOC] president Thomas Bach responded with 100% agreement," said Shinzo Abe, Japan's Prime Minister.

They took over five weeks to make that obvious decision.
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Post by LarsMac »

Looks to me like we are approaching 3 million actual infections in the world.

Probably a good time to make that decision.
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Post by spot »

LarsMac;1531594 wrote: Looks to me like we are approaching 3 million actual infections in the world. .


That seems a fair guess. It brings us to the final ten doublings, currently taking an average 4 to 5 days each worldwide. We said "excluding China" a month ago but the difference now is insignificant, whether you include China or not. The US on its own will pass the China confirmed case total on Friday.

The social separation approach in Western nations is intended to extend the 4 or 5 day doubling to longer. I can't guess what they're aiming for. 10 day doubling? 30 day? Nobody's exposed their model to show the extent of the delay they hope to achieve. The last couple of doublings will attenuate naturally but that's no solution.

South Korea, for example, has locked down efficiently enough to smother the spread, almost as well as China did. Should we hope the UK and US will manage the same? Smother the spread before the health systems melt?

The UK has a new expression, "NHS Field Hospital". It's a repurposed building with beds in it. If we could just import 20,000 Philippine medics in the next two weeks to staff them I expect we could even make good use of them.

And do we hope there will be solid resourcing to prepare for the next world pandemic once this one is over, or is that notion as laughable now as it was this time last year.

I have a puzzle, if anyone would like to give an answer. The people who have survived infection and recovered. There's no mechanism or pass in the UK to allow them go back to work, to travel, to get out and be useful. I'd like to know why not. They're no longer infectious and they're immune at least for the short term until genetic variants of SARS-CoV-2 emerge.

I do not mind saving lives as a priority over protecting the economy. What I object to is failing to protect the economy while at the same time failing to protect lives.
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Post by LarsMac »

Part of the problem with the "Social Distancing" strategy is simple. Many of people are already infected, and have yet to present symptoms. A portion of those will present in the next couple of weeks.

Also, citizens are still required to make sorties out to the retail stores to find essential items, many of which are still in short supply,not to mention clustering at the shelves of said essential items trying to beat each other to the last item.

And the local medical authorities are bragging about being able to test a hundred people in a day. There are nearly four million people in Colorado. the state will take years to get them all.

The doors have been closed but the horses fled a while ago.

Add to that that there are a number of people who have just begun to distance themselves, and we have a couple of weeks before those cases all present. It could be May Day, before we started seeing any positive effects from all the distancing.



There is still apparent no strategy to begin testing for antibodies, or proving recovered patients are no longer contagious.

And I still have yet to find a reliable supply of TP or disinfectants.

My wife and her sister are both in the 80+ range, with complications and I fear bringing this **** home to them every time I venture out.

It will be a long Summer.
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Post by FourPart »

The graph is misleading as it shows the base line as being Incremental. This is not the case, as the base should be Logistical. After all, if it were Incremental, the number of victims would soon exceed the population.

A Logistical line would begin as if it were Incremental, but would then level out as it reaches the peak of maximum infection. After all, the maximum you could possibly have is 100% of people infected.

It is also believed that once you have had the virus & recovered (as the vast majority of those without underlying health issues do) they are then immune, at which point they also cease to be carriers, meaning that there should be a peak, and then diminish, as a bell chart.
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Post by LarsMac »

FourPart;1531604 wrote: The graph is misleading as it shows the base line as being Incremental. This is not the case, as the base should be Logistical. After all, if it were Incremental, the number of victims would soon exceed the population.

A Logistical line would begin as if it were Incremental, but would then level out as it reaches the peak of maximum infection. After all, the maximum you could possibly have is 100% of people infected.

It is also believed that once you have had the virus & recovered (as the vast majority of those without underlying health issues do) they are then immune, at which point they also cease to be carriers, meaning that there should be a peak, and then diminish, as a bell chart.


To which graph do you refer?
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Post by FourPart »

LarsMac;1531613 wrote: To which graph do you refer?


Spot's one (Post #131).
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Post by spot »

FourPart;1531604 wrote: The graph is misleading as it shows the base line as being Incremental. This is not the case, as the base should be Logistical.


You may be entirely right, my mathematics is elementary and I've never reached any book or program which has offered the scaling you suggest. If you know of any site on any subject which has examples I'll adjust my display immediately.
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spot;1531428 wrote: .How many people do we think we're actually saving? 20% of the non-intervention deaths at he very most? 10% more probably? I'm not sure, given all the other unknowns, that is is a worthwhile swap.


Speak for yourself buddy! I'm in the 10% demographic. You just wished death on me! I'll come back from the dead to haunt you for that!

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Saint_;1531623 wrote: Speak for yourself buddy! I'm in the 10% demographic. You just wished death on me! I'll come back from the dead to hand you for that!




I may have misunderstood the figures in the press but I had thought that even the slackest 80 year old a week into recovery from a heart lung transplant has a three in four likelihood of survival of the infection itself, once they display coronavirus symptoms. Pensioners with preconditions follow not far behind, but it's scarcely a death sentence. I know of no category which has a worse chance than that. Do you?
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Post by Saint_ »

spot;1531625 wrote: it's scarcely a death sentence.


Tell that to these people:

Coronavirus Death Toll

20,519 people have died so far from the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak as of March 25, 2020, 17:52 GMT.



http://www.worldometers.info/coronaviru ... eath-toll/
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Post by spot »

Saint_;1531630 wrote: Tell that to these people:

Coronavirus Death Toll

20,519 people have died so far from the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak as of March 25, 2020, 17:52 GMT.


Out of Lars' estimate of 3 million? It's not much of a dent in progress really.

You killed more than that last year in car smashes.

More relevantly, given it's a world total, malaria killed 2 million last year too and it will do the same again by the end of this one.
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Post by Saint_ »

Yeah...and I didn't wish that on any of them either, Spot. Stop dodging.
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Post by LarsMac »

We are working on a move out to the country, out near the Kansas border. we bought a house out there and are having it renovated. We made trip out to meet with the contractor, and went exploring the nearby town.

We were shocked for read in the town newspaper that this COVID-19 has actually found its way to the town, already.

Apparently a chap had been working at one of the ski resorts until it was shut down a few of weeks ago after some cases appeared up there. He has been home for over a week and just now began to express symptoms.
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We were just talking about this

Covid-19 antibody test ready 'in days'

Some good news
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Post by spot »

Having seen the UK has, on the whole, responded to government advice, and having seen the staggering measures the Treasury has brought into play to mitigate the social impact, I confess I'm impressed by the government's willingness to be led by their technical and medical advisers.

I didn't believe the British government would be prepared to put in sufficient resources to actually achieve a significant reduction in the peak daily confirmed case count but I think what they have done might succeed. It will still leave too many ill people untreated for there not to be an Enquiry afterwards, but it will definitely have saved a lot of life. The debt will be spectacular too, but at least they'll have something to show for it.

Elsewhere, if President Trump has any sense at all he'll stop appearing in front of cameras for the next few months, it's embarrassing to watch.

Saint_;1531637 wrote: Yeah...and I didn't wish that on any of them either, Spot. Stop dodging.


When your total US deaths passes a million, which it will, I'll apologize. None of this is remotely funny, I'm not laughing, and I have yet to see any mass US response at all. Closing the schools and working from home can only have an effect if people then stay indoors and don't go out, and I doubt they're doing that in sufficient numbers. You're there, you can see better than me. Are they? The trouble with car drivers is that most think they're better than average, the same mentality applies.
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Post by LarsMac »

spot;1531684 wrote: Having seen the UK has, on the whole, responded to government advice, and having seen the staggering measures the Treasury has brought into play to mitigate the social impact, I confess I'm impressed by the government's willingness to be led by their technical and medical advisers.

I didn't believe the British government would be prepared to put in sufficient resources to actually achieve a significant reduction in the peak daily confirmed case count but I think what they have done might succeed. It will still leave too many ill people untreated for there not to be an Enquiry afterwards, but it will definitely have saved a lot of life. The debt will be spectacular too, but at least they'll have something to show for it.

Elsewhere, if President Trump has any sense at all he'll stop appearing in front of cameras for the next few months, it's embarrassing to watch.





When your total US deaths passes a million, which it will, I'll apologize. None of this is remotely funny, I'm not laughing, and I have yet to see any mass US response at all. Closing the schools and working from home can only have an effect if people then stay indoors and don't go out, and I doubt they're doing that in sufficient numbers. You're there, you can see better than me. Are they? The trouble with car drivers is that most think they're better than average, the same mentality applies.


Well, The US passed China for Confirmed cases, today.

We will make this thing all about us, even if it kills us.
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Post by spot »

spot;1531071 wrote: I think there's now enough data to narrow that down a bit. The millionth confirmed case worldwide appears to be due on March 26th give or take a day. Beyond that it's pointless to make estimates, but the course of March seems predictable now within reason.


That was posted on March 3rd, when the Rest of the World total was 12,700. I apologize for having been out by three days but I'm not sure I merited disbelief when I said it.
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Post by LarsMac »

April 1st or 2nd are looking very good for that mark, now.

The way the US is going, we could well see the 1 million mark by the last week or so of April. The "Shelter in place/Stay home" strategy is far to sporadic to show a real success for the next couple-three weeks.

This **** is starting to scare me.
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Post by spot »

LarsMac;1531698 wrote: This **** is starting to scare me.


It has at least led to some inspired lunacy. I've just been browsing YouTube for people hand-washing to Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" and there was Gloria Gaynor herself, joining in. You couldn't make it up.
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Post by spot »

spot;1531598 wrote: The UK has a new expression, "NHS Field Hospital".


And another. Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre is being equipped to treat confirmed cases, next door to "Birmingham airport's Hangar facility will have space for 12,000 bodies". We're certainly a practical people when it comes to crises, neither building could open at the moment for any other reason.
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Post by FourPart »

spot;1531620 wrote: You may be entirely right, my mathematics is elementary and I've never reached any book or program which has offered the scaling you suggest. If you know of any site on any subject which has examples I'll adjust my display immediately.


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Post by spot »

FourPart;1531713 wrote:


Thank you, I quite liked the video.

The chap only used two graph forms though. He started with x and y linear, and at 2 minutes he switched to x linear and y logarithmic.

What I was puzzled by was this bit that you wrote: "The graph is misleading as it shows the base line as being Incremental. This is not the case, as the base should be Logistical" - I still don't quite know what you meant. If "the base line" is the x axis then the chap never changed its scale at any stage in the video.

What am I failing to read correctly.

As an aside, the world is nowhere near reaching the point of inflection yet. His indication of how the graph eventually peters out is when he multiplies (1 - %population_already_affected) to his daily projection. That's what stops the projection from ever exceeding the population.
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Post by spot »

Right, an attempt at a new graph.

This is about who has been more at risk of catching or dying of Covid-19 during the outbreak so far.

For each line there are two people being compared. The categories of people are UK, US and World. You randomly select one of each, UK or US, UK or World, or US or World depending on the line.

You keep randomly picking a pair until you get two people one of whom has either confirmed as having caught it or died of it, and then you see which of the two it was.

If you find a hundred pairs, you can count how many are in the first group. That's what's plotted for each day of the outbreak.

The vertical lines are ten days apart.

Start with the blue line, US:UK cases.The first cases are all US at the end of January. Then the first UK case appears. For most of February the chance of the random confirmed case being American is between 20% and 30%. Since then it's pretty even but the US is catching it at a faster rate so the chance of the infected person being American is rising.

The red line is the same candidates but dead. It trails confirmed cases by four weeks. It's about the same story, which makes sense.

For the other graphs, the confirmed cases and deaths worldwide were already established and growing when the first US or UK confirmed cases or deaths happened. We have since caught up at a rapid rate, and now the likelihood of the random person being US or UK as opposed to World is higher than even. We monitor better, I expect. If everyone was accurately described as having been infected or died of Covid-19 then the lines wouldn't yet be that high but I still think they'd be aimed at least at an even probability. In terms of just the counted statistics, the US and UK are rocketing up the charts.

Behind all of the counted totals there's the asymptomatic and they don't show at all. I think that affects the count of cases but it's hard to be asymptomatically dead, death being a symptom.

That yellow line is the nasty one. If you have two bags, one with every American in and the other everyone on the planet, and you keep taking a random person out of each bag and counting whenever one is a confirmed case, four times out of five you're counting an American. Already.






A final detail. Assuming the US and UK are not in fact exceptional as far as the confirmed case rate goes, 1:2800 and 1:3700 respectively, and that the claimed Rest of the World rate of 1:15000 actually just reflects a lack of testing, then there are around a million more cases in the Rest of the World which are as severe as we're counting as confirmed cases in the US and UK, but which aren't showing in the available statistics.

I'll look at this graph again in a while and decide whether it carries information or whether it's just junk.
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Post by FourPart »

spot;1531728 wrote: Thank you, I quite liked the video.

The chap only used two graph forms though. He started with x and y linear, and at 2 minutes he switched to x linear and y logarithmic.

What I was puzzled by was this bit that you wrote: "The graph is misleading as it shows the base line as being Incremental. This is not the case, as the base should be Logistical" - I still don't quite know what you meant. If "the base line" is the x axis then the chap never changed its scale at any stage in the video.

What am I failing to read correctly.

As an aside, the world is nowhere near reaching the point of inflection yet. His indication of how the graph eventually peters out is when he multiplies (1 - %population_already_affected) to his daily projection. That's what stops the projection from ever exceeding the population.


I meant that the increamental line shown os plotted on the basis of 1,1 - 2,2 - 3,3 etc, thus forming a straight line, whereas the actual line should be on the logistic basis of a bell - curving upwards until it either reaches its peak, be that maximum contagion, or maximum isolation before the curve begins to mirror itself as the cases become fewer.
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Post by spot »

FourPart;1531741 wrote: I meant that the increamental line shown os plotted on the basis of 1,1 - 2,2 - 3,3 etc, thus forming a straight line, whereas the actual line should be on the logistic basis of a bell - curving upwards until it either reaches its peak, be that maximum contagion, or maximum isolation before the curve begins to mirror itself as the cases become fewer.


Well yes, clearly it can either be plotted as a natural graph or it can be plotted on a log scale, both have their uses and both tell exactly the same numbers but use a different shape to do it. The whole point of the log scale is the straight line. You can't project a natural graph to make future prediction, because it's a curve and all the detail disappears except on the scale of the last week or two and all the space for projection into the future can't exist.

Both graphs on both scales, natural and log are "actual", neither has lost information or lied about it.

The difference between the ascending line and the bell curve is that a permanently ascending line shows the accumulated count of cases or deaths, which always goes upward, while the bell curve shows the daily number of cases or deaths. Again, either has its uses, both represent exactly the same information and neither tell a lie. The permanently ascending line invariably flattens to a horizontal line when the event is finished, at which point it's showing the total count of cases or deaths. The ascending line is the integral of the bell curve, the bell curve shows its gradient as the differential of the ascending line. The same pair exists if you plot a car journey along a time axis as speed, the bell curve plotting distance per second, or alternatively plot distance travelled, the cumulative distance.

"logistic", to the best of my knowledge, is a synonym for logarithmic.
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Post by spot »

For anyone who can play BBC Radio on the Internet, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csythk is startlingly helpful and informative concerning the South Korean response.

Coronavirus: What can the world learn from South Korea?

The Inquiry

South Korea has reduced its daily new coronavirus cases by 90 per cent and kept mortality rates low. What can we learn from what they’ve done?


On another note, of the first 165 British patients treated in intensive care, the "outcomes of patients admitted to critical care with confirmed COVID-19" shows a 48% mortality. I do hope they get better with practice, those are not good odds. The linked "ICNARC report on COVID-19 in critical care" carries a breakdown on page 7, table 2.
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Post by spot »

The comments of Lord Sumption are far and away the most sensible observations I've seen in weeks. Well done that man.





A former supreme court justice has heavily criticised Derbyshire police for stopping people exercising in the Peak District saying that such behaviour risks plunging Britain into a “police state”.

Lord Sumption warned that police had no legal power to enforce “ministers’ wishes” and that the public should not be “resigning their liberty” to over-zealous citizens in uniform.

“The behaviour of the Derbyshire police in trying to shame people in using their undoubted right to take exercise in the country and wrecking beauty spots in the fells so people don’t want to go there is frankly disgraceful,” he said.



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... l-policing

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Not with a Bang, but with a Sneeze?

Post by spot »

The scammers work from home, presumably.




Goodwill, for those ignorant of the ways of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, is not among their varied and extensive attributes.

And yes, that's a screendump off my own phone this morning.
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Not with a Bang, but with a Sneeze?

Post by LarsMac »

We've seen a number of things like that.

Some clown called today to tell me that my COVID-19 relief check was ready, and all I needed to do was send $100 for postage and handling via a Cashier's Check for escalation fees and I could have it tomorrow.
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Not with a Bang, but with a Sneeze?

Post by Saint_ »

LarsMac;1531807 wrote: We've seen a number of things like that.

Some clown called today to tell me that my COVID-19 relief check was ready, and all I needed to do was send $100 for postage and handling via a Cashier's Check for escalation fees and I could have it tomorrow.


LOL! Was he a Prince from Nigeria?
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Post by LarsMac »

the State of New York, alone is rapidly approaching the confirmed case numbers from all of China.
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Post by spot »

LarsMac;1531811 wrote: the State of New York, alone is rapidly approaching the confirmed case numbers from all of China.


Followed two days later by the City of New York, presumably.

I'm somewhat disturbed not to have seen Anne log in recently. Three weeks.
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Post by spot »

Here, I've found a tweet from 22 days ago from President Trump:

So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!


This is a deeply ignorant man with no grasp of reality. Is he seriously going to say that today's position was unforeseeable just three weeks ago?

I suspect he is totally surrounded by people who stroke his ego for a living.

Mr Trump has criticised those who want to "ride it out".


I'm speechless. Does he think nobody can remember past yesterday?

"I think from a practical standard that couldn't have been carried out", he says, because models forecast that if the US did not undertake any mitigation efforts at all, "that number [of deaths] becomes 1.5m up to 2.2m, and even beyond."


Well duh. Read the thread, Mister President. It's not exactly news.

I have no faith that America could mitigate a piss-up in a brewery just right now. Bring back Sean Spicer. Please. And where's Kellyanne Conway when she's needed.

What does "goals" mean, Ms Conway?




Look, it's that same lying corrupt pretend-graph again.

Can things get worse? Of course they can. The President still hasn't got to falsely announcing "America was deliberately attacked" yet. Has anyone offered me odds on that so far? It'll be on a par with "The virus will not have a chance against us".
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Post by spot »

Saint_;1531808 wrote: LOL! Was he a Prince from Nigeria?


Where I live, most of the phone scammers operate out of India.

It used to be Americans working offshore in boiler-rooms, but these days the Indians have captured the market.

Africans specialize in email scams, they're so much cheaper to set up and operate.
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Post by LarsMac »

spot;1531818 wrote: Where I live, most of the phone scammers operate out of India.

It used to be Americans working offshore in boiler-rooms, but these days the Indians have captured the market.

Africans specialize in email scams, they're so much cheaper to set up and operate.


Yeah, this guy that called me was likely some sort of local Amateur. 100 bucks is chicken feed for those guys.
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Post by spot »

To get a perspective on numbers of deaths in the UK, we have just passed the fully-laden Jumbo 747 crash per day scale, we are approaching the Titanic hitting an iceberg per day scale next week and I'm stuck for comparisons thereafter. The Great Plague of London in 1665 killed 75,000 but that's not a feasible daily total for the UK. America might, but not the UK.

If America passes the 9/11 death toll per day scale around ten days from now then President Trump's brand new lockdown self-isolation extra ventilators approach will need some tweaking. Without mitigation, that's when it's due.
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Post by LarsMac »

Well we hit the 4 thousand mark today. And there does not really seem to be a sign of leveling off, yet.

We have yet to come up with a reliable testing protocol in most of the country.

They announce some location doing drive-by testing, and within an hour it is overwhelmed, and then they announce that they tested 100 people or so, and closed because they ran out of tests.

Deaths in the US

April will be so much FUN this year. [sigh]
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Post by spot »

On a positive note, the traditional cliche in Hollywood blockbusters of partying on highrise roofs hasn't happened.

Let me try to explain my concern, since it's now April.

Firstly, I have an image of a very long bulky oil tanker rushing toward a rock, and nobody has yet succeeded in reversing the screws. It will take a long time from actually affecting the rate of cases to actually affecting the rate of deaths, you have to be a case for a while on average before you're into the deaths column. If the UK or US does actually reverse the screws on infections, the rate of increase of deaths will still lag by something between one and two weeks perhaps. By some period, definitely.

Secondly, if the current rate of increase remains unchanged in the UK, the present 500+ deaths per day will run out of candidates before the end of the month - that's game over, wait for the next pandemic before trying again. We run out of candidates when it approaches a million deaths a day, and that's where we'd get to by the first week of May if we didn't run out. That's ten doublings, and we currently double the number of deaths per day after nearer three than four days. Three and a bit times ten is thirty and a bit, 500+ doubled ten times is a half a million deaths daily.

The government here keeps saying next week we'll start this or that, we'll have the extra ventilators coming on stream in just a few weeks. It's over by then, there is no need in a few weeks. There is no more time to prepare, and the rate of increase in cases hasn't even started to slacken.

I am not sanguine. Perhaps you can tell. Perhaps someone can explain this in simple language to your cartoon President. I'm quite sure our own government is fully aware of it already but still trips over unanticipated implementation problems on a daily basis.

Based on White House project models, the US appears to be on track to see a coronavirus impact similar to Italy's, says Vice-President Mike Pence

"We think Italy may be the most comparable area to the United States at this point for a variety of reasons,” Mr Pence told CNN on Wednesday.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-52115535




I do not for one moment believe America is anywhere near as competent as Italy in organizing a successful lockdown, I'll believe it when I see it. Did I hear that New York City of all places has just, today, closed its playgrounds? Today, not weeks ago? I rest my case. Gunshops re-opened because of a Federal reversal of States orders, as an essential supply during a lockdown? People will be exercising their second amendment rights within their own four walls? That's what a well regulated Militia is for during an epidemic?

To anyone who remembers my yellow gradient, the real-world confirmed cases is running parallel to it and just 20% higher which makes the yellow gradient pretty accurate to within a day or two right the way through March. I'm still waiting for the real-world total to bend flatter. It still hasn't. I may not be a roomful of political advisers backed by a university department full of mathematical modellers but I do know how to use a spreadsheet.
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Post by spot »

Here we are, the most informative article in the press to date.

The clue for Horton was in the main papers it considered in advising the government of the strategy.

“There is evidence on modelling and on behavioural science, but I don’t see the evidence from the public health community or from the clinical community,” he explained.

Testing, isolation and quarantine – basic public health interventions – were barely on the agenda. Warnings from Chinese scientists of the severity of Covid-19 had not been understood.

“We thought we could have a controlled epidemic. We thought we could manage that epidemic over the course of March and April, push the curve to the right, build up herd immunity and that way we could protect people,” said Horton. “The reason why that strategy was wrong is it didn’t recognise that 20% of people infected would end up with severe critical illness. The evidence was there at the end of January.”

Anthony Costello, a UK paediatrician and former director of the WHO, also fiercely criticised the decision to stop tests. “For me and the WHO people I have spoken to, this is absolutely the wrong policy,” he said. “The basic public health approach is playing second fiddle to mathematical modelling.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... unravelled




The article as a whole is well worth reeding.

Meanwhile, with the likelihood that home-made face masks and eye coverings are soon to be recommended to Americans and Brits alike whenever they leave their residence and go out in public, if I hear another complaint about Hijabs in future I'll respond with hollow laughter. I might even point and shake and double over while doing it.

And finally, with ominous undertones, a quote from Dr Edith Bracho-Sanchez today: "Unfortunately in America, not all our population is in top-shape health".
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Post by LarsMac »

Well, by the time anyone reads this, we will have hit 1 million confirmed cases, world wide.

The US will be nearly a quarter of those.
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Post by Bryn Mawr »

LarsMac;1531842 wrote: Well, by the time anyone reads this, we will have hit 1 million confirmed cases, world wide.

The US will be nearly a quarter of those.


France is the one that’s suffering at the moment, thirteen hundred and fifty five deaths yesterday and rising :-(
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Post by spot »

Bryn Mawr;1531868 wrote: France is the one that’s suffering at the moment, thirteen hundred and fifty five deaths yesterday and rising :-(


The Now Show was rather unkind about the French last week. "Alors, the sun is warm, Spring is here, the buds bloom, the sap rises, we shall go for a picnic", approximately.
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Post by Bryn Mawr »

spot;1531870 wrote: The Now Show was rather unkind about the French last week. "Alors, the sun is warm, Spring is here, the buds bloom, the sap rises, we shall go for a picnic", approximately.


Do you think we’ll get the summer slowdown they promised us?
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Post by LarsMac »

Bryn Mawr;1531873 wrote: Do you think we’ll get the summer slowdown they promised us?


Perhaps, but I would not count on it.

Especially if they release the stay at home orders too soon.

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey resists calls to issue shelter-in-place order
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Post by spot »

Bryn Mawr;1531873 wrote: Do you think we’ll get the summer slowdown they promised us?


The rate of increase of the daily world confirmed cases has dropped over the last five days, which is the first drop we've seen since mid-February when we saw the Chinese clampdown. Nearly all of those cases are in the northern hemisphere and we just passed the spring solstice where the warm-up it at its maximum rate.

The bolding is an emphatic indication that the thing that has dropped is the rate of increase, not the number of daily new cases. That's still going up.

If the trend holds for the next five days it might be an indication that the transmission rate has been affected. I can't distinguish between a weather effect and self-isolation. I don't think the single five-day drop is enough to predict from but it's encouraging. If the trend turns out to be there as a lower gradient then it's deferred the 40 millionth case by two weeks, from the first week of May to the third.

The data all come from "Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)".














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Post by spot »

I take it most people will have red and digested What Should the US Federal Government and the States Do to Fight the Coronavirus: Tomas Pueyo: Apr 1 · 29 min read but I add it to the thread for continuity.
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Post by spot »

I'll be interested, if I'm spared, to see the eventual statistics breaking down US and UK fatalities by ethnicity. The UK will definitely produce that as a matter of course, I might have a struggle to find an equivalent US source but I'll look. It's started to crop up in occasional news articles. I'm wondering whether it's a poverty issue.

There seems to be a consensus that the US and UK outbreaks will each peak in ten days, I have no idea why that's not twenty. We'll have to see.
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