Semi-OT: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[HotRocks34]

Its not just what percentage of the population is older but the count matters here. It doesn't matter if x% of the population is older but if one county has more number of older people and 1% of them get sick, the two FL counties together would still have ~1300 sick people compared to the 400 in Manhattan.

Ofcourse the population density in Manhattan is higher and therefore more vectors for transmission etc.

Another factor here is that NY according to the governor has already reached its peak whereas cases in Florida were still rising the last I read. The number of critical care beds, medical staff etc also matter.

I personally don't mind them opening the beaches with regulations of no loitering, sunbathing etc. We've had the same thing here in Europe and other than a few joggers, the beaches are mostly deserted because there is inherently a higher trust of government and officials in Europe than it is in America. Which is the last thing that matters because once you tell someone in America something isn't allowed, they feel the need to be on the beach because they feel the need to exercise their freedom even if they've never been the type to go there and do the things that are forbidden.

So, there is more risk in New York City in terms of raw numbers of older persons. That's clear from the data. There are more elderly people in New York, and thus more risk (more people who could potentially die from catching the disease). I put the raw count in the post above.

Also, I just got the data for recent positive testing in both New York and Florida. Now this is Florida as a whole (some areas of the state are "on fire", whereas the two counties opening beaches are at a relatively low level with the virus).

From De Blasio's press conference today (Monday April 20), the current percentage of people testing positive for the virus in NYC is 34%. That's really high. So the virus is still there, in force.

Now let's look at the last recorded day of testing in Florida:
https://covidtracking.com/data/state/florida#historical

Sun April 19
9,552 tests completed
727 new positives
7.6% of those tested were positive


Thus, the rate of positive testing in NYC seems to be about five times that of Florida at the moment. New York City is still quite sick, at a level far beyond that of Florida currently.

As far as peaks go, the IHME model (gold standard) says that Florida peaked in deaths about 18 days ago:
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/florida

So it seems as though each place is (hopefully) beyond its peak in deaths. In that same model, New York is just 4 days past it's peak in deaths. It seems that both locations had the same peak (4 days ago or so) in terms of needed resources peak.


The inescapable conclusion of all this information is that New York City is putting more elderly lives at risk by having Central Park open than the two Florida counties are by having their beaches open. I don't think there's any way around that. There are more could-be-infected elderly in New York City, and the city is still far sicker than is Florida or are the two involved counties.

All that being said, I still think that having Central Park open is feasible, if it's handled right. I don't know if anyone has asked Dr Birx or Dr Fauci about Central Park being open (to get their opinion), but I trust that if the health commissioners of New York state and New York City felt that the situation was untenable, they would shut it down.

People need to get out of their houses and get exercise, IMO, during this crisis. They just need to do it in as smart a way as possible. Hopefully that will be the case in New York City and Florida.

[HotRocks34]

One more data point on New York City's population of age 65+. Before I just mentioned Manhattan, but here is the data for the city as a whole (as of 2019):

https://nycfuture.org/research/increase-support-for-nycs-growing-and-diverse-older-adult-population

There are now 1.2 million New York City residents over the age of 65, and that number has increased by 237,000 people in just the last ten years

[LAKESHOW]

Well whaddaya know, just as i thought. The money program has run out of money. Check.program needs more cash. The food lines are long. The welfare system overwhelmed. So of course, small business monies and loans, that well is dried up, and needs more. No one to blame, just a total unpreparedness all around, and all emergency systems are revealing the cracks in our system.

[HotRocks34]

For anyone wondering why some of the USA fatality counts look so different from each other, this is from the Twitter account of the much-used virus tracker site: https://covidtracking.com/data

Read on Twitter

Yesterday, the count on that site was like 5100 or so fewer than the count on the FOX News tracker (highest number I saw yesterday). The problem with the FOX News tracker is that it doesn't tell you where the information came from, and it's state-by-state data actually comes from the site above.

There needs to be some kind of universal counting standard, I think. It's a grim subject, but one where precision would be appreciated.

[Fairview4Life]

For anyone wondering why some of the USA fatality counts look so different from each other, this is from the Twitter account of the much-used virus tracker site: https://covidtracking.com/data

Read on Twitter

Yesterday, the count on that site was like 5100 or so fewer than the count on the FOX News tracker (highest number I saw yesterday). The problem with the FOX News tracker is that it doesn't tell you where the information came from, and it's state-by-state data actually comes from the site above.

There needs to be some kind of universal counting standard, I think. It's a grim subject, but one where precision would be appreciated.

It also doesn't help, considering all the comparisons to the flu, that the estimates they use to count flu related deaths are different. Using those calcs the number of dead related to covid would be even higher I think.

[HotRocks34]

Cuomo daily presser:

Watch on YouTube

- Total hospitalizations (people in - people out) continues to be negative (more peeps leaving than coming in)
- Net intubations (people on ventilators - people get off ventilators) slightly negative (good sign)
- New hospitalizations falls slightly (good)
- Daily fatality total is 478 (down from 507)

Good trends. Mostly a 'flat' day in terms of net intubations and new hospitalizations (as regards trends)

Cuomo had a slide where he talked about how it looks like the state is now on the downside of the curve. But, he said, no one knows how steep or long the descent will be (fast or slow? long or short tail? etc).

[michaelm]

Just replying to add sources:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200414173251.htm


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK304366/

Sure, I think the ultraviolet sterilisation thing is the same one I read. The advantage is apparently that it doesn’t break down surfaces the way alcohol based disinfection does. I realised it was much more intense than sunlight, the UVC thing not so much.

Unfortunately we're not walking around with UV lights (this isn't something contradicting you, but seeing nymets posts on this last night just seem to be giving an idea that this will magically go away, which seems right now to be mostly wishful thinking from what I've read, it may go down some but there's nothing definite and Singapore's resurgence seems to indicate otherwise).

It's still a matter of continued social distancing.

Also yep, sunburn will happen more in general depending on genetics too.

Sure, I actually deleted a post on this thread because I didn’t want to suggest that Floridians should in any way base their approach to the disease on being significantly less at risk because it is sunny there; I think clusters and super spreaders are much more key in this disease. I have had a notion that wide open spaces and sunny weather have helped in Australia, and was diverted by the data cited about sunlight, but the wide open spaces, being an island continent and the consequent ability to isolate the whole country from the rest of the world, and being fairly socially cohesive and largely prepared to adhere to the measures put in place are what I would consider to have been mainly important. I personally would have taken the measures 2 weeks earlier if it was up to me, but at this stage action seem to have been taken sufficiently early. One thing I observed in the deleted post is that the cluster of cases in the region of Bondi beach seems to have come from indoor parties/functions involving back packers rather than the widely publicised sunny day when everybody thronged to that beach leading to its subsequent closure. They are actually re-opening some of the Sydney beaches although for exercise and not for sunbathing in large groups.

The trick will be when and how to reduce the measures as you imply. A leading infectious disease guy in Australia whom I knew personally decades ago and has been pretty much right about everything since has opined that much of what is being seen in Australia currently is a result of the earlier level of restrictions rather than the higher level of restrictions in place the last 3 weeks. I am hopeful we might be able to go back to the previous level with copious testing, prompt identification of clusters and tracing of contacts of those infected, and high level measures to protect the sick and elderly, as well as appropriate PPE for health workers. It goes both ways with health workers though, one cluster of 50 odd cases and another of 40 in Australia have both been traced to a single minimally symptomatic or asymptomatic health worker.

[bondom34]

Sure, I think the ultraviolet sterilisation thing is the same one I read. The advantage is apparently that it doesn’t break down surfaces the way alcohol based disinfection does. I realised it was much more intense than sunlight, the UVC thing not so much.

Unfortunately we're not walking around with UV lights (this isn't something contradicting you, but seeing nymets posts on this last night just seem to be giving an idea that this will magically go away, which seems right now to be mostly wishful thinking from what I've read, it may go down some but there's nothing definite and Singapore's resurgence seems to indicate otherwise).

It's still a matter of continued social distancing.

Also yep, sunburn will happen more in general depending on genetics too.

Sure, I actually deleted a post on this thread because I didn’t want to suggest that Floridians should in any way base their approach to the disease on being significantly less at risk because it is sunny there. I think clusters and super spreaders are much more key in this disease, I have had a notion that wide open spaces and sunny weather have helped Australia, but the wide open spaces, being an island continent and hence the ability to isolate the whole country from the rest of the world, and being fairly socially cohesive and largely prepared to adhere to the measures put in place are I consider to have been mainly important. I personally would have taken the measures 2 weeks earlier if it was up to me, but at this stage actions seem to have been taken sufficiently early. One thing I observed in the deleted post is that the cluster of cases in the region of Bondi beach seems to have come from indoor parties/functions involving back packers rather than when everybody thronged to Bondi beach on a sunny day which led to them closing the beach subsequently.


The trick will be when and how to reduce the measures as you imply. A leading infectious disease guy in Australia whom I knew personally decades ago and has been pretty much right about everything since has opined that much of what is being seen in Australia currently is a result of the earlier level of restrictions rather than the higher level of restrictions in place the last 3 weeks. I am hopeful we might be able to go back to the previous level with copious testing, prompt identification of clusters and tracing of contacts of those infected, and high level measures to protect the sick and elderly. One cluster of 50 odd cases and another of 40 have each resulted from a single minimally symptomatic or asymptomatic health worker.

Jeez, it really shows how little it can take for this to just spring right back up again. It's the concern with opening too soon on beaches like FL is right now. Also sounds like Australia was likely adhering to guidelines better than the US as a whole, which is a definite plus and a big help.

[13th Man]

Well whaddaya know, just as i thought. The money program has run out of money. Check.program needs more cash. The food lines are long. The welfare system overwhelmed. So of course, small business monies and loans, that well is dried up, and needs more. No one to blame, just a total unpreparedness all around, and all emergency systems are revealing the cracks in our system.

Seems to me like you're blaming the higher ups for being totally unprepared. The biggest blame should go to China and partly the WHO imo for misinforming and misleading the rest of the world. The people can only go on information that they thought were trusted.

I give credit to the people working their tails off for the betterment of the people. Others that are on constantly on vacation especially during this time of crisis and not doing their jobs out of political spite, those are who I have an issue with. They should not be chirping from their mansions if they haven't lifted a finger during this ordeal.

[Fairview4Life]

The people can only go on information that they thought were trusted.

Lots of countries, including the US, had accurate information and warnings for months. Of course you can blame the higher ups for not being prepared. They had the info and they didn't do the right things with that info. That's literally the job of the "higher ups".

[13th Man]

I now think that the Florida beach thing is overblown by the media. I fully endorse for people to go outside to get as much fresh air and sunlight as they possibly could, this would mitigate the stress put on their health and mental state. Right after this post, I will be taking my daily 1.5hr walk, it is crucial for my physical health and mental sanity.

I've seen other pictures and accounts that most are following safety protocol. We also know that the virus has a much more difficult time transmitting outdoors. The problem are not the beaches but for people to continue to maintain social distancing and santizing practices everywhere until a vaccine is developed imo.

[bwgood77]

Sweden kept its movie theatres open! But not really.



Like I asked earlier, what are they winning economically? Are there even any numbers we can look at?

Too bad drive in movies are not still a thing...those could probably have remained open.

Still a handful left:
https://www.driveinmovie.com/united-states

I was thinking the same thing, but there's none anywhere near me. For the theaters where you can buy tickets online, this seems pretty dope.

Yeah, someone mentioned on the Media Lounge yesterday they were going to one, so I checked Austin, who has one, but it's closed due to being non essential, until May 7th. But the Round Rock one (a little north of Austin is open with a bunch of double features).

https://www.bluestarlitedrivein.com/

This one only shows old movies though. https://www.bluestarlitedrivein.com/round-rock-1

[13th Man]

The people can only go on information that they thought were trusted.

Lots of countries, including the US, had accurate information and warnings for months. Of course you can blame the higher ups for not being prepared. They had the info and they didn't do the right things with that info. That's literally the job of the "higher ups".

I disagree. China outright lying about the nature of the virus early on, covering things up and severely downplaying their numbers is not providing accurate information. The WHO backed up this narrative, it wasn't until mid-March where the WHO finally woke up and by then other countries were reeling in a slew of deaths. The U.S. were still in fact-finding mode in February with no casualties, how would they have the foresight to shut things down at that time? I think that 90% of the blame should be shouldered on China. The rest of the world are doing their best to make up for this now.

[Fairview4Life]

That isn’t reality though. The us had its own intelligence services as well as WHO employees warning them long before March. This wasn’t a shock or surprise in March.

They also didn’t need to shut things down in February, but planning for what everyone knew was coming, including buying masks and ppe, ventilators, mobilizing supply chains, ramping up test kit production and starting heavily supporting vaccine work would have accomplished a lot. That is the only reason “higher ups” exist.

[HotRocks34]

Just wanted to pass something along from doing research.

When the virus task force team did their Reopen America rollout, Dr Birx said that each state needed to be able to do like 27 tests per 1000 people in the population in order to be able to handle any outbreaks. She used New Orleans and Italy as examples of how having that level of testing can get you through an outbreak successfully (if one occurred once you opened back up). In fact, I think New Orleans (at that time) was at exactly 27 tests per 1000.

Looking at the data for the testing done by all nations, what she said makes more sense to me. Take a look at this chart:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing#Virus_testing_statistics_by_country

If you click on the "tests per million" box twice to get the info to be sorted from highest to lowest by that category, here's what you see:

Iceland --------> 118,440
UAE -------------> 79,901
Luxembourgh --> 53,981
Bahrain ---------> 52,610
Malta -----------> 48,712
Estona ----------> 28,301
Israel -----------> 27,416
Norway ---------> 26,619


Now divide those numbers by 1000 to get "tests per thousand" rather than tests per million

Iceland ---------> 118
UAE -------------> 79
Luxembourgh --> 53
...and so on


Thus, if a state is capable of doing 30 tests per thousand (per month, I think was the reference point used by Birx), then you would seem to be near the very top of testing ability in the world, per capita. Seemingly above places like Germany, South Korea, Singapore, etc.

Birx said that 47 of 50 states are now at that level, and she said that the task force will help the other 3 states (OK, OR, MT I think) get up to speed.

[jason bourne]

For anyone wondering why some of the USA fatality counts look so different from each other, this is from the Twitter account of the much-used virus tracker site: https://covidtracking.com/data

Read on Twitter

Yesterday, the count on that site was like 5100 or so fewer than the count on the FOX News tracker (highest number I saw yesterday). The problem with the FOX News tracker is that it doesn't tell you where the information came from, and it's state-by-state data actually comes from the site above.

There needs to be some kind of universal counting standard, I think. It's a grim subject, but one where precision would be appreciated.

The first count of deaths seem really low.

My personal count is too high because I don't know how to factor in the apex has passed, effects of shelter in place, social distancing, PPE, and other factors to affect the count. I multiply the number of deaths from here -- https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ by 100 to get the number of people who have it or have had it. I think this is a pretty solid number even w/o enough testing as long as deaths are counted relatively correctly. Then I multiply that number by the mortality rate of 1.4%. You can use 3.4%, 2.4%, or whatever if you want to move the numbers higher or lower in your country. This should give you the numbers for the next two weeks assuming the trend is rising.

I got around 88,498 deaths by beginning of May which is very high compared to the official count from worldometer last week, ~82,000 by Aug 4th in the USA. Dr. Fauci lowered his numbers to 60,000 (Aug 4th?) from 100,000 - 200,000 last week, but think that's way too optimistic after the passing of the apex. We should be in post apex now.

[HotRocks34]

The first count of deaths seem really low.

My personal count is too high because I don't know how to factor in the apex has passed, effects of shelter in place, social distancing, PPE, and other factors to affect the count. I multiply the number of deaths from here -- https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ by 100 to get the number of people who have it or have had it. I think this is a pretty solid number even w/o enough testing as long as deaths are counted relatively correctly. Then I multiply that number by the mortality rate of 1.4%. You can use 3.4%, 2.4%, or whatever if you want to move the numbers higher or lower in your country. This should give you the numbers for the next two weeks assuming the trend is rising.

I got around 88,498 deaths by beginning of May which is very high compared to the official count from worldometer last week, ~82,000 by Aug 4th in the USA. Dr. Fauci lowered his numbers to 60,000 (Aug 4th?) from 100,000 - 200,000 last week, but think that's way too optimistic after the passing of the apex. We should be in post apex now.

Interesting stuff, man.

I have not modeled things out, really. Just not tried to do it. But based on where things are at now, I would personally not be surprised if we hit 80,000 fatalities, sadly.

When you see flu deaths by year, they're almost always in a range (although there may be a particular number guessed at for the exact total). It's inexact. I think we'll know more about the 'true' number of deaths from Covid once we can look back (after most of the deaths done) and compare how overall mortality looked for a region/the nation and compare it with those seems areas (and USA) from previous years. Excess mortality stuff.

Right now, I'm just going with the higher counts, while also using the Tracker site to get a sense of how trends are (even if their counting is lower than other places).

[michaelm]

The people can only go on information that they thought were trusted.

Lots of countries, including the US, had accurate information and warnings for months. Of course you can blame the higher ups for not being prepared. They had the info and they didn't do the right things with that info. That's literally the job of the "higher ups".

Without wanting to be too political if there was initial tardiness from China it was for a week or two, and it was pretty obvious what was going on there weeks before it took off in most places in the world. While saving face and bureaucratic butt covering may be greater in China than most places, their initial attitude was not much different than everywhere else imo except that they were the first affected, mostly wishful hoping it wasn’t going to be too bad. Many places thought it was a Chinese phenomenon then an Italian phenomenon which wouldn’t affect them. In Australia there was every intention of holding the Australian F1 Grand Prix involving teams based in Italy which even back then I considered to be insane; it was only cancelled because of positive tests on team members who were already in Australia.

Reform in regard to traditional medicines involving animals, the farming of wildlife and the selling of wildlife at wet markets would seem to be well and truly in order though, as well as desisting from experimentation with dangerous bat viruses, although I consider the latter to be far from as proven as the cause as Fox News contends it to be.

[bidde]

When the virus task force team did their Reopen America rollout, Dr Birx said that each state needed to be able to do like 27 tests per 1000 people in the population in order to be able to handle any outbreaks. She used New Orleans and Italy as examples of how having that level of testing can get you through an outbreak successfully (if one occurred once you opened back up). In fact, I think New Orleans (at that time) was at exactly 27 tests per 1000.

Neither New Orleans nor Italy have reopened and successfully kept things open by doing testing + contact tracing. No idea how she came up with that number other than looking at what she thinks the US can do and declare that it is enough...

27/1,000 per month translates to 8.9 million tests/month. For comparison a Harvard study estimates that it would take 500k-700k tests a day or 15 million - 21 million (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/17/us/coronavirus-testing-states.html). Germany was looking at 500k tests/day as a goal as well - while having 25% of the population... (Sorry, only German source: https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/coronakrise-innenministerium-skizziert-moeglichen-weg-aus-dem-lockdown-a-76007151-31ed-4383-a198-22dbaf781ccc)

[California Gold]

It really is crazy how this thing impacts so many organs. Underlying conditions or not, I think when all of these organs are impacted, this is why there's always a chance for long term damage. This is all uncertain right now but that's also why this thing is being taken so seriously from the health/science side.

Yeah, it seems like people are too caught up in the binary outcome of whether this virus kills you or not. But people should be concerned with some of the long-term harmful effects that it can do to your body, even if you don't die.

Oh my gosh it's almost like most illnesses affect multiple organs.

Yeah... and? There's still a lot of uncertainty with this. I don't understand people's logic with comments like these.