Official Covid-19 Discussion Thread

[jaymeister15]

All caveats regarding models duly noted...

https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden

IHME projects that Sweden is 22 days away from peak resource use and 23 days from peak daily deaths. They are projecting a 3,700 bed shortfall.

They are projecting 17,000+ deaths in Sweden.

That would be fair to call a catastrophe. If Sweden's healthcare system is overrun and they have around 13k deaths by June 1st, I would agree their decision was bad and I was completely wrong.

On the other side, what would Sweden have to look like on June 1st for you to acknowledge that they might have it right?

[Vaclac]

All caveats regarding models duly noted...

https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden

IHME projects that Sweden is 22 days away from peak resource use and 23 days from peak daily deaths. They are projecting a 3,700 bed shortfall.

They are projecting 17,000+ deaths in Sweden.

I would love for someone more tech-savvy than me to go find snapshots of what that model predicted regarding Sweden before. I do remember looking at it weeks ago and it saying that Sweden would peak May 1 and predicting far more deaths over the next several weeks than actually occurred. I also have serious beef with these modelers decision to assume current social distancing restrictions stay in place for the projection period and then cut off the projection period arbitrarily in August. This from people who are specifically pitching their model as part of a decision guide as to when to reopen, while studiously designing their model to avoid addressing the question of what happens when you try to lift the measures and whether the implication is you need to keep doing them forever. Every model I've seen that does not limit time periods so tightly and considers the possibility that social distancing would ever be lifted shows that indeed there would be a huge spike whenever they are.

[mrsocko]

Quebec with 944 new cases today an increase of 170 from yesterday.

[Vaclac]

Sorry...but I don't see any evidence that Sweden is past it's peak.

Did you look at the graph of Sweden's deaths per day in the wikipedia article I linked? It seems pretty clear to me that that should qualify as at least *some* evidence. And it's been happening for two weeks already so it's not just a delayed reporting issue. But anyway, if this qualifies as no evidence that it's past it's peak, I am curious what you would look for as some evidence, so that there's at least a standard we can return to in a week or two.

[hankscorpioLA]

All caveats regarding models duly noted...

https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden

IHME projects that Sweden is 22 days away from peak resource use and 23 days from peak daily deaths. They are projecting a 3,700 bed shortfall.

They are projecting 17,000+ deaths in Sweden.

That would be fair to call a catastrophe. If Sweden's healthcare system is overrun and they have around 13k deaths by June 1st, I would agree their decision was bad and I was completely wrong.

On the other side, what would Sweden have to look like on June 1st for you to acknowledge that they might have it right?

Under 8,000 would be a big win. Over 13,000 would be a big loss. In between those two numbers it could get a little muddy.

But even then...it depends what lens you want to use. California, with 4X Sweden's population, has reported 500 fewer deaths, despite being one of the earliest locations of community spread. If California was on Sweden's trend, there would already be 10,000 dead and the IHME would be projecting 60,000 dead by August.

So do we look at the 5-10,000 lives that Sweden could have saved with a stricter lockdown or the 60,000 more that California could have lost with a looser one?

[ash_k]

Quebec with 944 new cases today an increase of 170 from yesterday.

among those 944, how many are from "retirement home"?!
if it is a low number, does that mean that people in Quebec have not been listening to the "staying home"?

"Staying home" has been on for like 6 weeks, how is Quebec still getting those kind of numbers? 1000 cases in 24 hours??

[Courtside]

The thing to remember about Sweden is that while they are mostly "open", they are still practicing a large measure of care in terms of not going out excessively, interacting carefully, quarantining those at greatest risk, etc... It is NOT an example of what "doing nothing" would have looked like, which some people are erroneously making a comparison to (not here, but elsewhere).

It's possibly an example of what it would look like here if we made some concessions to the lockdown and loosened things up, but it's important to note that the numbers are incomplete. Not enough time has passed to be certain of anything, and a couple of superseeder events would completely destroy all the numbers in any of the countries or cities being discussed. It's the risk of superseeders that is the main concern with opening things up again.

Schools may not be a place where the students get sick, but if you're going to start congregating in numbers, then one sick kid could infect dozens, which gets carried home to many family members in more risky age groups or who also have interactions with others beyond the house. Whoever was nitpicking over Doug Ford's words "when it's safe for the kids to do so" is being obtuse about the matter, when it's a widely established fact that kids and schools always have and always will be major vectors for illness to spread. Colds, flus, chicken pox, etc...

[hankscorpioLA]

Sorry...but I don't see any evidence that Sweden is past it's peak.

Did you look at the graph of Sweden's deaths per day in the wikipedia article I linked? It seems pretty clear to me that that should qualify as at least *some* evidence. And it's been happening for two weeks already so it's not just a delayed reporting issue. But anyway, if this qualifies as no evidence that it's past it's peak, I am curious what you would look for as some evidence, so that there's at least a standard we can return to in a week or two.

Here is the issue

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

These stats are based on the date of reporting. Today, Sweden reported it's 2nd highest number of daily new cases at 790 (highest was 812 reported six days ago), and the 6th highest number of daily new deaths at 124 (vs 185 on April 21). Yesterday they reported 107 deaths.

The last two days of reporting represent about 8% of the total deaths in Sweden and are not included on the wikipedia chart. So how can I look at the past week of data on that chart and draw any conclusions?

[Vaclac]

Sorry...but I don't see any evidence that Sweden is past it's peak.

Did you look at the graph of Sweden's deaths per day in the wikipedia article I linked? It seems pretty clear to me that that should qualify as at least *some* evidence. And it's been happening for two weeks already so it's not just a delayed reporting issue. But anyway, if this qualifies as no evidence that it's past it's peak, I am curious what you would look for as some evidence, so that there's at least a standard we can return to in a week or two.

Here is the issue

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

These stats are based on the date of reporting. Today, Sweden reported it's 2nd highest number of daily new cases at 790 (highest was 812 reported six days ago), and the 6th highest number of daily new deaths at 124 (vs 185 on April 21). Yesterday they reported 107 deaths.

The last two days of reporting represent about 8% of the total deaths in Sweden and are not included on the wikipedia chart. So how can I look at the past week of data on that chart and draw any conclusions?

So the worldometers chart does not look like the wikipedia one. I suspect the issue you're describing is from the worldometers data that seems to have a day of the week effect where there are spikes in reported cases every week. The wikipedia data I linked to comes from the public health authority and seems to have a much more normal shape as one would expect from a chart using date of death rather than date of report. Did you take a look at that one and still think it suffered from that issue?

[hankscorpioLA]

Did you look at the graph of Sweden's deaths per day in the wikipedia article I linked? It seems pretty clear to me that that should qualify as at least *some* evidence. And it's been happening for two weeks already so it's not just a delayed reporting issue. But anyway, if this qualifies as no evidence that it's past it's peak, I am curious what you would look for as some evidence, so that there's at least a standard we can return to in a week or two.

Here is the issue

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

These stats are based on the date of reporting. Today, Sweden reported it's 2nd highest number of daily new cases at 790 (highest was 812 reported six days ago), and the 6th highest number of daily new deaths at 124 (vs 185 on April 21). Yesterday they reported 107 deaths.

The last two days of reporting represent about 8% of the total deaths in Sweden and are not included on the wikipedia chart. So how can I look at the past week of data on that chart and draw any conclusions?

So the worldometers chart does not look like the wikipedia one. I suspect the issue you're describing is from the worldometers data that seems to have a day of the week effect where there are spikes in reported cases every week. The wikipedia data I linked to comes from the public health authority and seems to have a much more normal shape as one would expect from a chart using date of death rather than date of report. Did you take a look at that one and still think it suffered from that issue?

Yes...but my point is that they reported 231 deaths in the last two days that are not reflected on the Wikipedia chart, which is current until April 28th.

[NinjaBro]

Bonnie Henry says that our data shows that the vast majority of cases of covid infection is from congregated clusters, like those in nursing homes and now currently in meat packing plants where workers are working shoulder to shoulder. Also we had an outbreak in a penitentiary where an inmate first got infected and now has spread to staff and other inmates. Penitentiaries are difficult to contain because it's so crowded.

She mentioned that contracting Covid from fleeting encounters like walking past someone on the street or going grocery shopping is infinitesimally small.
Has there been a case in Canada where someone got infected while sitting at a park bench or grocery shopping?

[Vaclac]

Here is the issue

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

These stats are based on the date of reporting. Today, Sweden reported it's 2nd highest number of daily new cases at 790 (highest was 812 reported six days ago), and the 6th highest number of daily new deaths at 124 (vs 185 on April 21). Yesterday they reported 107 deaths.

The last two days of reporting represent about 8% of the total deaths in Sweden and are not included on the wikipedia chart. So how can I look at the past week of data on that chart and draw any conclusions?

So the worldometers chart does not look like the wikipedia one. I suspect the issue you're describing is from the worldometers data that seems to have a day of the week effect where there are spikes in reported cases every week. The wikipedia data I linked to comes from the public health authority and seems to have a much more normal shape as one would expect from a chart using date of death rather than date of report. Did you take a look at that one and still think it suffered from that issue?

Yes...but my point is that they reported 231 deaths in the last two days that are not reflected on the Wikipedia chart, which is current until April 28th.

Ok, so you're saying you think some of those deaths should be attributed to prior days in the wikipedia chart and therefore it should drop off less in the past week than it appears to in the chart? That's a fair point, but it still doesn't leave you with *no* evidence, as you claim, since the peak in that chart actually occurred two weeks ago. Plus, while the worldometers chart is made more annoying to read due to variation within each week as to timing of reporting, its pretty clear that the latest weekly spike is lower than the previous one, so I would think that should qualify as at least some evidence too. The proper way to account for this within week variation would be to look at the average of the past seven days, using the more complete (but attributed to wrong days) worldometers data. That value peaked at 107 on April 24th, and has since dropped to 81, which I would consider at least some evidence. (I would insert the chart here if I know how to insert things in forum posts).
Anyway, just curious what you are looking for as evidence that it is passed its peak. I think this decrease in the 7-day average is a good indicator, but certainly if Sweden sets new daily death highs over the next couple of weeks I will admit I was wrong in thinking it had already peaked. What would the data need to show in the next few weeks need to show in order for you to admit that you were wrong in thinking based on this same evidence that Sweden had not yet already had its peak in deaths?

[ATLTimekeeper]

Sweden also has a much lower obesity rate than Canada. They eat well. They're active. Diabetes mortalities in Ontario iirc are close to the US.

[dohboy_24]

Before you object by saying "the 2018 flu stats are for a full year and the covid-19 stats aren't", remember it's called a "flu season", not a "flu year" because influenza is a seasonal illness.

While some cases will occur throughout the year, historically the majority of the cases are seen during the fall and winter months of the year the same as we've experienced with covid.

"While seasonal influenza (flu) viruses are detected year-round in the United States, flu viruses are most common during the fall and winter. The exact timing and duration of flu seasons can vary, but influenza activity often begins to increase in October. Most of the time flu activity peaks between December and February, although activity can last as late as May."

"The “peak month of flu activity” is the month with the highest percentage of respiratory specimens testing positive for influenza virus infection during that influenza season. During this 36-year period, flu activity most often peaked in February (15 seasons), followed by December (7 seasons), January (6 seasons) and March (6 seasons)."

SOURCE: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season.htm

[Kevin Willis]

Sweden also has a much lower obesity rate than Canada. They eat well. They're active. Diabetes mortalities in Ontario iirc are close to the US.

Ontario - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24114114
US - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28121997
Sweden - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0143084 and https://www.medpagetoday.org/endocrinology/diabetes/64534?vpass=1

[dohboy_24]

For comparison, here is the current data for covid-19, pneumonia, and influenza deaths since 2/1/2020 in the US according to the CDC.



SOURCE: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm

[ATLTimekeeper]

Sweden also has a much lower obesity rate than Canada. They eat well. They're active. Diabetes mortalities in Ontario iirc are close to the US.

Ontario - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24114114
US - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28121997
Sweden - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0143084 and https://www.medpagetoday.org/endocrinology/diabetes/64534?vpass=1

https://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/provincial/health/diabetes.aspx

[Kevin Willis]

Sweden also has a much lower obesity rate than Canada. They eat well. They're active. Diabetes mortalities in Ontario iirc are close to the US.

Ontario - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24114114
US - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28121997
Sweden - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0143084 and https://www.medpagetoday.org/endocrinology/diabetes/64534?vpass=1

https://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/provincial/health/diabetes.aspx

I think the sum is( Worse to best)

US

Ontario



Sweden

However those numbers would be different if you compare all of Canada instead of Ontario. Also if you compare Ontario to Southern states it would be different and if you compare Canada to Southern states it would be different still. We're not that bad as a country.

[Kevin Willis]

Well - we're in a recession.

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/c-d-howe-says-canada-has-entered-a-recession-due-to-covid-19-impact-1.1429939

[RoLo]

its fcking May and flu bros still exist