At what point did you / will you take the coronavirus epidemic seriously?

[Uncle Ted]

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[Omaha 680]

https://twitter.com/benshapiro/statu...972571136?s=19

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David Neeleman read my post and is taking action!

Also, a Shaprio link? You will be scorned here for that.

[swampfrog]

I would think they'll be able to figure the effective totals by comparing death totals from years past. After a few years, I would think they could even estimate how many years people lost at the end of their lives because of COVID-19.

These stats are already being accumulated, I posted some links earlier. Some towns in Italy are seeing 3 to 10 times the typical deaths.

Not really. Overall deaths are way down for march in the usa (probably everywhere in the west). Turns out when you never leave your house your chance of dying goes way down.

When looking at the data, one can't just look at total deaths, analysis must control for the most common types of death that are affected by the mitigation factor of sheltering in place--such as drunk driving deaths which are going to be way down in the US, but likely little or no effect in Italy where people walk home drunk. It will be a while before this type of work can be done, but the preliminary data from Italy is being reported by various reputable outlets.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/italys-...ed-11585767179

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKBN21J677

Separate data from national statistics office ISTAT showed deaths in the north of Italy doubled in the first three weeks of March compared with the average during the same period between 2015 and 2019, reflecting the onset of coronavirus.
In Bergamo, fatalities more than quadrupled, while they increased between two- and three-fold in several other Lombardy cities. In some small towns at the heart of the outbreak they were up 10-fold this year compared with 2019.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/ar...ing-death-toll

In other towns nearby, including Bergamo itself, the trend seemed identical. The researchers made the point that the only reliable indicator in the end will be “excess deaths” — namely, how many more people have died in total compared to a “normal” year.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-de...igures-suggest

[CardiacCoug]

These stats are already being accumulated, I posted some links earlier. Some towns in Italy are seeing 3 to 10 times the typical deaths.



When looking at the data, one can't just look at total deaths, analysis must control for the most common types of death that are affected by the mitigation factor of sheltering in place--such as drunk driving deaths which are going to be way down in the US, but likely little or no effect in Italy where people walk home drunk. It will be a while before this type of work can be done, but the preliminary data from Italy is being reported by various reputable outlets.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/italys-...ed-11585767179 EU

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKBN21J677



https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/ar...ing-death-toll



https://www.economist.com/graphic-de...igures-suggest

Dude didn’t you hear that drunk walking is 8 times as deadly as drunk driving. Italy is no longer suffering as many drunk walking deaths and still has an astronomical death rate.

https://freakonomics.com/2011/12/28/...drunk-walking/

[SeattleUte]

No. No.

I can assure you, if a hospitalized patient gets pneumonia and dies from it, the listed cause is 'pneumonia'. It doesn't matter at all if the patient was healthy before getting hospitalized, or even if the patient had comorbidities that worsened the effects of pneumonia.

When I issue an autopsy report, I list all the diseases the patient has, in descending order of 'acuteness'. These might or might not be proximate causes of death. When I'm confident of the ultimate cause, I list that as cause of death. In our broken hip patient, this would be pneumonia. If I were ever to do an autopsy on an obese diabetic patient with hypertension and history of a heart attack, who contracted COVID and died of respiratory failure, I would list the cause of death as COVID. The comorbidities are essentially footnotes. They undoubtedly made it worse, but they are not the immediate cause of death.

What percent of very old who die get autopsies? Who controls what nursing homes and hospitals say about cause of death among the very old? Are you saying that often the obituary says natural causes but something else gets reported somewhere else? If so, isn't it important to public policy that normally society sees the precise cause of death among the very old a trivial fact?

I think we're talking about two different things, past each other.

[Northwestcoug]

What percent of very old who die get autopsies? Who controls what nursing homes and hospitals say about cause of death among the very old? Are you saying that often the obituary says natural causes but something else gets reported somewhere else? If so, isn't it important to public policy that normally society sees the precise cause of death among the very old a trivial fact?

I think we're talking about two different things, past each other.

This is what you said previously:

Also, every year millions of very old people die from "natural causes." What actually happened is that many of them had their hearts stop because of coronary heart disease, died of pneumonia brought on by an underlying infection such as the flue, etc. Which is it? natural causes or the immediate cause of death? The same thing is true here. In this sense, the dead are being vastly overcounted. Many died with Covid-19 but it's debatable whether they died because of it.

I assume you think so because of your impression that 'natural causes' is listed as the cause of death in many deaths that are attributable to other diseases. I'll give you that in 'uninvestigated' deaths a specific cause may not be explicitly stated. It's a safe bet that most nursing home and many at-home deaths of the elderly are not investigated. But you're dreaming that this extrapolates to the population infected with COVID, such that it 'vastly overcounts' deaths caused by it. Since some of the at-risk patients have other comorbidities, it is possible that they could die from heart disease,etc., and that the viral infection didn't play a part. But take the safe bet in the majority of patients; if they are infected, end up intubated, and die of respiratory failure, the ultimate cause is COVID.

[SeattleUte]

This is what you said previously:



I assume you think so because of your impression that 'natural causes' is listed as the cause of death in many deaths that are attributable to other diseases. I'll give you that in 'uninvestigated' deaths a specific cause may not be explicitly stated. It's a safe bet that most nursing home and many at-home deaths of the elderly are not investigated. But you're dreaming that this extrapolates to the population infected with COVID, such that it 'vastly overcounts' deaths caused by it. Since some of the at-risk patients have other comorbidities, it is possible that they could die from heart disease,etc., and that the viral infection didn't play a part. But take the safe bet in the majority of patients; if they are infected, end up intubated, and die of respiratory failure, the ultimate cause is COVID.

I stand by what I said. We’ve never before been so obsessed or precise about the ultimate cause of death of very old otherwise sick to the point of near death people. How many of the deaths in the lower right quadrant of this graphic (see the link) do you estimate are among the very old with multiple underlying conditions that would otherwise have led to their death within the next 12 months? Why do you suppose there is such a wide range in the estimate?

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden...-estimates.htm

[Northwestcoug]

I stand by what I said. We’ve never before been so obsessed or precise about the ultimate cause of death of very old otherwise sick to the point of near death people. How many of the deaths in the lower right quadrant of this graphic (see the link) do you estimate are among the very old with multiple underlying conditions that would otherwise have led to their death within the next 12 months? Why do you suppose there is such a wide range in the estimate?

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden...-estimates.htm

This is a goalpost move. We were arguing before about what the at-risk population is dying from right now. Where is your evidence that the COVID deaths are vastly overestimated?

[Omaha 680]

As real data is fed back into the Washington model, they continue to revise down their death estimates and move their peaks earlier in time. NY is now expected to peak in two days. The vast majority of our population is now predicted to peak by April 16, when Massachusetts and California are predicted to peak. Note that these are peak death projections, which means that peak infection would have occurred 1-2 weeks before. Bloomberg had a good state-by-state breakdown of the latest model update yesterday:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2...-on-the-curve/

The modelers are open that they originally used Wuhan and Italian data for the model, which is fine as you use what you have. The problem is Chinese data could be made up and the spread of the virus in Wuhan and northern Italy probably doesn't look a lot like in the US. As the model is updated with US data, the predictions continue to be revised down. I don't think that is all because of social distancing. Obviously the lockdowns have played a crucial role, particularly in the hard-hit northeast. But a big component of it may be apart from the high density and high mass transit use NY/NJ area, the virus can't spread like it did in Wuhan or Italy. Also, our healthcare system stretched, but largely is holding better than expected, even in NYC. If you believe Cuomo and the federal task force, no one has yet to be denied a ventilator who needs one and they don't expect that to happen now. Bed capacity in NYC will be tight this week, but they expect to accommodate everyone who needs one.

I'm doing a lot of speculating. But the next week will be interesting. If peak death continues to be revised down and moved earlier in time, and if we are largely through the worst of it by mid-April, the calls to start opening things up in a strategic way in early May will get very loud. And I don't think they will be unjustified. The feds should use the remaining time in April to do some large-scale antibody surveys by region to determine with acceptable accuracy how many people actually were infected. That would go a loooong way to making good decisions in May. So when TF are they going to do those surveys?

The Washington model was just revised downward again. Now predicting 60,000 total deaths in the US.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcar...n-us-by-august

The Washington Post notes the wide discrepancy between the Washington model and some models that local governments are using.

Local leaders in the District said on Friday that their model estimates the outbreak in the nation’s capital will peak June 28. The IHME model predicts the peak is coming in just days, on April 16. The District’s model predicts hospitals will need 1,453 ventilators at the peak. IHME predicts a need for only 107. The District is using the IHME model as a best-case scenario and the more dire model to prepare for a likely surge.

LaQuandra S. Nesbitt, director of the District’s Department of Health, explained how the city’s leaders chose their model. It’s called CHIME and was created by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania.

“We felt that a model that determined the District would have essentially no medical surge needs was not indicative of what we anticipated would be our reality in the District and thought that a model that did not overestimate the impact of social distancing in the United States” was the right one, Nesbitt said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/healt...-model-agrees/

That Nesbitt quote doesn't really explain what the model they are using in DC does. My understanding is the Washington model began by using Wuhan and Italy data, but is constantly updated using actual infections and death stats from the USA. So it is not necessarily assuming the impact of social distancing measures, it is measuring the actual impact and projecting forward. Its short-term track record seems to be pretty good, but we will know after this week if it is overly optimistic.

[Moliere]

I think we're talking about two different things, past each other.

Have you considered that you are just wrong?

[old_gregg]

Have you considered that you are just wrong?

this is his field. none of us knew he was an epidemiologist.

[CardiacCoug]

I stand by what I said. We’ve never before been so obsessed or precise about the ultimate cause of death of very old otherwise sick to the point of near death people. How many of the deaths in the lower right quadrant of this graphic (see the link) do you estimate are among the very old with multiple underlying conditions that would otherwise have led to their death within the next 12 months? Why do you suppose there is such a wide range in the estimate?

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden...-estimates.htm

I think this is true in that we know for sure that among patients with heart conditions failure to get a flu shot predicts much higher risk of dying in a given winter. Some of this is just correlative rather than causative. But there is no doubt a lot of people every winter die of heart conditions who actually had influenza that went undiagnosed because it wasn’t very important to figure out precisely why they died.

[Bo Diddley]

Why is Utah's mortality rate so low? Are we just testing more people, identifying more of the cases with less severe symptoms?

[Northwestcoug]

Here's a good article debunking some claims of COVID truthers. SU, please look at the 'Claim: Anyone who dies is counted as a coronavirus death!' section.

https://arcdigital.media/debunking-c...m-c290fc660a12

[Bo Diddley]

Here's a good article debunking some claims of COVID truthers. SU, please look at the 'Claim: Anyone who dies is counted as a coronavirus death!' section.

https://arcdigital.media/debunking-c...m-c290fc660a12

Italy is undercounted. They are only counting those who die in hospitals, not all the people who die at home.