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

[Bo Diddley]

A measured look at the balance between shutdown and economic concerns. With links to other takes. Not an easy question.

It'll be interesting to Monday morning quarterback this, and what lessons are learned for future pandemics.

My earliest concerns have been for my aged parents.

[SeattleUte]

New York now lacks money for mass transit, the poor, other social services, law enforcement, etc. The government can't just print money. Value is created by private citizens in the economy. Too bad AOC chased off Amazon.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/n...e=articleShare

[beefytee]

Clay Travis is not the only person rapidly adjusting their IFR (Infection Fatality Rate) estimates of Covid-19:

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates/

Maybe Travis made his revised estimate based on this.

What is the IFR of seasonal flu again? 0.1%?

Seems a bit early for this, doesn't it? Considering only about 8% of the cases in Iceland have a final outcome (i.e. recovery or death).

[Uncle Ted]

Seems a bit early for this, doesn't it? Considering only about 8% of the cases in Iceland have a final outcome (i.e. recovery or death).

Yeah it is still early and as better data comes in the estimates will be revised. But right now the seasonal flu still has killed far more people in the US than the coronavirus. It seems Anderson Cooper is still right:

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[Moliere]

https://covidactnow.org/state/TX

Not sure how accurate all the numbers are, but it's an interesting graph. Looks like for most states, shelter in place for 3 months is way too long but social distancing for 3 months isn't enough. Guess finding an equilibrium between the two is the right path.

[wapiti]

https://covidactnow.org/state/TX

Not sure how accurate all the numbers are, but it's an interesting graph. Looks like for most states, shelter in place for 3 months is way too long but social distancing for 3 months isn't enough. Guess finding an equilibrium between the two is the right path.

It doesn't feel like that's realistic, especially in a climate like Texas. I've been working but practicing social distancing. I don't see how I would get it and the precautions I'm taking are not really over the top.

The theory is that New York's problems are due to the mass transit systems. Packed trains are the perfect place for viral spread. Close mass transit. But I don't think a full lockdown is necessary in most of the US.

[Uncle Ted]

Good news everyone... a lot of us may already be immune to Covid-19:

New Oxford study suggests millions of people may have already built up coronavirus immunity

A model predicting the progression of the novel coronavirus pandemic produced by researchers at Imperial College London set off alarms across the world and was a major factor in several governments' decisions to lock things down. But a new model from Oxford University is challenging its accuracy, the Financial Times reports.


The Oxford research suggests the pandemic is in a later stage than previously thought and estimates the virus has already infected at least millions of people worldwide. In the United Kingdom, which the study focuses on, half the population would have already been infected. If accurate, that would mean transmission began around mid-January and the vast majority of cases presented mild or no symptoms.

The head of the study, professor Sunetra Gupta, an Oxford theoretical epidemiologist, said she still supports the U.K.'s decision to shut down the country to suppress the virus even if her research winds up being proven correct. But she also doesn't appear to be a big fan of the work done by the Imperial College team. "I am surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model," she said.


If her work is accurate, that would likely mean a large swath of the population has built up resistance to the virus. Theoretically, then, social restrictions could ease sooner than anticipated. What needs to be done now, Gupta said, is a whole lot of antibody testing to figure out who may have contracted the virus. Her research team is working with groups from the University of Cambridge and the University of Kent to start those tests for the general population as quickly as possible. Read more at the Financial Times.

https://news.yahoo.com/oxford-study-suggests-millions-people-221100162.html

[jay santos]

Ugh social media right now lib's telling conservatives they are money grubbing people haters.

[smokymountainrain]

https://covidactnow.org/state/TX

Not sure how accurate all the numbers are, but it's an interesting graph. Looks like for most states, shelter in place for 3 months is way too long but social distancing for 3 months isn't enough. Guess finding an equilibrium between the two is the right path.

this was always the right answer as it relates to social distancing/shelter in place. everybody wants it to be so black and white when the the real answer is that it is more nuanced and somewhere in between. there is a sweet spot where we can take appropriate social distancing measures to slow this thing while keeping the economy up and running.

[Uncle Ted]

Ugh social media right now lib's telling conservatives they are money grubbing people haters.

Are these the same lib's that have been telling people how bad vaccines are?

[Omaha 680]

Ugh social media right now lib's telling conservatives they are money grubbing people haters.

Sooo...a typical day on social media?

[swampfrog]

Yeah it is still early and as better data comes in the estimates will be revised. But right now the seasonal flu still has killed far more people in the US than the coronavirus. It seems Anderson Cooper is still right:

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It isn't the total numbers. It's the wave like phenomenon of the virus spread. The numbers are compressed in time. NYC is being struck by it now. The annual death toll of the flue doesn't all show up at the hospital at the same time.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/n...hospitals.html

Still, hospitals are under siege. New York City’s hospitals run the gamut from prestigious teaching institutions catering to the elite to public hospitals providing care for some of the poorest communities in the nation. Regardless of whom they serve, few have been spared the impact of the pandemic: A flood of sick and fearful New Yorkers has besieged emergency rooms across the city.

All of the more than 1,800 intensive care beds in the city are expected to be full by Friday, according to a Federal Emergency Management Agency briefing obtained by The New York Times. Patients could stay for weeks, limiting space for newly sickened people.

At least two city hospitals have filled up their morgues, and city officials anticipated the rest would reach capacity by the end of this week, according to the briefing. The state requested 85 refrigerated trailers from FEMA for mortuary services, along with staff, the briefing said.

Medical workers said they saw the first signs of the virus in early March — an increase in patients coming in with flulike symptoms before the alarm had been fully raised in the city and the country. Tests results were taking longer then, but they eventually confirmed that many of these patients had coronavirus.

In the weeks after, the emergency room began filling up, with more than 200 people at times. Every chair in the waiting room was usually taken. Patients came in faster than the hospital could add beds; earlier this week, 60 coronavirus patients had been admitted but were still in the emergency room. One man waited almost 60 hours for a bed last week, a doctor said.

The patients coming in now are sicker than before because they were advised to try to recover at home, doctors said.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Good news everyone... a lot of us may already be immune to Covid-19:


https://news.yahoo.com/oxford-study-...221100162.html

That would be wonderful if true. We desperately need something like this.

[Omaha 680]

That would be wonderful if true. We desperately need something like this.

Indeed. That's what I was getting at in my exchange with Tooblue yesterday. This would be the best case scenario.

[tooblue]

Please, Let’s Stop the Epidemic of Armchair Epidemiology

https://slate.com/technology/2020/03/armchair-epidemiology-coronavirus.html

"Ginn’s analysis certainly had a seductive contrarian appeal—after all, who wouldn’t want to hear that the pandemic won’t be as bad as we were told? But a closer look by scientists revealed his number-crunching to be riddled with inconsistencies and entry-level errors. Over the weekend, Medium took down the post ...

When Medium took down Ginn’s post (it’s since been posted here), the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board framed its removal as an attempt to “stamp out” free debate and “require conformity with the judgment of expert institutions.” The board has a point: We shouldn’t always blindly trust expertise. Consensus is not always coterminous with truth. And in some cases, outsider viewpoints provide valuable insights that evade insider experts. But this wave of nouveau epidemiologists parsing publicly available data about the new coronavirus does not appear to be one of those cases ...

'I’m quite experienced at understanding virality, how things grow, and data,' Ginn writes, in a hall-of-mirrors move that seems to elide the fact that marketing virality is a bastardized metaphor cribbed from … epidemiology. 'In my vocation, I’m most known for popularizing the ‘growth hacking movement’ in Silicon Valley that specializes in driving rapid and viral adoption of technology products. Data is data. Our focus here isn’t treatments but numbers. You don’t need a special degree to understand what the data says and doesn’t say. Numbers are universal.' That has a nice ring to it. It’s also not true ...

Data isn’t just data. It can’t exist without context. Rather than diving into Ginn’s analysis, which is lengthy and complicated and has already been refuted in some detail by more qualified critics, let me offer a simple example of how a lack of expertise can make analyses go awry ...

That said, the facts on the ground make it clear that many things are far less uncertain than the raft of Medium posts might lead the casual reader to believe. Countries that have failed to take preventive measures get hit harder. Health care systems in New York City are already becoming overwhelmed before the pandemic has peaked."