By far the worst part about this story is the number of people whose main takeaway is that you should use Excel rows, not Excel columns, to track a national epidemic.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 is the causative agent of the 2019 novel coronavirus disease pandemic. Initial estimates of the early dynamics of the outbreak in Wuhan, China, suggested a doubling time of the number of infected persons of 6–7 days and a basic reproductive number (R0) of 2.2–2.7. We collected extensive individual case reports across China and estimated key epidemiologic parameters, including the incubation period. We then designed 2 mathematical modeling approaches to infer the outbreak dynamics in Wuhan by using high-resolution domestic travel and infection data. Results show that the doubling time early in the epidemic in Wuhan was 2.3–3.3 days. Assuming a serial interval of 6–9 days, we calculated a median R0 value of 5.7 (95% CI 3.8–8.9). We further show that active surveillance, contact tracing, quarantine, and early strong social distancing efforts are needed to stop transmission of the virus.
So this study estimates the R0 of covid19 at almost 6, that's way higher than we thought previously. I think it makes sense assuming that people stay asymptomatic for several days while shedding virus and thus there is a large asymptomatic carrier population.
Some people find that optimistic as it means that our fatality rate is much lower than it seems currently, but I find that little comfort as fatality rate skyrockets when you run out of healthcare.
I find the information scary as fuck because it means that there are probably alot more infected out there who just haven't developed bad symptoms yet. In a couple of weeks we shall see for sure.
So follow up to this post.
Quote:
The work here shows that there is global convergence (i.e., across many nations) to an uncontrolled Ro = 4.5 that describes the early time spread of COVID-19. This value is in agreement with independent estimates from other sources reviewed here and adds to the growing consensus that the early estimate of Ro = 2.2 adopted by the World Health Organization is low.
Not as bad as 5.7, but a lot fucking worse than under 3.
According to a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, areas of the country exposed to television programming that downplayed the severity of the pandemic saw greater numbers of cases and deaths—because people didn’t follow public health precautions.
So a while back I shared this study that found from March 1 to May 30 that there were 122,300 excess deaths and 95,235 Covid deaths. We reported about 78 percent of the covid deaths correctly.
This new study similarly compares excess deaths and covid deaths March 1 through August 1. They find 225,530 excess deaths and 150,541 covid deaths. So we are reporting about 67 percent of covid deaths.
Yeah. I don't think 500k deaths in the US is all that an unreasonable prediction by the end of winter. Most other countries will be comparable in per capita terms.
__________________ The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. -Eugene Wigner
You mean for the count or for the total as through excess deaths?
Because if Covid is very seasonal, I think first one and then the other.
Biden doesn’t take office soon enough.
One way of looking at those two studies is that in June and July we had 102k excess deaths and only counted 55k covid dead.
So our count is a bit better than half.
If so, we are averaging 1500 dead a day right now.
Anyway, this is highly speculative on my part. I like to note when I’m talking out my ass.
I have been expecting the undercount to worsen as it became politicized. Lots of states in the Covideracy have been fucking with their numbers. So I see a worsening undercount.
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Last edited by beyelzu; 10-15-2020 at 01:25 AM.
Reason: Clarity.
I don't understand the "most other countries will be comparable" part. Isn't it the case that most other countries are doing a much better job of containing Covid?
The problem, as always, is trying to compare countries and areas that don't have the same methods or standards, even within industrial nations. Some countries don't test as much so their numbers of sick will be artificially low, others only count very specific pulmonary deaths as Covid-19 deaths, so also that stat is not as reliable as it should be.
I don't understand the "most other countries will be comparable" part. Isn't it the case that most other countries are doing a much better job of containing Covid?
Maybe a bit? But they're all in the same ballpark of deaths in the many hundreds per million population. Some countries are certainly not comparable (Denmark, South Korea, New Zealand, Japan, Australia, Thailand...) and others poor (Belgium, Sweden, France, UK, USA, Italy, Spain) but most sort of fall in that ballpark of the order of magnitude of 100 deaths per million. Nobody has had multiple thousands of deaths per million. At an IFR of about 1%, you'd expect at least a few thousand deaths per million before herd immunity drove R below 1 (if such a thing is even possible).
One of the depressing things is how policy independent the excess deaths have been, outside of some very few countries.
__________________ The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. -Eugene Wigner
That's sad but actually somewhat refreshing to hear. From what I've absorbed in my information bubble I've come to believe that I'd be better off almost anywhere else in the world.
That's sad but actually somewhat refreshing to hear. From what I've absorbed in my information bubble I've come to believe that I'd be better off almost anywhere else in the world.
You still might be; it just might be by a factor of 4 or 5 rather than 10 or 100.
And you can certainly find hotspots - Lombardy, or New York or New Jersey, or Madrid. If you're in one of those places, yeah. New Jersey and New York are both pushing 2k deaths per million, and might well go higher still...
Also what JoeP says.
__________________ The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. -Eugene Wigner
Maybe the main thing the article is trying to suggest is that countries' success is related to how well people trusted their govt's rules (which relates a lot to how well they are explained ... which in the case of the UK ... is getting steadily worse).
Quote:
The influential German scientist Christian Drosten put it like this ahead of this month's World Health Summit in Berlin: "There are already speeches celebrating German success but it's not very clear where that comes from. We have moved with exactly the same measures as others. We didn't do anything particularly well, we just did it sooner."
But he is not giving his country enough credit. Doing the right thing sooner instead of pfaffing around Boris Pfaffel Johnson style could be the biggest factor in how successful countries have been.
someone who should have fucking known better got through our system of covid screening et al, and likely showed up at a clinic I work at with covid symptoms.
Fucking all to hell. WHY I MONTHS OF THIS SHIT FOR THIS DOUCHE TO EFF IT THE FUCK UP
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Ishmaeline of Domesticity drinker of smurf tears
Are you guys still on this? The election is almost over and then this nonsense about being afraid of the common cold will be all over.
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What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. ... The origin of myths is explained in this way.
>What happens when you refuse to wear a mask in the Italian senate.>
Are they not spreading the virus through that close contact violent endeavour?
Lots of heavy breathing there ... seems counter productive to slowing the spread of the virus, but certainly seems productive to hasten the spread of fear and violence.
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What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. ... The origin of myths is explained in this way.
Re: Winnie the Flu
Linear Mode
