Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

This is a really great thread. It's long, but I recommend clicking on the tweet and reading it. It's from an infectious disease expert at Harvard who has been doing modeling for the federal government on the coronavirus. He basically says that the Trump administration is back to painting rosy, misleading pictures and goes into quite a bit of detail of what we need to do moving forward.

 

Joined? I’ve had to follow NY events due to my company having several jobs there. Cuomo never wanted to close the state down. He refused to do it for a long time. When he did he started with only 50% of employees, then bumped it up 75%, then 100%, all of which had large exceptions. Economics was the primary driver of him taking a reserved approach from the start.

 

Well, that is interesting. I stand corrected.

 

IMO a must read!

 

Threadreader link to the twitter thread.
Thread by @mlipsitch: Tonight #DeborahBirx stated that models anticipating large-scale transmission of COVID-19 do not match reality on the ground. Our modeling (…

 

So when do all these mandatory everythings begin to show that they are doing anything? All i see everyday is more headlines of more deaths and more infected.

Really doesnt appear to be having any effect at this time.

 

I'm not sure that there is any way we could truly detach economic considerations from non-economic human ones. It's not quite pitting one vs the other but they are the two primary considerations.

Shut things down too early and too much, you cause far more economic harm than you might have otherwise.

Shut things down too late and not enough, you not only cause economic harm but you increase the destructive effects that the outbreak is causing because than it probably spreads even more and you then have a public health(care) catastrophe.

Worst of all, we still don't know how far it has spread because our testing lags behind, which means it's still very much out of control.

 

Not sure anyone can say but I'd read the twitter feed provided by lawyer and demosthenes. Lipsitch is really informative.

As it is right now, we are experiencing the immediate fallout over decisions related to shutting things down, and we have only just started to feel the negative effects of this rapid rise in positive cases and deaths.

How far it goes remains to be seen, but whatever uncertain ends there are the goal is to limit the height of peak; bend the curve.

I am not optimistic that we get this under control in two weeks since the spread of this disease is wholly reliant on human interaction.

 

It doesn’t mean he didn’t care about people’s safety and well-being. There’s simply a natural tension between safety measures and economic harm/inconvenience. My state governor still isn’t locking down the state and she’s a progressive with a rising number of cases and three of our neighbors have locked down.

I actually agree with your point that his regrets are over the manner of the safety precautions, not economic impacts. His tiered approach to closing things showed he evaluated the impacts at each stage and felt he had no other choice. I don’t look at his statements with that history in mind as potential regret how they handled the shutdown from an economic perspective.

 

It appears so. The number of times he used it incorrectly was indicative of an apparent inability to comprehend the meaning of what he reads. Its disappearance from his everyday lexicon in his posting on Too Hot is a hopeful sign he is perhaps teachable. One can hope.

 

Birx history gives her the benefit of the doubt.

 

I wonder if any of these people with WHO, CDC and that did reports for govts of countries as part of this fear hysteria will even apologize for being the ones to cause untold carnage to the economies. I am hoping a few are humble enough to but of course the ones in on the plan won't and many others will just try and claim they saved everyone when in some places they made things worse in reality.

 

He uses his bully pulpit to create a reality that doesn’t exist. Michigan is a hot spot. Doctor letter there circulating about triaging sock people. Not even trying. He simply lies. He is a con man with the best job for a con man. Sad his people believe him. But, it must be working, because he just keeps lying. He is turning his pressers into campaign speeches. The terrible thing is that if he had followed the South Korea approach from the beginning, we would not have the shutdowns like we do today. Or the exposure of health care workers to disease. Or effective “death panels.” That would have costany billions. But not trillions and a full economic shutdown. But understanding the disease spread and how to stem it and reduce the exponential growth is complex. His insistence this is not a national problem is passing the buck and sick. Trump is evil.

 

That twitter poster is either lying or blatantly ignorant of the disease or it’s course. Cases that develop today were infections 2 weeks ago. So the shutdown 10 days ago would not be showing effect.

 

The links say exactly what I am saying. Because I quoted them directly, subject to the 4 paragraph limit. The “different group” is not an accurate way to describe the other group. The different group is at oxford and their disease study is later and concludes earlier disease exposure and lower infection rates. And my post quoted the Oxford analysis too. Suggest reading about what they did. Which is part of the story. As for Ferguson, he is right that the lockdown is slowing disease spread.

 

Hard to say.

2 weeks is the supposed incubation period to start showing symptoms, but people are taking weeks after that to die.

So if we are following basic logic, from the moment you “shut things down”, you will have at least a 2-4 week lagged increase reflecting previous infections, before maybe things start leveling off if you’ve successfully decreased NEW infections.

 

One for the deep thinkers. The CDC maintains an influenza report for 2020 and if you visit the site will see dramatic numbers and that the death rate stands at 7.3 per 100,000 which is .2 below epidemic.
Now I have mentioned this before but what if we are actually blending statistics between the virus and the flu? What if possibly the flu has a death percentage that is conveniently or simply due to lack of deducting the cause being parlayed to the virus counts.
Why oh why are the flu numbers not being released as an equal to the virus?
I think its realistic to assume that the numbers are not as provided and that the flu holds a greater responsibility than given credit for to include adding to the virus complications.

 

Related to your point:
Fact check: Trump utters series of false and misleading claims at coronavirus briefing - CNNPolitics

 

She gave false information yesterday about hospitals not triaging people for COVID 19 and other serious and life threatening ailments.