Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

That seems like a perfectly normal and rational thing for the president to say...

 

Not really. Either the infection rate is higher and the death rate is lower, or the infection rate is lower and the death rate is higher. You still end up with a lot of deaths either way.

 

He really should be removed from office. All we can do is hope that the nation rejects this idiot come November.

 

no. it can be racist, sexist, nationalist, deep state to name a few other boogeymen

 

Very legal & very cool.

 

"I hope someday we can look at today’s meltdown as something to be pitied, rather than condemned. But we don’t have that luxury today. There is too much at stake.

strong stuff

 

Surprisingly, Rural areas without stay at home orders are still stilling rises and spikes.... who'd have guessed?

Heartland hotspots: A sudden rise in coronavirus cases is hitting rural states without stay-at-home orders - CNNPolitics

 

I'd say take caution. Santa Clara might not be representative of the entire US. And while it points to there being more cases than currently known, which was long a concern, it's premature to call the death count low (besides it's not all about the numbers). At best, we can say is that it's lower than the rate based on confirmed cases. We also still don't have proven antivirals (though remdesivir looks promising, among others) or vaccines that would considerably decrease this threat.

 

Glad you mentioned this one WES. I linked it earlier in this tread too and completely forgot. Good call.

 

Not the most informative article I have ever read. Percentages out of context mean whatever the author/reader decides that they mean.

People should at least be willing to acknowledge that population density is a factor in the spread of this virus, and it makes very little sense to issue "stay at home" orders for state like South Dakota, especially since 50% of all their cases are related to one single Chinese own/operated meat processing plant.

Further, it is not a guess, but an understood reality that far more people have been exposed to/ contracted this viral disease than we have come close to counting. The guess is how many. Latest estimates from government officials is that 10x the number of counted cases in this country probably actually exist/existed. The only guess right now is exactly how many.

Despite largely being a shut-in with my wife since the second week of March, I will at least acknowledge that folks in Wyoming and Arkansas and heck, even the western part of North Carolina live in very different environment than I do, where the risk of virus spread is different than where I live.

 

I have said it over and over, shame on us for letting this (person) get elected president. He is a sad reflection on all of us.

 

Jeff, I don't think any of us are claiming 100% accuracy, just pointing out there is better news out there than you are typically seeing.
Even the CNN article was somewhat buried and got no real run on their site.

 

No. If the infection rate is what they show, then this is the flu. That would be huge.

 

No, it wouldn't be the flu. It would have an R0 of at least about 3x or so compared to the flu. And to have this have the same death rate as the flu, if we believe the current estimate of 68,000 deaths through the curve, we would need to believe that 68,000,000 people got the disease while social distancing. Seems highly unlikely.

Extremely hard to explain the hotspots of the disease if the disease is that widespread. We should be having a much more even distribution of death. Too much domestic travel and too little isolation for it to be that concentrated in a few areas.

 

Just based on what we've seen over the last 45 days, we already know this is far worse than the flu.

 

Right. There's still a lot we don't know. But one thing we do know is this is far worse than typical flu.

 

As for news today, DeSantis opened the Duval beaches, and IHME says Florida peaked three days ago, and cut its death projections by 60 percent. Also overall death projections came down to just over 60K from 68. So good news in a lot of ways.

I don't know what to actually buy into in regards to this stuff, but I'm feeling confident that by the middle of summer things will appear to be much more normal than they are right now.

 

Even if COVID-19 had the morbidity rate of the seasonal flu, COVID-19 is still more dangerous. That's because we have 0% immunity in the population for COVID-19, whereas the season flu has a portion of the population who has experienced the strain in the past. For example, most people over 60 weren't at risk for the recent H1N1 outbreak because of past exposure leading to immunity.

We also have vaccines for the flu. Even if they are only 50% effective, with about half the population getting the vaccine, that lowers the RO rate. If more people got the flu vaccine, it would decrease the rate, but that's debate for another thread. With COVID-19, we won't have a vaccine for a while.

Last, we have flu treatments that are tried are true. We're learning more about drug treatments for COVID-19, but there's still a lot more we don't know about the disease than what we do know.

 

can you share your mat that makes this anything like the flu?

flu 0.1% mortality
maybe 10% infection rate during bad years = 30M infection

covid 1% mortality (assuming your best case scenario) = 10x the flu rate
no immunity, no vaccine = 60% infection before any sort of herd immunity = 6x the number of people infected

do you disagree with these numbers?

now apply them to a 330M population and explain to me how this is like the flu again. using numbers please