Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Seriously tell me where you get your news if you are going to openly attack others potential sources.

 

I'm afraid that Trump is having a destructive influence on the CDC, among pretty much the rest of government.

 

I remember your posting a May 26th projection, though I thought it was for 100k. Even though it's not, we will reach 100k a day before.

I can't say with exact numbers what winning and a great response is to this pandemic, but it's certainly not 100k deaths in three months.

 

Lightening?

 

my thought too, but such an odd pattern.

 

When I originally did those numbers, I thought we would see a decreasing stair pattern. A falling rise and run. It appears to be more of a gentle decreasing slope.
How much has reopening and less social distancing affected the fall, I have no idea.
I just know that 100,000 and counting in 100 days would tell you this is not the flu.
1/3 of world deaths are in the US and Brazil will pass western Europe.

 

Trump imposes travel ban on Brazil but like the other bans it is only on foreign nationals. So any American abroad can come back as well as anyone traveling from S.America except Brazil.
So many loopholes that a plane can fly right through it.

White House imposes coronavirus travel ban on Brazil

 

What is just stunning to me is that there is still no program for enforced quarantining for new entrants into the country from hotspots if they are US citizens or legal residents or, in this case, related to US citizens. No testing at airports for them either. It's amazing how easy it still is to walk into this country and just walk around compared to other countries in the world, where you get a test and then quarantined (I know three people that have recently traveled from here to three different countries and all are currently sitting in enforced quarantines, 2 of them after testing negative at the airport (the other wasn't tested but screened)).

 

It's all just security theater.

 

It was a thoughtful and reasonable projection, about the best I've seen on this board. It's why I went back and brought it up

We can't exactly predict this anyway (it'd be more @ luck to be spot on), but the things that bounce around in my head are these:

1) social distancing and shut downs bent the curve
2) mitigation measures are imperfect, and if we were far better prepared and sooner, mitigation could have happened more systematically
3) contagious virus can be unpredictable and piecemeal mitigation measures leave us vulnerable
4) a resurgence can occur and things can get worse in the future, maybe multiple times, unless a vaccine is developed

*I've left all the explicit political criticisms out, though they matter greatly

 

IFR? Infection Fatality Rate?

 

And another moment of strong Presidential leadership in the face of a global pandemic. Trump trying to bully North Carolina into committing to letting them pack a building full of people that traveled in from around the country who will then travel back out around the country, because that doesn't sound like an epidemiological nightmare or anything.

Trump threatens to move GOP convention over North Carolina's coronavirus restrictions

Here is the CDC guidance on the matter:

But he wants them to commit to breaking his own CDC's guidance.

 

Yes, the percentage of infections that result in death. As opposed to the much easier to calculate CFR, case fatality rate, which is the percentage of confirmed cases that result in death.

IFR will be less accurate because there are more estimated numbers in that calculation. But it is the important number when trying to predict total deaths.

An IFR of .26% leaves us with 500-600k dead (assuming 60-70% infection before herd immunity shuts down the spread). 0.8% is 1.5-1.8 million, 1% is 1.9-2.3 million fatalities for herd immunity.

Those little differences add up when you are dealing with a population of 328 million.

 

There should be no international travel (other than essential travel), it's asinine how are are doing this. I'd think there are very few American's dumb enough to travel to Brazil right now, but I'm also sure the number isn't zero. The problem is the people irresponsible enough to travel into a virus hotspot, probably also aren't going to quarantine themselves when they get back.

At some point, when the rest of the world starts actually getting things under control - if they want to keep i that way - they are going to have to ban U.S. travelers from their countries.

 

You keep saying 1 in a million like it's gospel. Where are you getting this data?

I didn't believe it, so I tried to corroborate your claim. Here's the CDC page with a chart breaking down deaths by age group on a weekly basis (there's a grid view where you can get actual numbers)

COVID-19 Provisional Counts - Weekly Updates by Select Demographic and Geographic Characteristics

Manually adding the groups up to age 24, I come up with 88 cumulative deaths. Unless you are trying to say that 88 million Americans age 0-24 have been infected, you want to revise your statement.

If we look at age distribution, the 0-24 group makes up almost 1/3 of the population. Let's assume they are similarly represented in covid infected. By the official count, that would suggest under 600k infected. That's more like a 1 in 7k chance of dying if infected.

So let's presume we are grossly under counting actual cases,and the real number is 10x higher. Not sure I'd go that, high, but let's consider it anyway. That would be 1 in 70k. Still a far cry from 1 in a million.

The 1 in a million you keep repeating is based on disingenuous math to create a talking point. They took the 88 deaths as the numerator, and as the denominator used the total us population for that age group. They ignore the fact that the virus has not run its course, and many more stand to get infected. If the true risk was capped at 1 in a million, I think we'd feel much differently about it.

 

And just think how well that will go over with our compassionate and understanding population.

 

No international travel is a fairly easy way to handle it. The better but certainly more difficult way is to enforce quarantines and mandate testing. I know somebody in quarantine in South Korea right now and it is incredible how much further along they still are in isolating and testing. Tested at the airport, where you sat for 6 hours waiting for the result. If positive, they send you to a special isolation spot. If negative, you get a choice: isolate at a hotel of the government's choosing, with appropriate security monitoring the quarantine, or download tracking apps and agree not to leave a room at your destination. The government will then drop food and other supplies at your door for those two weeks.

I agree that our government has no capability of working such a program at this point and stopping international travel would probably be the only thing that we could do.