TPS

Interesting piece on the virus and differences in "types" of Trump supporters. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/03/why-some-early-maga-adopters-went-against-trumps-virus-doctrine

Washington State follow up? Nope, not a peep. In the first article he used examples to show how to estimate the number of true cases since testing was so limited. He used Washington, SF, and a few countries. Unfortunately, it still took Washington State a long time to get testing ramped up--it's only been the last week. Since he is focused on predicting situations for countries, I'm not sure what your issue is here? Diamond Princess? Clearly a statistical anomaly. But Italy isn't. He used DP also as an example for estimating the CFR, which he said would be between 1-6%. Again, not sure what the issue is here? My view is DP is a good example of how to keep it contained by extreme quarantining of people, as everyone was confined to their cabins, which limited the cases. He lumped the Swiss as one of the countries who were late in responding, without noting that the country has negligible deaths from CV. Based on the article, he was predicting what would happen to countries based on their responses. He predicted the growth in the # of cases for the swiss would accelerate because of their late response. As of the date of his prediction, 3/5, Swiss had 120 cases and 1 death; currently they have 8500 cases and 118 deaths. I don't know what your definition of negligible is...? Which brings me to the biggest problem of painting this virus with as broad brush as possible. As we're about to finish the third month in a pandemic, clear patterns are emerging despite what people like Puevo want you to believe, and that pattern is much closer to Leavitt's & Ginn's theories. Culture, demographics and climate all play a major role in the spread, and that's why you are seeing an explosion in Lombardy & NYC (Australia is not a problem btw). Other areas of the Italy are faring much better, and don't get me started on NYS north of Orange County compared to the NY metro area. Even the NY's first major outbreak in New Rochelle appears to be abating, similarly to what happened in Washington. But that's not NYC because people are on top of one another, and they're stupid. I witnessed what Cuomo was talking about first hand yesterday. All along the West Side, it was as if there's no danger lurking. He states that demographics and climate to play a roll. Very few people are getting airtime to propose commonsense solutions. Hype sells. We keep getting bombarded by stories of Chinese, South Korean and Singapore lockdowns, without getting much details of what happened. Reality is none of these countries truly locked down. And here's where experience with SARS and their culture came in to curb the spread. EVERYONE obeyed common social norms, they wore masks, they kept their distance and they washed their hands. Lo and behold, the spread slowed down and spread. Not so hard. Avoid direct contact and keep washing yourself. Regarding how SKorea did it, he linked to this video in the second article which explains it. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-51897979/coronavirus-south-korea-seeing-a-stabilising-trend Regarding Singapore, he linked to this article: https://academic.oup.com/jtm/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jtm/taaa039/5804843 Neither SK or Singapore needed to use lockdowns, so I"m not sure where that statement comes from? Regarding China, did you not see videos of their lockdown? It seems you are putting your own spin on his basic analysis. Here's what he is saying in my view. 1. Countries that acted quickly to limit the spread (as described in the above two pieces) experienced low CFRs and for the most part number of cases. SKorea had the issue of on super-predator underlying a significant number of cases. That CFR is was between 0.5 - 1.0%. 2. Countries that reacted late will experience exponential growth and higher CFR, between 3-5%. This is due to the healthcare system being overwhelmed, not the actual death rate from the virus itself, as in #1. 3. Countries in the latter group, if they act fast and use extreme measures (what he calls the hammer) can reduce the death rate. It's all about getting R0 near or below 1. 4. In article 2, he puts together a hypothetical chart 15 which looks at different measures that reduce R0. The first two points listed are climate and pop density. He also tries to provide estimates of economic impact from the various strategies, and he says policy makers need to weigh the cost-benefits of implementing. Maybe we read different articles? 5. His conclusion, based on the Chinese evidence of extreme quarantine, is that it would take about 2 weeks of the extreme measures to get us close to 1. However, this strategy also means that many people will most likely get it in the next season, but he says that buys us time to prepare and we won't have to take extreme measures. I've seen criticisms that his estimate of 2 weeks is too short. So, from what I see, he admits that climate, pop density, and demographics all impact the spread and therefore the CFR, so he covers your criticisms. It seems to me, all the countries that delayed their responses are experiencing exponential growth as predicted, including Switzerland. My guess is that it will take 3-4 weeks for us to reduce the spread because so many people are #######s who don't heed the quarantine, your "culture" variable I guess... If the bill being discussed was set up to keep people employed by government support, then the economy could recover more quickly. Unfortunately, most of it seems to be a corporate boost controlled by the Munchkin, much like what Paulson's original bailout proposal was.

Cases in Italy declined 15% compared to yesterday. Hopefully they’re turning the corner.

Quarantine life...

Never waste a good crisis...

So Fox news is not part of the media?

All deficit spending is essentially helicopter money. At least he doesn't get into petty squabbles with reporters... of course, you guys would've criticized him for wasting money on ventilators back then anyway.

Should've added, the issue is we just don't know yet. Regarding his second article, he suggests extreme measures would take 2-3 weeks to get the R0 factor down. However, with fewer people infected, we could expect another burst late fall. That would give us the time to prepare though.

Pueyo links to an article on temps and virus, which suggests there "may" be an impact. Looking at the data for Australia and Brazil, however, both are on exponential growth paths currently.

There was no preventing the virus, yes. However, your response, or lack, will determine if you end up like Italy or China/Korea. We had an opportunity to be on the right side after shutting down flights to China, but it was wasted.

Not really. Yes.

The lack of testing early on, what I was harping on weeks ago, is why we got to the point of taking extreme measures now. But, yes, it’s all about saving lives now.

I'd be wary of that if you don't know the veracity of the site. I'm sure people are taking advantage of the situation. I'm more interested in your opinion of the second article when you have the time.

If you want a to read an analysis that has been vetted by experts in the field, try this one. The first is his early analysis, the second is about responses and their impact, the more important one. https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

That was a quote from the guy himself, being just a guy... I did not discredit it based on who he was, I provided one dramatic piece of data he provided but ignored, I assume because it didn't fit his preconceived conclusion?. There are articles by knowledgeable people on this that also have input from experts, as opposed to "this guy" who posted his analysis and opinion on the existing data without any input from experts on epidemiology. He obviously has an admitted bias, which fits the bias of the majority of posters here, some of whom then act like he's an expert in the field.

From my experience, that is not the case.

Spotrac has the estimates for the draft picks, Andy currently the top 51 salary cut off is $675k, which means the draft picks will raise the cap by about $300k. Essentially, no impact.

I was taking hydroxychloroquine aka plaquenil for my rheumatoid arthritis by prescription. Are you sure there's an "off the shelf" version? I assume you mean non-prescription?

I'll save us both some time and just copy some of the criticisms in the comments to this piece... This article is deeply flawed, both in its analysis of the disease and in its analysis of international response to the disease. This is a response to every problem I could find. Flaws in his analysis of the disease: He argues that for considering virus spread on a national per-capita basis instead of absolute as a better way to account for the spread of the disease. This doesn’t make sense to me because coronavirus doesn’t take population size into account as in continues its exponential growth. Let’s take a parallel example. Instead of cornovirus spreading through a population, let’s consider e coli bacteria spreading in a Petri dish. The size of the Petri dish does not seem relevant to measuring the rate of e coli population growth until you get to a point where the e coli has covered the Petri dish and there’s no more room to expand. The same applies for coronavirus. He argues that a 10% per day growth rate is acceptable. At 10% growth rate per day, a virus that has infected 1000 people as of today would infect the entire population of the earth in 168 days. If that virus killed 1% of hosts, that would be over 75 million people. Corona has a higher death rate than that and has already infected many more people. 10% daily growth rate is not acceptable. “Among cases in people under age 19, only 2.5% developed severe disease” — this is still a lot of people, especially if we fail to flatten the curve and they all get sick at once He argues that viral infections are declining, then points to the example of China where decline in infections followed extremely harsh government action unlikely in Western countries “~95% of people who are tested aren’t positive” this is to be expected early in a viral outbreak and doesn’t imply anything about the actual potential of the virus to spread. “the fatality rate and severity rate will decline as more people are tested and more mild cases are counted” — not exactly true: the measured fatality and severity rates will decline as testing capacity increases because we will be able to test more borderline cases, but testing will have no impact on the actual fatality rate Argues that per-capita hospital beds doesn’t seem to be correlated to current fatality rates at the moment, and gives six examples of countries with highly divergent approaches and in different stages of viral infection. These conflicting variables void his statement about correlation between per-capita hospital beds and fatality rates. Saying anything meaningful about this would require a more detailed analysis. Other than these inaccuracies, he mostly paints a pretty accurate picture of a bleak situation, but tries his best to put a positive spin on the terrifying numbers his graphs portray. Flaws in his analysis of the response to COVID: Then he argues against draconian measures to reduce viral spread (using lots of scare quotes), while also repeatedly holding up China (the most draconian of all) as an example where viral spread fell. He argues that there is little evidence of disease spread in schools but this is to be expected because most places with high infection rates have closed schools. Is he implying that we should make our schools into Petri dishes to test this theory? He points to Singapore and South Korea as examples of societies that have remained running while also controlling the virus, but these countries started testing and other prevention mechanisms very early in the spread of the disease. We were not equipped like they were and it’s now too late for us to catch up. He argues that “we will spend more money on “shelter-in-place” than if we completely rebuilt our acute care and emergency capacity.” This is an interesting point but not relevant — even if we could spend this money as he seems to suggest, we wouldn’t have time to build any hospitals before we reach peak viral infection rates. Also even if we were able to instantly double our hospital capacity that might or might not be enough beds anyway. “big government came barrelling in like a bull in a china shop claiming they could solve COVID-19” — not really, actually big government in the US and China systematically downplayed the issue for critical weeks and thereby put their populations and economies at greater risk. “Let Americans be free to be a part of the solution, calling us to a higher civic duty to help those most in need and protect the vulnerable. Not sitting in isolation like losers.” — he’s calling for volunteer participation, which is admirable and something that many including are advocating alongside social distancing. This is a false dichotomy. He misleadingly summarizes this yahoo article: “75% of Americans are scared not of COVID-19 but what it is doing to our society.” The article never compares fear about government response to fear of COVID as he suggests https://finance.yahoo.com/news/harris-poll-on-americans-and-coronavirus-104636493.html This points to a general trend in his approach — saying “numbers don’t lie” then proceeding to state mistruths or misdirections about the numbers he throws out. Like other commentators, I don’t want to do a full point-by-point, but here are some examples: 1. Author’s claim: “According to Nobel Laureate and biophysicist Michael Levitt, the infection rate is declining: ‘Every coronavirus patient in China infected on average 2.2 people a day — spelling exponential growth that can only lead to disaster. But then it started dropping, and the number of new daily infections is now close to zero.’” First, it started dropping because China took draconian measures. The lockdown began nearly overnight on January 23rd. The provincial government in Hubei began enforcing round-the-clock “closed management” of all residential complexes, banning the private use of cars, forbidding residents from leaving their apartments without permission and requiring purchasers of cold medicine to disclose their temperature, address and identification number at the pharmacy. Citizens were also financially rewarded for reporting those who fail to follow quarantine orders. (https://www.npr.org/.../life-during-coronavirus-what...). The real conclusion? The infection rate declined because the government essentially locked people in their homes. To be clear, I’m not saying we should do this in the U.S. But the infection rate didn’t just magically or naturally decline. Second, the author left out this great tidbit from his source: Dr. Levitt said, “Currently, I am most worried about the U.S. It must isolate as many people as possible to buy time for preparations. Otherwise, it can end up in a situation where 20,000 infected people will descend on the nearest hospital at the same time and the healthcare system will collapse.” (https://www.calcalistech.com/.../0,7340,L-3800632,00.html). 2. Author’s Claim: “Children and Teens aren’t at risk” Just because children and teens are less susceptible to infection and severity doesn’t mean they are not at risk. On Severity: 90% of cases were mild or moderate — great. But 6% of children still developed severe or critical illness. (https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-children-serious...). That number’s too high for me to be comfortable with. On infection rate: The worry is less that children will spread it to other children, full-stop (although, see above, 6% is still a dangerous number). The concern is that children will spread it to their own families and to folks who are more prone to serious illness (which, strikingly, the author AGAIN recognizes in a later section: “[children] are more likely to expose older vulnerable adults as multi-generational homes are more common.”) 3. Author’s Claim: “What about asymptomatic spread?” (suggesting it isn’t a problem) Even if what the author says is true — that 10% of infections come from people who don’t yet show symptoms, and 1.2% of cases were truly asymptomatic — that is still a problem. The median incubation period is about 5 days (https://annals.org/.../incubation-period-coronavirus...). And 2.5% of people still have not shown symptoms after 11.5 days (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32150748). In the author’s world where things are pretty much business as usual, the median person has 5 days to spread the virus to other people. Again, that’s why, if left unchecked, the virus could spread exponentially and cripple the world. 4. Author’s Claim: “Watch the Bell Curve… Both the CDC and WHO are optimizing virality and healthcare utilization, while ignoring the economic shock to our system. Both organizations assume you are going to get infected, eventually, and it won’t be that bad.” Again, I am amazed at the author’s ability to recognize facts (“Flattening the curve’s focus is a shock to the healthcare system which can increase fatalities due to capacity constraints”), yet completely leap to contrary conclusions. First, a peaked Bell Curve WILL lead to more fatalities, it is not just a possibility. (see the graph https://healthblog.uofmhealth.org/.../flattening-curve...). Second, to the extent the criticism is that this concept isn’t being weighed against economic harms: (i) WHO is a health organization, not an economic organization. Sure, WHO didn’t do a detailed weighing of the public health effects of “flattening the curve” against the economic harms of allowing the curve to peak. But the author didn’t either (nor has anyone else as far as I’ve seen.) (ii) In the absence of such a study, I imagine the economic loss from 1–2 months of isolation is far more favorable than the economic loss in a world where half the world gets sick (https://www.cnbc.com/.../coronavirus-will-infect-half-the...) and 55,000 Americans are killed in just a single day (peak in mid-June https://www.theatlantic.com/.../how-we-beat.../608389/). Consider the first visual the author uses under the section “1% of cases will be severe.” If, left unchecked, half of Americans get the virus, then 81% of this people will “just” be sick with a mild case. That alone is horrible for economic productivity. But even worse, 14% are severe cases (requiring hospitalization which, again, gets worse when it’s happening to everyone at the same time) 5% are critical cases, and 2.3% of people are killed. Even if a fruitful economy is the #1 goal of humanity, this kind of infection scenario would absolutely devastate our economy. When you also consider that we, as a society, should probably protect our citizens from illness and death, the balancing test has a clear winner. To sum up: “Everything we do before a pandemic will seem alarmist. Everything we do after will seem inadequate.” — Michael Leavitt, former HHS Secretary under President George W. Bush I don’t get the point of this kind of skepticism. Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi are on the same side here. All the world’s leading epidemiologists agree that this is a crisis, that severe actions need to be taken to prevent the spread of this virus. Does the author think this is some sort of conspiracy? Some sort of cover-your-ass political paranoia? I say we listen to the experts (who have no incentive to crash the world economy, by the way) instead of the 2010 econ grad. 2 2 claps

DR already posted this Bman. It's some guy's blog, who says himself that he's "a nobody." I prefer to listen to experts. I highlighted the most important criticism that he seems to completely ignore. However, I can give you several other problems with his analysis if you'd like? Or just read some of the responses to his piece.

Ummmm...you're basically supporting why it is so important to reduce the spread, their health system has become so overwhelmed that they can't provide the care that would save many of these people--that's the point of taking extreme measures.

You are correct about the States, which is why they used the data from China. The total deaths in the US are 300 so far, so not sure where you got those numbers.

Really, you're linking some guy's blog post? I wish he would've started with this paragraph instead of ending... I'll focus on one point. There is a figure posted that compares "case fatality rates" for the flu vs the virus but he doesn't really address the dramatic difference that screams out from that figure--the CFR is 2.3% for the virus vs. 0.1% for the flue. There is an interval given that states the CFR for the virus is somewhere between 12 and 24 times higher. Let's see, nanker posted earlier today that 80,000 people died from the flu, which makes that interval 960,000 to 1.92 million....

And yet this ignorance persists.... The flu has a contagion factor of about 1.3, each person infects another 1.3, which is a very slow progression; CV has a factor of 2-2.5, which is what generates an exponential expansion of infected. If that number doesn't change, the number of deaths could hit millions. It's taken about 3 weeks for NYC to max out its hospital capacity. Please stop posting this nonsense.

I've said elsewhere things will never go back to normal, and I agree, along with that, the Dow will never hit its previous peak in my lifetime (I'm assuming I make it through this). What I am pointing to is the ability to prevent the economy from going on a downward spiral once we get past this thing, which may be a year from now. As for velocity, yes it is a reflection of spending, but it is simply a number that is calculated from other values (GDP and money supply). The behavioral variable is the spending decisions out of income received.