shoshin

A good case for a flattened curve.

I love Indian food and Ate freely in most of India but Kathmandu had a different vibe. I of course had many meals without silverware. Trivandrum, the Indian spelling for which is many more syllables, is nice. I went there on a trip where my whole family joined me. We spent a very memorable Christmas in a nice hotel on the Indian Ocean in nearby Kovalam. My daughter was 12 at the time—great fun and memories, particularly the Santa Claise that wore a rubber mask and looked a little like a Richard Nixon bank robber.

I didn't mean to make you upset. We have been there so you know that the people you and I deal with in India are not among the 800B living on less than $2 per day. The Indian middle class has access to some of the niceties of western civilization and lives a life that we in the US would somewhat recognize. I don't know all of your experiences but if they resemble mine, there is a wealth of human compassion in India, but strangely I found it often absent from higher classes regarding lower. That's not a universal statement but some of the things I heard people say were uncomfortable. I have not been to Mumbai. It's a big hole in my India travels. There's a fun book set in Mumbai with a loose relation to a true story called Shantaram. It gave me my best Indian curse word. Been to the others, with Delhi and Bangalore as my most frequented, but always travel on the weekends to other places just to see them. If you can get yourself to Amritsar to see the Golden Temple (and also watch the nearby famous Waggah border ceremony), I highly recommend it. You can do it in a weekend. I found the Golden Temple to be a pretty moving place and the langar there to be equally so. I also took a good (and really strange) weekend trip to Katmandu. As my Indian friends said to me, "Why did you go there? That's like India was 40 years ago." Some amazing Buddhist temples there but even I, who eat almost everything when I travel, was a little more cautious in Katmandu, and stuck with cooked veg options (not because I thought they'd serve me cat...just didn't trust the cleanliness) and drank mostly beer (which is not usually something I prefer).

I know a lot about India and have been many times. India is less than half the size of the continental US. It has a gazillion more cultures and diversity than us. And how are you going to compare the middle class of India to the US...ignore the 800,000,000 people who live on less than $2 per day? I assume you're just trolling because you're not giving any data, so good on you: You got me!

I dunno, their population density, population overall, the fact that they have 1 billion people living below the lowest poverty line that the poorest person in America could even imagine, abominable healthcare, negligible government control and rule compliance, poor hygiene on average, poor nutrition, less weather variation (yes I know they have mountains and a little zone of cool places). Off the top of my head and by the way, I LOVE India. But it ain't comparable to America unless you can carve out its 300M middle class people and make them not live with the other 1B people and spread them out over a larger area. Then you might have an OK comparison, though you'd still have more cultural differences to acocunt for than European countries. Come on man: The European countries are clearly the best comparison. If it makes you feel better, lump the continental giants together for comparison's sake. They are still doing better. Brazil might be the top of the list after them.

You guys have got to be kidding about India.

Ok, so does that mean Magox will stop comparing Sweden to the US? I think we learn a lot from looking at the way other countries have acted and fared, and they learn from us. One of the reasons I expect us to get back to normal faster is because different countries took so many different approaches both in policy and medicine. I can't compare a European country to the US but you think India is a good comparison. Okey dokey then.

Mid may, the 7-day avg looks to be at 37. Yesterday...maybe 34. We're talking low numbers but it's only lower since the peak. Not trending lower in the last month but level, unless you want to make a big deal of the cliff-like descent (!) from 37 to 34 as "clearly trending lower." And if that's your position, I guess we're arguing about the clarity of the trend from 37 to 34 indicating some great improvement.

You're a regular fountain of bad information. Hospitalizations are also pretty level, rising in the last week. I'm more sympathetic to your point of view than you think, but you need to accept that not all the data is peachy.

You see I posted Florida there, eh?

Deaths trail cases (not sure they will in this case...can only watch) but what you said if true at all, is only barely true. Looks pretty level since mid-May, with low overall deaths in general.

Another 2600+ cases in Florida. We can spin the Florida case jumps all we want but let's be honest: We all wish they were level to declining. Or they got amazingly good at case-tracing in the last 5 days.

I didn't post for the overall counts, but the trendline as I noted several times. I couldn't find the 330-million-person western hemisphere country to compare the US too, so I chose one of the free countries of continental Europe that has almost our exact testing/capita, and even suggested that Spain could be used to make the same comparison (though I didn't chose it because their testing/capita is better than ours). If you think there is another country that provides a better comparison, please feel free to share it. If you combine DE, ES, FR, and IT, you will end up with trendlines that similarly decline faster than the US. It's something I observe and hope that we resemble their path downwards as a nation soon.

Posting data is not misleading and I noted EXACTLY the point you made. I am wondering when and/or if we will follow the trendline in a place like Italy as we reopen. I don't know--no one does.

That's not your original point but OK. Erm...I said, "I hope that at some point, we follow the trends of those places, and suspect we are regionally similar to Italy in the NE states," The real test is coming now and in the next few months with the reopening statistics. And the next biger (IMO) test of how we handle this comes this fall especially into November. I expect us to be able to manage.

Uhh, no. Here's what I said: "Our trend line has been slower to decline than theirs (see the guy who faxed in the graph from the NYT yesterday) but it's still promising that those countries have yet to see rises in deaths on reopening." Compare Italy for example in deaths and cases (you could pick Spain too but I picked Italy because their testing per capita is almost identical to ours). You'll note the trend line for the US decline in deaths has a shallower slope, and the line for cases is not similar at all. I hope that at some point, we follow the trends of those places, and suspect we are regionally similar to Italy in the NE states, but cannot as a country follow the trend because we have areas falling while other rise. It's too early to predict that we will follow these countries on reopening but I hope we get to a curve that looks like theirs. to the US: And then cases:

Lighten up Francis. I know the Internet move is to flex in an argument like I just insulted your mom and children but I didn't. I just poked fun at you. Have a beer or puff or whatever eases your mind. We could create a better environment here. I engage your arguments, and ignore many other posters because you actually try to bring reason to the table and don't just parrot inflammatory tweets (usually!). Reasonable people should be able to argue without being ****heads. The fact that you just dedicated 2 new arguments to explaining why % positive is not a good measure is a good evolution of your position. You're right that contract tracing and increased infections for young people may also be driving up % positive, making it even less useful than it was getting a month ago. It's something to track but increasingly tells less of a story about prevalence than actual cases, and tells even less of a story about our actual problems (or not) than hospitalization. Hospitalization usage remains the most important (and hardest data point to tease out annoyingly) data point if it rises too high. And at some point if we can get a good ratio of cases detected to hospitalization, we can really direct resources in a surgical way, i.e., we could see a spike up of cases in a geography and predict with some certainty how many hospitalizations we can expect in the next two weeks. We are nowhere near that level of accuracy yet but we may be there in just a couple months. We can obviously watch fatality rate too--that seems to be in decline, which is fantastic. But that's a trailing indicator. Speaking of which, the number of fatalities in the European countries is almost hard to believe these days. In the sub 50 deaths per day in Spain and Italy. Our trend line has been slower to decline than theirs (see the guy who faxed in the graph from the NYT yesterday) but it's still promising that those countries have yet to see rises in deaths on reopening. India though, ugh. The news on the ground there is beyond ugly. 2000 per day is way low. June is by far the scorching hottest month in Delhi (I have been in Delhi in June a few times and it.is.horrible), but many other factors weigh against that making any difference, not the least of which being: It's not possible to socially distance in India and 115 degree heat does not get people outside--but the opposite.

So percent positive is no longer a useful stat? Good to have you on board!

The Sabres spent 10 years grooming a guy to be GM. In those 10 years, he's learned all the lessons you can absorb from holding multiple positions in a perennial losing organization. Kevyn, I want the best for you and us, so good luck. But in general, WTF?

He cured Covid with HCQ and now he's cured AIDS. Science matters President Trump!

I have long-suspected this is misleading because NYC has a large older population that lives in nursing-home-like environments (densely packed housing) that aren't called nursing homes.

Breaking news: Botterill out Me: I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE WHO THEY HIRE. HOPE IS ON THE WAY! SO EXCITED!!!!! Statement: Kevyn Adams is the new GM. Me:

I do, but I don't think you do. You can have rising cases along with rising tests (and you can also have falling cases and rising tests) so your attempt to flip around Trump's stupidity into a proof of the opposite doesn't always work. Can't justify his stupid here.

Could be but it's not as straightforward as "If we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases, if any." That's a whole different level of stupid.

One of the first things I've seen with promise for late-stage Covid patients. Pretty good-sized study here too, and a widely available drug (at least it was before this study!). My medical friends who treat this, as well as the stuff I've read, have termed the ventilator as the Hail Mary moment for Covid. Not many good outcomes if you have to go on one.