The Next Pandemic: SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19

[Doc Brown]

1 hour ago, TPS said:

Sweden is not "much lower than other developed countries." It's fifth is deaths per million among countries with 20k or more cases.  Italy and Spain are currently higher because they were hit early and hard.  We'll see if Sweden overtakes them.  

 

The point of a lockdown was to prevent the health system from becoming overwhelmed.  The idea of "flattening the curve" doesn't mean fewer coronavirus cases overall, it means spreading the cases so the health system can accomodate both covid and other serious health issues.  This was the point made in Pueyo's articles. Interestingly he suggested less extreme measures, including masks and social distancing.  Maybe US politicians took more extreme measures due to your focus on culture--they realized many Americans won't adhere to the policies.  

 

Arizona is an interesting case study at the moment.  As cases have increased after re-opening, and reports that ICU facilities are nearing capacity, how should they respond?

I was all for the Swedish model at first.  Now we're getting worse numbers though as Sweden's death rate (47.5 per 100k) is significantly higher than other Scandinavian countries Norway (4.4 per 100k) and Findland (5.8 per 100k).  My thought was at least they'd get to herd immunity but that doesn't seem to be playing out either.  Even their economy isn't much better off compared to other European countries.

Edited June 10, 2020 by Doc Brown

[Buffalo_Gal]

Well that's ok since protesters, rioters, and looters were somehow magically protected by their righteous indignation. ?‍♂️

 

 

[Taro T]

58 minutes ago, Doc Brown said:

I was all for the Swedish model at first.  Now we're getting worse numbers though as Sweden's death rate (47.5 per 100k) is significantly higher than other Scandinavian countries Norway (4.4 per 100k) and Findland (5.8 per 100k).  My thought was at least they'd get to herd immunity but that doesn't seem to be playing out either.  Even their economy isn't much better off compared to other European countries.

 

The thing is, in Sweden, they had planned to selectively protect their elderly and leave most of the rest of the population free to go about their normal lives but it doesn't look like their protections of the elderly were adequate.  (Much like NYC's protections for the elderly turned out to be inadequate though the state was shut down hard.)

 

Should another pathogen with similar potential for death arise, Sweden seems to have shown the general population doesn't need to halt their lives on a dime.  But their protections of the elderly were (or at bare mi in IMO seem woefully) inadequate and we need to look to other examples of what did end up successful to protect those most at risk.  (Not forcing nursing care facilities to accept currently ill patients MIGHT be a good starting point.)

 

 

[3rdnlng]

10 minutes ago, Taro T said:

 

The thing is, in Sweden, they had planned to selectively protect their elderly and leave most of the rest of the population free to go about their normal lives but it doesn't look like their protections of the elderly were adequate.  (Much like NYC's protections for the elderly turned out to be inadequate though the state was shut down hard.)

 

Should another pathogen with similar potential for death arise, Sweden seems to have shown the general population doesn't need to halt their lives on a dime.  But their protections of the elderly were (or at bare mi in IMO seem woefully) inadequate and we need to look to other examples of what did end up successful to protect those most at risk.  (Not forcing nursing care facilities to accept currently ill patients MIGHT be a good starting point.)

 

 

I lost him after he mentioned "Swedish model".

[shoshin]

4 hours ago, GG said:

 

This is a gross misrepresentation.    Cases are rising due to more widespread testing.  The positive results continue to drop significantly.  The number of active cases that require hospitalizations and ICU are falling in states that opened up early!  The death rate is dropping faster than WHO Covid retractions. 

I linked other data on this before. Here’s more  from the state’s largest health system. 
 

 

Your opinions are incorrect. Follow the numbers and frontlines. 

[123719bwiqrb]

11 minutes ago, shoshin said:

I linked other data on this before. Here’s more  from the state’s largest health system. 
 

 

Your opinions are incorrect. Follow the numbers and frontlines. 

 

 

117!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[GG]

3 hours ago, shoshin said:

I linked other data on this before. Here’s more  from the state’s largest health system. 
 

 

Your opinions are incorrect. Follow the numbers and frontlines. 

 

Where is the flashing red in Arizona?  Where is the evidence that Arizona is at the start of exponential growth?  Arizona is not exhibiting signs of a runaway crisis.  If anything the charts show that the lockdown did bupkus to stop the viral growth because there's been a consistent, but small increase.  If you look at the state's ICU capacity, it's been consistently above 70% since early May, when the heavy restrictions were still in place.

 

Now ask yourself why is Arizona suddenly being called out as a hotspot, when its trends haven't changed that much in a month?  Why is the focus off Texas and everyone is jumping on North Carolina?  The doomsayers will glom onto any piece of negative news, without examining all the underlying numbers to spot an anomaly or a false trend.  Why are CO, GA & WI very stable despite opening up in early May?

 

We're into Day 10 of Floyd protests.  Should there be a swarm of hospitalizations by now?

 

And please stop posting case numbers as evidence, because that's a total reflection of increased testing.  I can provide a dozen examples of people I know who are testing positive for antibodies because they had a very nasty "bug" in February/early March.    Do you ask why more data isn't coming out on those results?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 10, 2020 by GG

[GG]

7 hours ago, TPS said:

Sweden is not "much lower than other developed countries." It's fifth is deaths per million among countries with 20k or more cases.  Italy and Spain are currently higher because they were hit early and hard.  We'll see if Sweden overtakes them.  

 

The point of a lockdown was to prevent the health system from becoming overwhelmed.  The idea of "flattening the curve" doesn't mean fewer coronavirus cases overall, it means spreading the cases so the health system can accomodate both covid and other serious health issues.  This was the point made in Pueyo's articles. Interestingly he suggested less extreme measures, including masks and social distancing.  Maybe US politicians took more extreme measures due to your focus on culture--they realized many Americans won't adhere to the policies.  

 

Arizona is an interesting case study at the moment.  As cases have increased after re-opening, and reports that ICU facilities are nearing capacity, how should they respond?

 

Ranking fifth among the developed world is not as bad considering they didn't lock down the country.   Taro is correct to point out their failure in protecting the extremely vulnerable.  But when you ask whether lockdowns helped stop the spread, Sweden's #20 rank in the case count indicates that the lockdowns did not slow the spread as much as people credit them.   By the time the lockdowns took effect, much of the virus had run through the first wave.

 

The data also suggests that mortality and spread were heavily influenced by the differences in the mutations.  But there are still many unexplained questions of the propagation and mortality rates.   It's naive to think that a virus this deadly infected the entire northern Italy from a single tourist visiting Bergamo, yet somehow stopped spreading past Milan.  Why was it an easier jump to Spain, then to France, Belgium & UK, but not Switzerland.

 

 More locally, why didn't the lethality of the virus cross the commuter counties of NYC?   We're onto month 2 post-Hasidic funerals.  The yeshivas have been open under the radar.  Where are the Williamsburg spikes?

[TPS]

50 minutes ago, GG said:

 

Ranking fifth among the developed world is not as bad considering they didn't lock down the country.   Taro is correct to point out their failure in protecting the extremely vulnerable.  But when you ask whether lockdowns helped stop the spread, Sweden's #20 rank in the case count indicates that the lockdowns did not slow the spread as much as people credit them.   By the time the lockdowns took effect, much of the virus had run through the first wave.

 

The data also suggests that mortality and spread were heavily influenced by the differences in the mutations.  But there are still many unexplained questions of the propagation and mortality rates.   It's naive to think that a virus this deadly infected the entire northern Italy from a single tourist visiting Bergamo, yet somehow stopped spreading past Milan.  Why was it an easier jump to Spain, then to France, Belgium & UK, but not Switzerland.

 

 More locally, why didn't the lethality of the virus cross the commuter counties of NYC?   We're onto month 2 post-Hasidic funerals.  The yeshivas have been open under the radar.  Where are the Williamsburg spikes?

I'm not sure what you're using to rank cases?  Sweden is in the top 10 for cases per million population.

I'm curious, then, what would you suggest they do in Arizona, Texas, Florida, and other states where the number of cases is increasing again?

 

[realtruelove]

2 minutes ago, TPS said:

I'm not sure what you're using to rank cases?  Sweden is in the top 10 for cases per million population.

I'm curious, then, what would you suggest they do in Arizona, Texas, Florida, and other states where the number of cases is increasing again?

 

Protest with no masks on.

[GG]

26 minutes ago, TPS said:

I'm not sure what you're using to rank cases?  Sweden is in the top 10 for cases per million population.

I'm curious, then, what would you suggest they do in Arizona, Texas, Florida, and other states where the number of cases is increasing again?

 

 

Worldmeters.  If you take out the small populated countries, Sweden would still be #15.  That's not horrible considering no lockdown.  If the theory was spot on, they'd be the far away leader.

 

The states that have a tick up in cases should remember to practice proper hygiene & safe distancing.  But there's nothing in the data to suggest that this is the start of another exponential growth curve.

[shoshin]

 

 

Could just be noise. Stay tuned. 

[B-Man]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Po

[shoshin]

For places that got an initial wave, have any of them had a big second wave? 

 

I don't think so, but I'm curious if anyone else can answer that. 

[Warren Zevon]

[SoCal Deek]

Yesterday, Wednesday, once again there were no states that reported triple digit deaths and 30 states were in single digits ....again. 

[GG]

57 minutes ago, shoshin said:

For places that got an initial wave, have any of them had a big second wave? 

 

I don't think so, but I'm curious if anyone else can answer that. 

 

Wuhan, Bergamo, NYC ...

[shoshin]

54 minutes ago, GG said:

 

Wuhan, Bergamo, NYC ...

 

Those are currently counterexamples to what I'm asking. 

 

Asking if anyplace has had a big second wave after the first (yet). 

 

Summer may see the downtrend that the Spanish Flu had but I'm still curious about this.

Edited June 11, 2020 by shoshin

[GG]

Just now, shoshin said:

 

Those are currently counterexamples to what I'm asking. 

 

You mean when you asked if there are second waves in places that were hard hit?  What other examples are you looking for?

 

All the fear mongering about AZ, NC & TX are misplaced because they're still rolling through their first wave.  And but surely looks like the medical profession is utilizing lessons learned much better than the unfortunate places that got hit first.

[spartacus]

17 hours ago, shoshin said:

I linked other data on this before. Here’s more  from the state’s largest health system. 
 

 

Your opinions are incorrect. Follow the numbers and frontlines. 

took your advice to check out the numbers

went to the mecca of info- the CDC looking for hospitalization data

 

this should should be a high priority item to tract actual results in the field, as the entire shutdown was to prevent overwhelming the hospitals

However, after 4 months, the CDC still is not too interested tracking and posting in that critical info

https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/COVIDNet/COVID19_3.html

The below is from the CDC site, which indicates they are sampling 10% of the US population, in sites that have already been heavily hit, to "estimate" expected results (more modeling)

 

"The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)-Associated Hospitalization Surveillance Network (COVID-NET) conducts population-based surveillance for laboratory-confirmed COVID-19-associated hospitalizations in children (persons younger than 18 years) and adults. The current network covers nearly 100 counties in the 10 Emerging Infections Program (EIP) states (CA, CO, CT, GA, MD, MN, NM, NY, OR, and TN) and four additional states through the Influenza Hospitalization Surveillance Project (IA, MI, OH, and UT). The network represents approximately 10% of US population (~32 million people).

Cases are identified by reviewing hospital, laboratory, and admission databases and infection control logs for patients hospitalized with a documented positive SARS-CoV-2 test.

Data gathered are used to estimate age-specific hospitalization rates on a weekly basis and describe characteristics of persons hospitalized with COVID-19. Laboratory confirmation is dependent on clinician-ordered SARS-CoV-2 testing. Therefore, the rates provided are likely to be underestimated as COVID-19-associated hospitalizations can be missed due to test availability and provider or facility testing practices."