14 ms·

CA governor projecting 25.5M COVID19 cases in CA in 8 weeks [pdf]

155 points by jader201 7y ago

dis-sys 7y ago
There is something I really don't understand - if most people just stay at home and cut all non essential public activities to the minimum, how 50% of the population could still get infected?
- beders 7y ago
  Because they won't stay at home.
- jbkiv 7y ago
  It may just be simply too late. Everybody was still partying all over California 6 days ago
- nostromo 7y ago
  We only have lagging indicators by about a week or more. It takes people at least a day, and usually a few days to get sick. A little while longer for them to go to the hospital (if they go at all -- most don't because it's usually mild). Then testing, if it happens at all, takes a few days.
creato 7y ago
Is this the projection with the lockdown measures that are in place?
- ghouse 7y ago
  I think this is "business as usual" (which includes the bay area shelter-in-pace) and doesn't account for the shelter-in-place order from this afternoon.
- k1t 7y ago
  No, the projection assumes no measures at all are taken - not even the ones that already have been. "Newsom’s request said 56 percent of California’s population, a whopping 25.5 million people, would be infected over an eight-week period. A governor spokesperson later clarified the projection included zero mitigation efforts such as the Bay Area’s shutdown of non-essential businesses to decrease contact between residents." https://www.ocregister.com/2020/03/19/gov-newsom-56-percent-of-californians-projected-to-be-infected-with-coronavirus-in-8-week-period-2/ https://www.ocregister.com/2020/03/19/gov-newsom-56-percent-...
eganist 7y ago
Swag maths on the business-as-usual scenario incoming, bound to be very wrong: 3.4% mortality rate among those presenting symptoms. (via WHO) As low as 17.9% of cases asymptomatic: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2020/03/18/what-percentage-have-covid-19-coronavirus-but-do-not-know-it/#42991ddf7e90 https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2020/03/18/what-percen... Of the symptomatic cases, 80.9% are mild (https://www.sciencealert.com/large-chinese-study-finds-most-coronavirus-infections-are-mild https://www.sciencealert.com/large-chinese-study-finds-most-...) and we're assuming only the ones that present risks are being tested. So if the 25.5m figure stands correct, we're looking at what, a range of 195,000 to 695,000 possibly passed on in california before June depending on whether you apply it to not-mild (19.1%) cases v. all symptomatic (82.1%) cases? I can't find any concrete sources on how anyone is calculating current mortality rates for the bug, but: 1. that swing is unfathomable to me 2. those numbers are unfathomable to me. Especially once extrapolated to the whole country assuming 56% of the nation contracts it.
- wy3yebdudu 7y ago
  Not terrible considering state population is roughly 39,560,000. It'll be interesting to see how this goes the illegal alien communities.
- op03 7y ago
  Do the math for your neighborhood or county and you will sleep better. State numbers and national numbers for anything can freak anyone out if they dont deal with large numbers day in day out. Big numbers hide small numbers distributed all over the map. Plug in numbers for India or China and it's not complicated to produce helplessness and heatattacks.
  - jader201 7y ago
    According to these numbers, all you have to do is look at the percentage: 56%. That’s a big number in any scale. That’s over half of your family and friends. Not arguing these numbers are accurate. Just saying that they’ll still freak you out if you believe they’re accurate.
- 7y ago
zaroth 7y ago
I’m not saying there isn’t a report on Gavin’s desk with a bunch of lines on it, one of which extends to 25.5M in 8 weeks. Yes, if you double 1,000 14 or 15 times you get to 25.5M. The problem is that the population of California is 40 million. Even with basically unmitigated spread, your clusters will slow growth simply due to lack of new available uninflected contacts. Going from 1,000 people to 63% of your population in 8 weeks is frankly not a serious projection. Keep in mind this is a political document, not a scientific paper.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- btilly 7y ago
  We have 1000 confirmed cases when most people who have symptoms can't get tests to confirm whether they have it. That is a long way from having only 1000 cases at present. We are at a significant multiple of that. Estimates of Wuhan at a similar point suggest that they had 7x official figures. We are likely about 5000-10000 in reality. Now what is the growth? Here is a trivial sanity check. From https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/#case-tot-outchina https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/... on a log scale it is clear that reported cases worldwide have been growing by a factor of 10 every 2 weeks. Projecting that out for 8 weeks starting with 1000 gives you 10 million. Starting with our likely 5000-10000 we hit all of California. At which point the limit is not that exponential growth doesn't get us there, but rather that the exponential curve hits saturation and breaks down. At which point you fit to other models based on past epidemics to get an estimate of where it tops out. Now 63% is in line with projections we've seen for weeks. That's 25 million people. if we believe the recent Lancet estimate that the fatality rate is 0.5-1.5% of people who get it, that is 1.25-3.75 million dead Californians. If we believe more conservative estimates, that's still a lot of dead people no matter how you slice it.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    > that is 1.25-3.75 million dead Californians You are in error there. California has about 40 million people, 0.5 to 1.5% of 40 million is 200K to 600K. Mind you, that is still a lot of dead people, and that is just California, and assuming the health care system isn't going to be overrun in which case the 1.5% might be conservative.
sigsergv 7y ago
I don't believe they will have 26M tests in 8 weeks.
- ccktlmazeltov 7y ago
  right, if you don't get tested then do you really have coronavirus?
  - ingsoc79 7y ago
    Schrödingerona's virus
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    The parent is playing on the definition of "case." Cases are known infections, infections are infections. For example, the case fatality rate is the fraction of people who test positive and die, the infection fatality rate is the fraction of people who catch it and die.
throw03172019 7y ago
Politician math != math
ajdfladf 7y ago
what a fucking piece of shit - fuck this asshole - impeach his fucking ass right now!!
grej 7y ago
There are 1030 known positive CA cases right now according to the JHU map. The governor's letter is using a doubling time of 4 days, but there's good reason to believe this 4-day time is due to recently increased testing. If the governor instead takes the best-guess mean doubling time from several epidemiological studies[1] of 6.4 days, then, you would have to assume there are are 38.5 actual cases for any one tested positive case right now in order to get to 25.5M. (25.5 * (10 ^ 6)) / (1030 * (2 ^ ((7 days/wk * 8 wk) / 6.4 days_to_double))) = 38.46742327016 So to get there, the governor has to be assuming that the current measures being put in place will do absolutely nothing, and also assuming almost actual 40 cases per real case, which is quite possible. If you assume the 4-day doubling time they quoted will continue for 8 straight weeks, and the number of current cases is accurate (again, probably not - probably an underestimate), you still just get to 16.9M cases. Seems to me the more likely situation is that: (1) there are more cases than we think right now (Maybe not 40x, but maybe 10-20x?). (2) the doubling time will be affected quite A LOT by the measures being put in place. It might drop the R0 to close to 1. In that case, I would expect the enacted measures to at least half the R0 starting from this week, beginning of a flattening of active case count starting at this point. That new R0 would hugely affect doubling time. But even conservatively estimating that R0 only goes down by 25% vs 50%, in 8 weeks time the projection of cases in CA would still be reduced by almost 60x. TLDR - Best guess 8 weeks from now, CA has between 400k-1M cases. But not anything close to 25.5M. You can downvote me in 8 weeks if I'm wrong. Hopefully, the real number is closer to mine than to Gov. Newsom's. [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30260-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
- mid 7y ago
  “Any statistics can be extrapolated to the point where they show disaster” — Thomas Sowell, 1996
  - grej 7y ago
    Also - “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.” ― Ronald H. Coase
partiallypro 7y ago
I'm not trying to throw a ton of water on this, but this is a political document. Is it possible that they've put out this large number to justify their heavy handed response when it falls well short of that? Because people, once the economic impact if fully felt, are going to want a justification for their sacrifice.
- rectang 7y ago
  Take a look at the graphs on this page, particularly "World, Confirmed Cases" and "US States, Confirmed Cases Per Million Inhabitants": http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/ http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/ We are not near an inflection point yet.
  - forkexec 7y ago
    There are several factors to consider: - Temporary measures, once cancelled, will steepen the curve and recreate rapid community spread conditions. This will lead to a number of cycles of pandemic curves and responses as modeled in a number of papers. - There is insufficient testing in the US to know what's actually happening, or even if serious or critical ILI patients have it. - The JHU data shows March 20 suddenly leveled off, but this seems like a single, erroneous aberration since that day hasn't finished yet as of writing. [0] - Until there is a safe and effective vaccine proven to work, there's no realistic alternative except to isolate and not venture out more than absolutely necessary, in small numbers. https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594...
  - cheerlessbog 7y ago
    Great link thank you - it looks like if the US follows China, is it nearly two months from the peak, with Washington state about 10 days closer. If China is even comparable. We will know more when Italy reaches its peak.
jdminhbg 7y ago
As pointed out below[0], this is a sensationalist headline and should be changed. This is the projection if no measures were taken. Which makes sense: if 56% of the population is going to contract coronavirus in the next eight weeks, then the lockdown is pointless. You're nearly to herd immunity at that point, why cripple the economy if it doesn't even make a dent in the transmission rate. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22634268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22634268
- jader201 7y ago
  > As pointed out below[0], this is a sensationalist headline and should be changed. The title was based on the entirety of the linked content — the letter from the CA governor to the president — which included no context around the numbers being based on no measures being taken.
  - jdminhbg 7y ago
    Understandable, but since there's been clarification, I think that should be reflected in the title.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - jader201 7y ago
      I would disagree that the title should be changed, since the linked content does not reflect the additional context you’re referring to. I suppose a more fully-qualified title might append “in letter to the president”. But appending “if no measures are taken” is not accurate, since this article — his letter to the president — doesn’t include this context. Saying the title is sensationalist is equivalent to saying the letter is sensationalist. And if that is the case, the most you could say is a sensationalist title accurately represents a sensationalist letter.
      - jdminhbg 7y ago
adfjl23rnz 7y ago
FUCK NEWSOM
adfjl23rnz 7y ago
FUCK YOU LIBERALS
ComputerGuru 7y ago
I don’t think it’s honest for these reports that accompany executive decrees to not take into account the reality on the ground. This report assumes “business as usual” whereas the reality is people absolutely are social distancing. Therefore any data submitted to the public as the rationale behind a decision should reflect that: the numbers report should indicate the projection based off of the current Bay Area shutdown and the general self-isolation and self-distancing that is in effect to make its point.
fyp 7y ago
Why did we give up on containment? China and South Korea have shown that it's possible. China capped out at only 100k infected for a population of 1.4 billion. Aiming to let 56% of your population get infected of which more than 3% will die is NOT the solution. China's strategy seems simple enough. Close off borders of a region, stamp out all existing cases with aggressive testing, then keep the region at 0 cases by requiring mandatory 2 week quarantine before letting anyone in. Do this one region at a time until your country is all clean. Now their biggest problem is teaching the rest of the world this strategy.
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  The headline is not true and really does fall under "fake news" this is what happens if no one does anything. Sensationalist and unnecessary
- Barrin92 7y ago
  30% of the US population still says they are not concerned about the virus, and if you've seen the number of people still interacting as if nothing has changed in many parts of the country you will pretty quickly come to the conclusion that Chinese measures will be impossible to enforce in the US. Rapid testing and containment and tracing only works if the people actually comply.
  - Retric 7y ago
    ~30% of the population has little reason to fear an infection. That 0.2% risk of death for people under 40 largely includes people with significant underlying heath problems. At least assuming a functional healthcare system etc. My mother on the other hand is looking at possibly months of near total isolation. At her age it’s a much larger threat.
    - brokenmachine 7y ago
      I believe that even in young people, 16-20% will need hospital admission/intervention. That's a lot of people, and how many of those can we expect to have health insurance?
m0zg 7y ago
It's pretty clear that the current policies are misguided, IMO. The vast majority of those dying are the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions, most of the time, both. THOSE people should be locked down tight and they should receive testing and resources if we are to minimize the death toll. We're also fortunate in the sense that only 16% of US population is over 65 years old. Germany and especially Italy are nowhere near this lucky. Instead, we're spreading limited resources super thin, and fucking up the economy in the process for everyone. Seems like offering these vulnerable populations temporary shelter and supported isolation for a month would do a heck of a lot better job than locking down everything _and not providing any support to the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions_. And you could easily offer such isolation: millions of hotel rooms are currently empty, and hoteliers are hurting for cash, which bodes well for getting those rooms (and room service to go with it) at cost. Case in point: as of March 17, only 17 people of those who died in Italy were under the age of 50. That's out of something like 2800. And the median age of those dying was 80.5 years. Same stats on the ship: all of the deaths were among 70-80 year olds. This shows you who's really at risk in a Western-style medical system in a developed country.
- troydavis 7y ago
  > The vast majority of those dying are the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions. That’s true of deaths but not hospitalizations: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-young-people.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-young-... The hospitalization rate is believed to be 10-20% and much less specific to people over 65 or even 50.
- jpmattia 7y ago
  > Case in point: as of March 17, only 17 people of those who died in Italy were under the age of 50. Worth pointing out that the available life-saving equipment is being given to young people there, which complicates the simple statistic.
- gnicholas 7y ago
  My understanding is that in Italy they are triaging patients and allocating scarce resources to those who are younger and therefore more likely to recover. Apparently they are literally turning away some who are 80 on the grounds that the likelihood of saving them is too low (and they need to use the resources for people who are younger and therefore more savable). If this is true, it would artificially inflate the percentage of older folks who die, and do the opposite for the stats on younger people. I learned this from someone who has been heavily researching the COVID situation for months, and whose opinion I trust.
aazaa 7y ago
If the governor is assuming exponential growth, what's the doubling time? From the formula: N(t) = N0*2exp(t/Td) where: - N(t) is the final count (25.5M) - N0 is the initial count (1040 according to Johns Hopkins) - t is the time (8 weeks) - Td is the doubling time (TBD) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubling_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubling_time Solving for Td: Td = t/(ln(N(t)/N0) Plugging in the numbers, I get Td = 0.8 weeks, or 5.6 days.
- mNovak 7y ago
  Which I think is roughly what the numbers have been showing so far--debatably an upper bound, given the under-availability of testing.
- tunesmith 7y ago
  That seems low to me - Started with 1040 over 56 days at that rate (13.2% ish), I get about a million people.
tanilama 7y ago
This doesn't make sense right? As of today, California has 1000 cases. Even assume the infections double every 4 days, in 8 weeks that gives us: 16.4 millions. And currently Santa Clara county is in a virtual lockdown, I am wrapping my head how could we reach this number really?
- eunos 7y ago
  1000 detected cases. Detection is a bottleneck at the moment.
- jkachmar 7y ago
  I’m concerned that there is a vast disparity between the number of confirmed cases and the actual number of contracted cases (esp. asymptomatic). NY has tested the largest number of people out of all states and has >4000 confirmed cases as of March 19th, and it’s _still_ being undertested for relative to countries like South Korea.
- tunesmith 7y ago
  California has 1000 confirmed cases, not actual cases. You can get to 23.5 million if you estimate 10,000 actual cases, with a 5-day doubling time over eight weeks. Experts are estimating 5-6 days doubling.
xbhdhdhd 7y ago
I hope no one projects COVID19 onto anyone. What a rude man. Hope he reconsiders.
tunesmith 7y ago
Easiest way to get this number: estimate actual/confirmed case ratio is 10x, and estimate a 5-day infection doubling time. That hits the projection almost exactly.
blackrock 7y ago
At what point will they capitulate and give up? This sounds like they have completely given up on containing it. We are now left to our own fate.

155 points by jader201 7y ago

There is something I really don't understand - if most people just stay at home and cut all non essential public activities to the minimum, how 50% of the population could still get infected?

beders 7y ago
Because they won't stay at home.
jbkiv 7y ago
It may just be simply too late. Everybody was still partying all over California 6 days ago
nostromo 7y ago
We only have lagging indicators by about a week or more. It takes people at least a day, and usually a few days to get sick. A little while longer for them to go to the hospital (if they go at all -- most don't because it's usually mild). Then testing, if it happens at all, takes a few days.

creato 7y ago

Is this the projection with the lockdown measures that are in place?

ghouse 7y ago
I think this is "business as usual" (which includes the bay area shelter-in-pace) and doesn't account for the shelter-in-place order from this afternoon.
k1t 7y ago
No, the projection assumes no measures at all are taken - not even the ones that already have been. "Newsom’s request said 56 percent of California’s population, a whopping 25.5 million people, would be infected over an eight-week period. A governor spokesperson later clarified the projection included zero mitigation efforts such as the Bay Area’s shutdown of non-essential businesses to decrease contact between residents." https://www.ocregister.com/2020/03/19/gov-newsom-56-percent-of-californians-projected-to-be-infected-with-coronavirus-in-8-week-period-2/ https://www.ocregister.com/2020/03/19/gov-newsom-56-percent-...

eganist 7y ago

Swag maths on the business-as-usual scenario incoming, bound to be very wrong: 3.4% mortality rate among those presenting symptoms. (via WHO) As low as 17.9% of cases asymptomatic: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2020/03/18/what-percentage-have-covid-19-coronavirus-but-do-not-know-it/#42991ddf7e90 https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2020/03/18/what-percen... Of the symptomatic cases, 80.9% are mild (https://www.sciencealert.com/large-chinese-study-finds-most-coronavirus-infections-are-mild https://www.sciencealert.com/large-chinese-study-finds-most-...) and we're assuming only the ones that present risks are being tested. So if the 25.5m figure stands correct, we're looking at what, a range of 195,000 to 695,000 possibly passed on in california before June depending on whether you apply it to not-mild (19.1%) cases v. all symptomatic (82.1%) cases? I can't find any concrete sources on how anyone is calculating current mortality rates for the bug, but: 1. that swing is unfathomable to me 2. those numbers are unfathomable to me. Especially once extrapolated to the whole country assuming 56% of the nation contracts it.

wy3yebdudu 7y ago
Not terrible considering state population is roughly 39,560,000. It'll be interesting to see how this goes the illegal alien communities.
op03 7y ago
Do the math for your neighborhood or county and you will sleep better. State numbers and national numbers for anything can freak anyone out if they dont deal with large numbers day in day out. Big numbers hide small numbers distributed all over the map. Plug in numbers for India or China and it's not complicated to produce helplessness and heatattacks.
- jader201 7y ago
  According to these numbers, all you have to do is look at the percentage: 56%. That’s a big number in any scale. That’s over half of your family and friends. Not arguing these numbers are accurate. Just saying that they’ll still freak you out if you believe they’re accurate.
7y ago

zaroth 7y ago

I’m not saying there isn’t a report on Gavin’s desk with a bunch of lines on it, one of which extends to 25.5M in 8 weeks. Yes, if you double 1,000 14 or 15 times you get to 25.5M. The problem is that the population of California is 40 million. Even with basically unmitigated spread, your clusters will slow growth simply due to lack of new available uninflected contacts. Going from 1,000 people to 63% of your population in 8 weeks is frankly not a serious projection. Keep in mind this is a political document, not a scientific paper.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
btilly 7y ago
We have 1000 confirmed cases when most people who have symptoms can't get tests to confirm whether they have it. That is a long way from having only 1000 cases at present. We are at a significant multiple of that. Estimates of Wuhan at a similar point suggest that they had 7x official figures. We are likely about 5000-10000 in reality. Now what is the growth? Here is a trivial sanity check. From https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/#case-tot-outchina https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/... on a log scale it is clear that reported cases worldwide have been growing by a factor of 10 every 2 weeks. Projecting that out for 8 weeks starting with 1000 gives you 10 million. Starting with our likely 5000-10000 we hit all of California. At which point the limit is not that exponential growth doesn't get us there, but rather that the exponential curve hits saturation and breaks down. At which point you fit to other models based on past epidemics to get an estimate of where it tops out. Now 63% is in line with projections we've seen for weeks. That's 25 million people. if we believe the recent Lancet estimate that the fatality rate is 0.5-1.5% of people who get it, that is 1.25-3.75 million dead Californians. If we believe more conservative estimates, that's still a lot of dead people no matter how you slice it.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  > that is 1.25-3.75 million dead Californians You are in error there. California has about 40 million people, 0.5 to 1.5% of 40 million is 200K to 600K. Mind you, that is still a lot of dead people, and that is just California, and assuming the health care system isn't going to be overrun in which case the 1.5% might be conservative.

sigsergv 7y ago

I don't believe they will have 26M tests in 8 weeks.

ccktlmazeltov 7y ago
right, if you don't get tested then do you really have coronavirus?
- ingsoc79 7y ago
  Schrödingerona's virus
- whatshisface 7y ago
  The parent is playing on the definition of "case." Cases are known infections, infections are infections. For example, the case fatality rate is the fraction of people who test positive and die, the infection fatality rate is the fraction of people who catch it and die.

throw03172019 7y ago

Politician math != math

ajdfladf 7y ago

what a fucking piece of shit - fuck this asshole - impeach his fucking ass right now!!

grej 7y ago

There are 1030 known positive CA cases right now according to the JHU map. The governor's letter is using a doubling time of 4 days, but there's good reason to believe this 4-day time is due to recently increased testing. If the governor instead takes the best-guess mean doubling time from several epidemiological studies[1] of 6.4 days, then, you would have to assume there are are 38.5 actual cases for any one tested positive case right now in order to get to 25.5M. (25.5 * (10 ^ 6)) / (1030 * (2 ^ ((7 days/wk * 8 wk) / 6.4 days_to_double))) = 38.46742327016 So to get there, the governor has to be assuming that the current measures being put in place will do absolutely nothing, and also assuming almost actual 40 cases per real case, which is quite possible. If you assume the 4-day doubling time they quoted will continue for 8 straight weeks, and the number of current cases is accurate (again, probably not - probably an underestimate), you still just get to 16.9M cases. Seems to me the more likely situation is that: (1) there are more cases than we think right now (Maybe not 40x, but maybe 10-20x?). (2) the doubling time will be affected quite A LOT by the measures being put in place. It might drop the R0 to close to 1. In that case, I would expect the enacted measures to at least half the R0 starting from this week, beginning of a flattening of active case count starting at this point. That new R0 would hugely affect doubling time. But even conservatively estimating that R0 only goes down by 25% vs 50%, in 8 weeks time the projection of cases in CA would still be reduced by almost 60x. TLDR - Best guess 8 weeks from now, CA has between 400k-1M cases. But not anything close to 25.5M. You can downvote me in 8 weeks if I'm wrong. Hopefully, the real number is closer to mine than to Gov. Newsom's. [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30260-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

mid 7y ago
“Any statistics can be extrapolated to the point where they show disaster” — Thomas Sowell, 1996
- grej 7y ago
  Also - “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.” ― Ronald H. Coase

partiallypro 7y ago

I'm not trying to throw a ton of water on this, but this is a political document. Is it possible that they've put out this large number to justify their heavy handed response when it falls well short of that? Because people, once the economic impact if fully felt, are going to want a justification for their sacrifice.

rectang 7y ago
Take a look at the graphs on this page, particularly "World, Confirmed Cases" and "US States, Confirmed Cases Per Million Inhabitants": http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/ http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/ We are not near an inflection point yet.
- forkexec 7y ago
  There are several factors to consider: - Temporary measures, once cancelled, will steepen the curve and recreate rapid community spread conditions. This will lead to a number of cycles of pandemic curves and responses as modeled in a number of papers. - There is insufficient testing in the US to know what's actually happening, or even if serious or critical ILI patients have it. - The JHU data shows March 20 suddenly leveled off, but this seems like a single, erroneous aberration since that day hasn't finished yet as of writing. [0] - Until there is a safe and effective vaccine proven to work, there's no realistic alternative except to isolate and not venture out more than absolutely necessary, in small numbers. https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594...
- cheerlessbog 7y ago
  Great link thank you - it looks like if the US follows China, is it nearly two months from the peak, with Washington state about 10 days closer. If China is even comparable. We will know more when Italy reaches its peak.

jdminhbg 7y ago

As pointed out below[0], this is a sensationalist headline and should be changed. This is the projection if no measures were taken. Which makes sense: if 56% of the population is going to contract coronavirus in the next eight weeks, then the lockdown is pointless. You're nearly to herd immunity at that point, why cripple the economy if it doesn't even make a dent in the transmission rate. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22634268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22634268

jader201 7y ago
> As pointed out below[0], this is a sensationalist headline and should be changed. The title was based on the entirety of the linked content — the letter from the CA governor to the president — which included no context around the numbers being based on no measures being taken.
- jdminhbg 7y ago
  Understandable, but since there's been clarification, I think that should be reflected in the title.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - jader201 7y ago
    I would disagree that the title should be changed, since the linked content does not reflect the additional context you’re referring to. I suppose a more fully-qualified title might append “in letter to the president”. But appending “if no measures are taken” is not accurate, since this article — his letter to the president — doesn’t include this context. Saying the title is sensationalist is equivalent to saying the letter is sensationalist. And if that is the case, the most you could say is a sensationalist title accurately represents a sensationalist letter.
    - jdminhbg 7y ago

adfjl23rnz 7y ago

FUCK NEWSOM

adfjl23rnz 7y ago

FUCK YOU LIBERALS

ComputerGuru 7y ago

I don’t think it’s honest for these reports that accompany executive decrees to not take into account the reality on the ground. This report assumes “business as usual” whereas the reality is people absolutely are social distancing. Therefore any data submitted to the public as the rationale behind a decision should reflect that: the numbers report should indicate the projection based off of the current Bay Area shutdown and the general self-isolation and self-distancing that is in effect to make its point.

fyp 7y ago

Why did we give up on containment? China and South Korea have shown that it's possible. China capped out at only 100k infected for a population of 1.4 billion. Aiming to let 56% of your population get infected of which more than 3% will die is NOT the solution. China's strategy seems simple enough. Close off borders of a region, stamp out all existing cases with aggressive testing, then keep the region at 0 cases by requiring mandatory 2 week quarantine before letting anyone in. Do this one region at a time until your country is all clean. Now their biggest problem is teaching the rest of the world this strategy.

stjohnswarts 7y ago
The headline is not true and really does fall under "fake news" this is what happens if no one does anything. Sensationalist and unnecessary
Barrin92 7y ago
30% of the US population still says they are not concerned about the virus, and if you've seen the number of people still interacting as if nothing has changed in many parts of the country you will pretty quickly come to the conclusion that Chinese measures will be impossible to enforce in the US. Rapid testing and containment and tracing only works if the people actually comply.
- Retric 7y ago
  ~30% of the population has little reason to fear an infection. That 0.2% risk of death for people under 40 largely includes people with significant underlying heath problems. At least assuming a functional healthcare system etc. My mother on the other hand is looking at possibly months of near total isolation. At her age it’s a much larger threat.
  - brokenmachine 7y ago
    I believe that even in young people, 16-20% will need hospital admission/intervention. That's a lot of people, and how many of those can we expect to have health insurance?

m0zg 7y ago

It's pretty clear that the current policies are misguided, IMO. The vast majority of those dying are the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions, most of the time, both. THOSE people should be locked down tight and they should receive testing and resources if we are to minimize the death toll. We're also fortunate in the sense that only 16% of US population is over 65 years old. Germany and especially Italy are nowhere near this lucky. Instead, we're spreading limited resources super thin, and fucking up the economy in the process for everyone. Seems like offering these vulnerable populations temporary shelter and supported isolation for a month would do a heck of a lot better job than locking down everything _and not providing any support to the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions_. And you could easily offer such isolation: millions of hotel rooms are currently empty, and hoteliers are hurting for cash, which bodes well for getting those rooms (and room service to go with it) at cost. Case in point: as of March 17, only 17 people of those who died in Italy were under the age of 50. That's out of something like 2800. And the median age of those dying was 80.5 years. Same stats on the ship: all of the deaths were among 70-80 year olds. This shows you who's really at risk in a Western-style medical system in a developed country.

troydavis 7y ago
> The vast majority of those dying are the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions. That’s true of deaths but not hospitalizations: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-young-people.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-young-... The hospitalization rate is believed to be 10-20% and much less specific to people over 65 or even 50.
jpmattia 7y ago
> Case in point: as of March 17, only 17 people of those who died in Italy were under the age of 50. Worth pointing out that the available life-saving equipment is being given to young people there, which complicates the simple statistic.
gnicholas 7y ago
My understanding is that in Italy they are triaging patients and allocating scarce resources to those who are younger and therefore more likely to recover. Apparently they are literally turning away some who are 80 on the grounds that the likelihood of saving them is too low (and they need to use the resources for people who are younger and therefore more savable). If this is true, it would artificially inflate the percentage of older folks who die, and do the opposite for the stats on younger people. I learned this from someone who has been heavily researching the COVID situation for months, and whose opinion I trust.

aazaa 7y ago

If the governor is assuming exponential growth, what's the doubling time? From the formula: N(t) = N0*2exp(t/Td) where: - N(t) is the final count (25.5M) - N0 is the initial count (1040 according to Johns Hopkins) - t is the time (8 weeks) - Td is the doubling time (TBD) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubling_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubling_time Solving for Td: Td = t/(ln(N(t)/N0) Plugging in the numbers, I get Td = 0.8 weeks, or 5.6 days.

mNovak 7y ago
Which I think is roughly what the numbers have been showing so far--debatably an upper bound, given the under-availability of testing.
tunesmith 7y ago
That seems low to me - Started with 1040 over 56 days at that rate (13.2% ish), I get about a million people.

tanilama 7y ago

This doesn't make sense right? As of today, California has 1000 cases. Even assume the infections double every 4 days, in 8 weeks that gives us: 16.4 millions. And currently Santa Clara county is in a virtual lockdown, I am wrapping my head how could we reach this number really?

eunos 7y ago
1000 detected cases. Detection is a bottleneck at the moment.
jkachmar 7y ago
I’m concerned that there is a vast disparity between the number of confirmed cases and the actual number of contracted cases (esp. asymptomatic). NY has tested the largest number of people out of all states and has >4000 confirmed cases as of March 19th, and it’s _still_ being undertested for relative to countries like South Korea.
tunesmith 7y ago
California has 1000 confirmed cases, not actual cases. You can get to 23.5 million if you estimate 10,000 actual cases, with a 5-day doubling time over eight weeks. Experts are estimating 5-6 days doubling.

xbhdhdhd 7y ago

I hope no one projects COVID19 onto anyone. What a rude man. Hope he reconsiders.

tunesmith 7y ago

Easiest way to get this number: estimate actual/confirmed case ratio is 10x, and estimate a 5-day infection doubling time. That hits the projection almost exactly.

blackrock 7y ago

At what point will they capitulate and give up? This sounds like they have completely given up on containing it. We are now left to our own fate.