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> But it still suggests that if the virus had been allowed to spread uncontained In the US, it is spreading uncontained, because we don't test and trace in any

> But it still suggests that if the virus had been allowed to spread uncontained In the US, it is spreading uncontained, because we don't test and trace in any meaningful way. The question is when do we confront that reality and stop pretending otherwise? It appears people's acceptance of "flattening the curve" for ventilators has morphed into waiting for a vaccine, which normally takes 18 months. As I've said before, the US needs to test and trace just nursing homes/hospitals and stop the lockdown otherwise, since the mortality rate for younger people is near zero. The US economy is not setup for tens of millions of long-term unemployed people. In the case od Newsom's reopening slides, I'd like to see dates attached to each slide instead of non-specific "when adequate testing is available", which may never be true in the US. (By omitting dates, Newsom preserves his White House run at the expense of California residents.)

nopzor 6y ago
depends where in the US. for example, testing levels in NY state are extremely meaningful, they've really scaled up to the point that their testing (on a per capita basis) is among the best in the world.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Can you provide some numbers? (I follow SF news, not NY.) Several Asian countries csn do 100% of the tests they need because corona was not "uncontained." The US would need to be able to do 10-50 million tests per day to get there, plus tracing. Hope is not a strategy.
mdemare 6y ago
There we go again. In NYC, 19 out of 100,000 people aged 18-45 died. (1) There are roughly 110M people in that age group in the U.S. so that would mean 21000 deaths if the virus would spread as widely throughout the U.S. as it has in NYC (which is estimated to be around 25% of the population). 21000 deaths is not "near zero", nor is the population aged over 45 primarily found in nursing homes. 1) https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > 21000 deaths is not "near zero" I'm not sure what your contrived narrative is, but actually it is near zero, far less than several other causes of death. (The annual mortality rate is over 1,000 per 100,000, so 19 per 100,000 is a round-off error.) "He noted that between January and April in 2018, more than 234,000 people in the United States died of heart disease and nearly 199,000 died of cancer. So far during the coronavirus pandemic, there have been about 16,700 Covid-19 deaths in the United States, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University." https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/10/health/coronavirus-not-leading-cause-of-death-us-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/10/health/coronavirus-not-leadin... Even auto deaths are higher at 37,461 in 2016: "For 2016 specifically, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) data shows 37,461 people were killed in 34,436 motor vehicle crashes, an average of 102 per day." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... There is nothing the US can do to get to zero deaths from corona, so a more pragmatic public health policy is needed than "lock 300 million people down for years."
  - wbronitsky 6y ago
    How many of those people who died from cancer and heart diseased are aged 18-45? These numbers are largely irrelevant if we dont compare them apples-to-apples with the numbers in their proper cohort. In any case, these tactics, namely cherry-picking, callousness towards human life, and flippant dismissal of the points of others, make it very hard to have a discussion here. It does not seem like the posts are being made to debate but instead pummel into submission. Finally, there have been over 100,000 Covid-19 deaths in the US. Each one of them a human who could have not died from Covid-19.
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
      You are confusing empathy with US public healthcare policy. The first considers populations of individuals, the latter 300 million. And no, I'm not here to debate. I'm here to reinforce the message that policy needs to be considered at the national level, not the individual level. I can see from the hundreds of downvotes I've received in the past two months that very few people are considering the larger picture for society. I call that selfish. I seldom refer to IFR and CFR because the testing data is unreliable, so I use mortality numbers. If you feel that you're good with statistics and have accurate enough US data, please do some analysis and let people know. (I actually wasn't cherry-picking, but a more complete analysis should include mortality by age range.) For the record, I have no preference for the Democratic or Republican parties, and would like to see corona policy depoliticized. Mixing corona policy with the upcoming elections will not turn out well.

nopzor 6y ago

depends where in the US. for example, testing levels in NY state are extremely meaningful, they've really scaled up to the point that their testing (on a per capita basis) is among the best in the world.

redis_mlc 6y ago
Can you provide some numbers? (I follow SF news, not NY.) Several Asian countries csn do 100% of the tests they need because corona was not "uncontained." The US would need to be able to do 10-50 million tests per day to get there, plus tracing. Hope is not a strategy.

mdemare 6y ago

There we go again. In NYC, 19 out of 100,000 people aged 18-45 died. (1) There are roughly 110M people in that age group in the U.S. so that would mean 21000 deaths if the virus would spread as widely throughout the U.S. as it has in NYC (which is estimated to be around 25% of the population). 21000 deaths is not "near zero", nor is the population aged over 45 primarily found in nursing homes. 1) https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page

redis_mlc 6y ago
> 21000 deaths is not "near zero" I'm not sure what your contrived narrative is, but actually it is near zero, far less than several other causes of death. (The annual mortality rate is over 1,000 per 100,000, so 19 per 100,000 is a round-off error.) "He noted that between January and April in 2018, more than 234,000 people in the United States died of heart disease and nearly 199,000 died of cancer. So far during the coronavirus pandemic, there have been about 16,700 Covid-19 deaths in the United States, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University." https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/10/health/coronavirus-not-leading-cause-of-death-us-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/10/health/coronavirus-not-leadin... Even auto deaths are higher at 37,461 in 2016: "For 2016 specifically, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) data shows 37,461 people were killed in 34,436 motor vehicle crashes, an average of 102 per day." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... There is nothing the US can do to get to zero deaths from corona, so a more pragmatic public health policy is needed than "lock 300 million people down for years."
- wbronitsky 6y ago
  How many of those people who died from cancer and heart diseased are aged 18-45? These numbers are largely irrelevant if we dont compare them apples-to-apples with the numbers in their proper cohort. In any case, these tactics, namely cherry-picking, callousness towards human life, and flippant dismissal of the points of others, make it very hard to have a discussion here. It does not seem like the posts are being made to debate but instead pummel into submission. Finally, there have been over 100,000 Covid-19 deaths in the US. Each one of them a human who could have not died from Covid-19.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    You are confusing empathy with US public healthcare policy. The first considers populations of individuals, the latter 300 million. And no, I'm not here to debate. I'm here to reinforce the message that policy needs to be considered at the national level, not the individual level. I can see from the hundreds of downvotes I've received in the past two months that very few people are considering the larger picture for society. I call that selfish. I seldom refer to IFR and CFR because the testing data is unreliable, so I use mortality numbers. If you feel that you're good with statistics and have accurate enough US data, please do some analysis and let people know. (I actually wasn't cherry-picking, but a more complete analysis should include mortality by age range.) For the record, I have no preference for the Democratic or Republican parties, and would like to see corona policy depoliticized. Mixing corona policy with the upcoming elections will not turn out well.