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>If there is no spike in infections within two weeks, from areas which had large public protests in the past week, can millions of Americans be helped by restar

>If there is no spike in infections within two weeks, from areas which had large public protests in the past week, can millions of Americans be helped by restarting the economy? Daily new infections have more than doubled here in North Carolina in the last two weeks since "reopening" [0]. We have had more new cases in the last two weeks (2200) than in the entire length of lockdown from March until then (2000). The death rate has massively spiked beginning May 24th, exactly two weeks (the median time from infection to death) from May 9th, the day the governor relaxed restrictions [1]. The dream of this thing just magically going away is absolutely delusional. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/north-carolina-coronavirus-cases.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/north-carolina-c... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/north-carolina-coronavirus-cases.html#deaths https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/north-carolina-c...

walterbell 6y ago
Is there a dashboard which shows increase in testing capacity over that same period, case demographics, presence of other medical conditions, and asymptomatic cases? With increased (including employment-related) testing, case count should be increasing everywhere, but some of those could be recovered or asymptomatic. We know that most hospitals were well below capacity, so new cases can be treated.
- bitbuilder 6y ago
  >Is there a dashboard which shows increase in testing capacity over that same period Here's the best resource Ive found for comparing all the relevant data: http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ Playing around with the data there, it looks like yes NC has had an increase in cases recently, but it tracks an increase in testing. Test positivity rates are about flat. It really is completely pointless to discuss increases in cases without also comparing to increases in testing and positivity rates. Deaths are up, but as another poster pointed out it's hardly statistically significant. The rolling 7 day average is 2.2/1m now, vs 1.7/1m on May 1st.
  - aphextron 6y ago
    >"Deaths are up, but as another poster pointed out it's hardly statistically significant. The rolling 7 day average is 2.2/1m now, vs 1.7/1m on May 1st." How is a 34% increase not statistically significant?
    - thephyber 6y ago
      That's a statistical/maths term[1], not an opinion of the number. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance
    - mikem170 6y ago
      >How is a 34% increase not statistically significant? Because going from a daily death rate of 0.00017% to 0.00022% is still such a very small number, what might be called statistical noise.
    - bitbuilder 6y ago
      Because we're talking relatively small numbers. It's easy to create large movements in small numbers. If one person in my town is murdered this year, and 2 are murdered next year, that's a 100% year over year increase in the homicide rate. But it's obviously a meaningless increase. 2.2 out of a million is a small number. More people in NC are dying every day from cancer or heart disease.
  - shock-value 6y ago
    Be careful not to swing too far the other way and assume that a flat positivity rate implies a flat actual infection rate. As states increase testing capacity, lower risk individuals will start to become part of the testing pool (e.g. those without severe symptoms, those with only fleeting contact with someone infected, those with no connection at all as part of a disease surveillance measure, etc.). Thus a flat testing positivity rate can very well coexist alongside an actual increase in rate of infection, and given the aforementioned factors we might even infer the latter given the former.
    - 6y ago
- dnprock 6y ago
  Testing capacity has been increased. The amount of negative cases is going up. Positive cases are going down. https://vida.io/dashboards/ck9thqbxl00000umrd0u2pmdj https://vida.io/dashboards/ck9thqbxl00000umrd0u2pmdj
chrisco255 6y ago
Remember the whole point of shutdowns was to "flatten the curve" to keep the hospitals from being overrun. We can't stop the disease and we can't commit economic suicide. NC has only seen a slight uptick in hospitalizations: https://covid19.ncdhhs.gov/dashboard https://covid19.ncdhhs.gov/dashboard and it's been flat for the past week.
- majormajor 6y ago
  Yes, the shutdowns failed miserably if we thought we were going to eradicate infections. The government failed badly at communicating this. So now you have half the people saying the shutdowns were useless (cause the virus still exists) and another half saying they have to continue (cause the virus still exists, also)! If we had realistically wanted to squash this thing, the examples of other countries suggest we would've needed much more aggressive tracing and isolating of people, widespread early mask distribution and wearing, and more tracking. I fear that the government also may have failed miserably at taking advantage of them to bring more capacity online. Maybe the minimum stuff like masks and clothes and ventilators are taken care of, but we still seem in a very precarious place. Voluntary changes in behavior persist, though, which will make things very hard to untangle "effect of shutdown" from "effect of people being cautious about high-risk environments."
  - ptero 6y ago
    Can you define what you mean by saying other countries squashed the thing? They may have flattened the curve, drove numbers down, etc. but until they get either a herd immunity or a wide vaccination the infections will likely flare up again as soon as travel restrictions get lifted.
    - gbear605 6y ago
      Some countries aren’t planning on lifting travel restrictions, or are planning on having mandatory quarantine for arrivals
      - 6y ago
mikem170 6y ago
There are more tests than there were a month ago, and that affects how many positives are seen (by some amount). Also the increase in deaths you link to is not statistically significant, given it is in the rage of 10-30 over the course of several months in a state with 10 million people. Those numbers don't prove your point.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  > Also the increase in deaths you link to is not statistically significant, given it is in the rage of 10-30 over the course of several months in a state with 10 million people. A penny doubled daily is $0.64 after a week, $81.92 after two, $10,485.76 after three, and $1,342,177.28 after four. Upwards movement in cases and deaths in something that spreads exponentially is... not great.
  - mikem170 6y ago
    Nothing is doubling every week anymore. Why did you bring that up? Daily deaths across pretty much all nations are decreasing even as lockdowns are removed. Nit pick all you'd like, be as afraid as you like, but the numbers you supplied don't support your assertions.
    - thephyber 6y ago
      > Nothing is doubling every week anymore Exponential growth of the disease isn't tied to an arbitrary "week" timeline. It's delayed because of a 0.25 - 4.0 weeks. Different environment and behaviors will cause it to spread at different time intervals (not just a different number of recipients per spreader). > Daily deaths across pretty much all nations are decreasing even as lockdowns are removed. And COVID death doesn't happen within days of new exposure. It's delayed 3.5 - 5+ weeks after exposure and the people most likely to die aren't the ones walking around in public on the first day of end of SiP. Your parent comment wasn't as outrageous as you make it seem.
      - mikem170 6y ago
matwood 6y ago
Yeah, the 7 day moving average of new cases and deaths is also slowly trending up [1]. I think we all wished COVID would just go away, but that seems unlikely. [1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
- Jabbles 6y ago
  Please post a screenshot of the graph you're referring to, because I cannot see this upward trend on the page you linked. Regardless, your second sentence is true.
  - minism 6y ago
    I think they are referring to the uptick seen after May 29 here: https://imgur.com/a/Z9y7cek https://imgur.com/a/Z9y7cek
  - staycoolboy 6y ago
    Click the "Projections" link, under the "Recovered" count. There you can see the daily trend.
  - matwood 6y ago
    If you look at the "daily new" graphs they have options to see the bars and/or overlay moving averages. Deaths and new infections were coming down, but have since bottomed out and are every so slightly going back up. Still not enough to see an upward trend, but the downward trend seems to have stopped.
usaar333 6y ago
> Daily new infections have more than doubled here in North Carolina in the last two weeks since "reopening" Confirmed cases, not infections. The hospitalization numbers are about 30% higher or so which is about-ish how much new deaths have increased. Which is bad, but not 2x bad. All said, NC may have one of the highest spike of any state (reopened or not). Texas and Florida have flat hospitalizations; Georgia is slightly decreasing.
downerending 6y ago
> The dream of this thing just magically going away is absolutely delusional. Since we don't really know what's going on yet, almost anything that happens is going to seem kind of magical. Right now we're operating on guesswork and superstition.

walterbell 6y ago

Is there a dashboard which shows increase in testing capacity over that same period, case demographics, presence of other medical conditions, and asymptomatic cases? With increased (including employment-related) testing, case count should be increasing everywhere, but some of those could be recovered or asymptomatic. We know that most hospitals were well below capacity, so new cases can be treated.

bitbuilder 6y ago
>Is there a dashboard which shows increase in testing capacity over that same period Here's the best resource Ive found for comparing all the relevant data: http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ Playing around with the data there, it looks like yes NC has had an increase in cases recently, but it tracks an increase in testing. Test positivity rates are about flat. It really is completely pointless to discuss increases in cases without also comparing to increases in testing and positivity rates. Deaths are up, but as another poster pointed out it's hardly statistically significant. The rolling 7 day average is 2.2/1m now, vs 1.7/1m on May 1st.
- aphextron 6y ago
  >"Deaths are up, but as another poster pointed out it's hardly statistically significant. The rolling 7 day average is 2.2/1m now, vs 1.7/1m on May 1st." How is a 34% increase not statistically significant?
  - thephyber 6y ago
    That's a statistical/maths term[1], not an opinion of the number. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance
  - mikem170 6y ago
    >How is a 34% increase not statistically significant? Because going from a daily death rate of 0.00017% to 0.00022% is still such a very small number, what might be called statistical noise.
  - bitbuilder 6y ago
    Because we're talking relatively small numbers. It's easy to create large movements in small numbers. If one person in my town is murdered this year, and 2 are murdered next year, that's a 100% year over year increase in the homicide rate. But it's obviously a meaningless increase. 2.2 out of a million is a small number. More people in NC are dying every day from cancer or heart disease.
- shock-value 6y ago
  Be careful not to swing too far the other way and assume that a flat positivity rate implies a flat actual infection rate. As states increase testing capacity, lower risk individuals will start to become part of the testing pool (e.g. those without severe symptoms, those with only fleeting contact with someone infected, those with no connection at all as part of a disease surveillance measure, etc.). Thus a flat testing positivity rate can very well coexist alongside an actual increase in rate of infection, and given the aforementioned factors we might even infer the latter given the former.
  - 6y ago
dnprock 6y ago
Testing capacity has been increased. The amount of negative cases is going up. Positive cases are going down. https://vida.io/dashboards/ck9thqbxl00000umrd0u2pmdj https://vida.io/dashboards/ck9thqbxl00000umrd0u2pmdj

chrisco255 6y ago

Remember the whole point of shutdowns was to "flatten the curve" to keep the hospitals from being overrun. We can't stop the disease and we can't commit economic suicide. NC has only seen a slight uptick in hospitalizations: https://covid19.ncdhhs.gov/dashboard https://covid19.ncdhhs.gov/dashboard and it's been flat for the past week.

majormajor 6y ago
Yes, the shutdowns failed miserably if we thought we were going to eradicate infections. The government failed badly at communicating this. So now you have half the people saying the shutdowns were useless (cause the virus still exists) and another half saying they have to continue (cause the virus still exists, also)! If we had realistically wanted to squash this thing, the examples of other countries suggest we would've needed much more aggressive tracing and isolating of people, widespread early mask distribution and wearing, and more tracking. I fear that the government also may have failed miserably at taking advantage of them to bring more capacity online. Maybe the minimum stuff like masks and clothes and ventilators are taken care of, but we still seem in a very precarious place. Voluntary changes in behavior persist, though, which will make things very hard to untangle "effect of shutdown" from "effect of people being cautious about high-risk environments."
- ptero 6y ago
  Can you define what you mean by saying other countries squashed the thing? They may have flattened the curve, drove numbers down, etc. but until they get either a herd immunity or a wide vaccination the infections will likely flare up again as soon as travel restrictions get lifted.
  - gbear605 6y ago
    Some countries aren’t planning on lifting travel restrictions, or are planning on having mandatory quarantine for arrivals
    - 6y ago

mikem170 6y ago

There are more tests than there were a month ago, and that affects how many positives are seen (by some amount). Also the increase in deaths you link to is not statistically significant, given it is in the rage of 10-30 over the course of several months in a state with 10 million people. Those numbers don't prove your point.

ceejayoz 6y ago
> Also the increase in deaths you link to is not statistically significant, given it is in the rage of 10-30 over the course of several months in a state with 10 million people. A penny doubled daily is $0.64 after a week, $81.92 after two, $10,485.76 after three, and $1,342,177.28 after four. Upwards movement in cases and deaths in something that spreads exponentially is... not great.
- mikem170 6y ago
  Nothing is doubling every week anymore. Why did you bring that up? Daily deaths across pretty much all nations are decreasing even as lockdowns are removed. Nit pick all you'd like, be as afraid as you like, but the numbers you supplied don't support your assertions.
  - thephyber 6y ago
    > Nothing is doubling every week anymore Exponential growth of the disease isn't tied to an arbitrary "week" timeline. It's delayed because of a 0.25 - 4.0 weeks. Different environment and behaviors will cause it to spread at different time intervals (not just a different number of recipients per spreader). > Daily deaths across pretty much all nations are decreasing even as lockdowns are removed. And COVID death doesn't happen within days of new exposure. It's delayed 3.5 - 5+ weeks after exposure and the people most likely to die aren't the ones walking around in public on the first day of end of SiP. Your parent comment wasn't as outrageous as you make it seem.
    - mikem170 6y ago

matwood 6y ago

Yeah, the 7 day moving average of new cases and deaths is also slowly trending up [1]. I think we all wished COVID would just go away, but that seems unlikely. [1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Jabbles 6y ago
Please post a screenshot of the graph you're referring to, because I cannot see this upward trend on the page you linked. Regardless, your second sentence is true.
- minism 6y ago
  I think they are referring to the uptick seen after May 29 here: https://imgur.com/a/Z9y7cek https://imgur.com/a/Z9y7cek
- staycoolboy 6y ago
  Click the "Projections" link, under the "Recovered" count. There you can see the daily trend.
- matwood 6y ago
  If you look at the "daily new" graphs they have options to see the bars and/or overlay moving averages. Deaths and new infections were coming down, but have since bottomed out and are every so slightly going back up. Still not enough to see an upward trend, but the downward trend seems to have stopped.

usaar333 6y ago

> Daily new infections have more than doubled here in North Carolina in the last two weeks since "reopening" Confirmed cases, not infections. The hospitalization numbers are about 30% higher or so which is about-ish how much new deaths have increased. Which is bad, but not 2x bad. All said, NC may have one of the highest spike of any state (reopened or not). Texas and Florida have flat hospitalizations; Georgia is slightly decreasing.

downerending 6y ago

> The dream of this thing just magically going away is absolutely delusional. Since we don't really know what's going on yet, almost anything that happens is going to seem kind of magical. Right now we're operating on guesswork and superstition.