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RealClearPolitics links to TFA, and just below links to this story as well, “Where are all the deaths?” https://spectator.us/where-deaths-coronavirus-wave/ htt

by zaroth 6y ago

RealClearPolitics links to TFA, and just below links to this story as well, “Where are all the deaths?” https://spectator.us/where-deaths-coronavirus-wave/ https://spectator.us/where-deaths-coronavirus-wave/ They both overstate their respective cases. I also would toss this one into the mix, “CDC Now Estimates there have been over 20 million Coronavirus cases”; https://outkick.com/cdc-now-estimates-there-have-been-over-20-million-coronavirus-cases/ https://outkick.com/cdc-now-estimates-there-have-been-over-2... The upshot is that this article could more accurately be titled Where’s the tragedy of the new Coronavirus spikes?. Strip away the politics and we have a huge uptick in case with in some cases the lowest death rates we’ve seen since March. The media keeps loosing the message in the midst of the disaster porn and political finger-pointing. We need the economy to be open to the absolute greatest extent possible while hospital capacity remains near maximum. The long-term damage (in dollars and lives) in over-regulating the extent of the lockdown could exceed the damage of COVID by an order magnitude. Needless to say, the more cases we can shift forward into summer and fall, versus having to deal with those cases in winter concomitant with flu season is how we prevent the disaster of a second wave. Hospitals in winter can be overwhelmed by a bad flu season alone, and COVID didn’t go exponential until after flu had tapered this year. We do not want to see them peaking together in vulnerable populations. This drumbeat of articles like this just totally miss the point entirely, as if we could just keep handing out trillions of dollars a month indefinitely until a half billion doses of vaccine are ready to go, and as if even if we did that we’re not inadvertently causing hundreds of thousands of death due to side effects of quarantine and things like canceled elective procedures. A lot has changed over the last couple months, but the media is still “reporting” like it’s February.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
klipt 6y ago
Is it possible that Covid has already evolved to be less virulent? Many a new (to humans) disease has started off unusually deadly, only to evolve to keep its host alive longer to help further its spread.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Possible? Anything is possible. But the current guesses are that the most vulnerable people already died, and less usage of ventilators or more steroids have better outcomes. My personal guess is that our testing methods still don't work reliably most of the time, since the Santa Clara dashboard has extremely low positives (2.86%) considering we had direct flights from Wuhan (and Shanghai) for 2 months after the first hospitalization, and indirect flights after that until even more recently. I mean, come on - one of the most contagious diseases, but only 3% positive?
- zaroth 6y ago
  I doubt it? I think changing demographics of the people being infected is a more obvious culprit. Hundreds of thousands of young adults (20-30) went out in very large groups over the last month. At the same time we've finally gotten better at actually protecting the elderly. This is the result; https://img.apmcdn.org/6b486323329122674a9b5fbfdcf2e51f9ad83f8d/uncropped/8e1875-20200626-covid-cases-age.png https://img.apmcdn.org/6b486323329122674a9b5fbfdcf2e51f9ad83... The younger demographic happens to be vanishingly unlikely to die, and highly unlikely to even be hospitalized, from a case of SARS-CoV-2.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  Not very plausible in the time period. It's more likely that we're not seeing a spike in deaths from the US spike in cases because it hasn't been long enough yet; the spike of deaths will be along in a week or so. Deaths within days of detection are fairly unusual. Also, the average age of cases has generally fallen (presumably older people are being more careful than younger people) and younger people are less likely to die.
redis_mlc 6y ago
Santa Clara (SV) basically has no spike unless you use a magnifying glass on the official charts. Nothing's changed in months. Guess that doesn't get clicks though. https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx
- jml7c5 6y ago
  The positivity rate* increased by 50% in two weeks. That the jump is from 4 pixels to 6 pixels obscures the magnitude of the change. *one week moving average
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    > The positivity rate* increased by 50% in two weeks. Wow, 50%. Sounds yuuge! Oh wait, that's a couple dozen people?
DoingIsLearning 6y ago
You mention the importance of having this pandemic dilluted prior to reaching the flu season. Another aspect that I haven't seen discussed in terms of public health is the side-effects of the large scale habits change due to this pandemic. Could this change in social distancing, hygiene habits i.e. Hand-washing frequency, use of desinfectants on hands, public surfaces, parcels, shopping trolleys, etc. could this create a positive pressure on flu viruses promoting a particularly virulent flu in seasons to come? Could the measures used to contain this pandemic provide the selection pressure conditions for a future (worse?) flu pandemic? edit:typo
SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
This is not how it works. You cannot "shift" cases into summer. The cases you "shifted" into summer will become the origin of the second wave - i.e. the more you have it now the more you have it in October or September. I also keep hearing about "hundreds of thousands of death due to side effects of quarantine" and have not seen a single reputable study regarding that. The lowest death rate first of all is still very high, and secondly, it is because the demographic has shifted towards younger population. It will go up back soon. The best thing to do now is a) universal masking; b) close the businesses, causing biggest trouble, such as bars.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  There's no proof masks stop the spread. There's immense economic damage for shutting down businesses for a year or two, would likely trigger an economic collapse worse than Great Depression, and I have yet to see any scientific evidence that bars are the hot spots for spreading the disease right now.
  - SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
    To get a proof about masks ust search the Google by the relevant keywords. Speaking of bars - just switch the news channel on, all the latest outbrakes are from bars and nightclubs. And that would be considered science by the way, just not made by degreed scientists. Unless of course someone is a conspiracy theorist, and distrust the local news when they go to some bar in Michigan, to make a report about a closure.
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      Check out Sweden's results: http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/sweden_uk20jun.html http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/sweden_uk20jun.html You really just download your opinions from the top 10 results on Google and whatever the anchor person tells you? Fascinating. As for scientists, they do not agree on this point at all. The virus is nanometers thick and can easily sail through the vast majority of facial coverings people are using. It also easily becomes useless when worn for long periods of time, or when adjusting the mask with your hand or when eating or drinking, etc. How much of the outbreaks are attributed to the massive gatherings and protests of people over the past few weeks? Why are bars blamed for this?
dm319 6y ago
Eughh. You want to strip away the politics, but all your reporting is political. The spectator uses it's arguments to hold a specific political position, using emotive terms like "The coronavirus doomsayers could not even wait until the fall for the apocalyptic announcements of the dreaded second wave.", "those New York death numbers have declined, but they have not been replaced by deaths in the rest of the country. This should be good news. Instead, it is no news." As usual, it is an argument about the behaviour of people and the press on the opposite side of the political spectrum, like every damn discussion in America is about. Some of the points are valid, but it's hard to take the article seriously when it clearly has a political agenda. It's main thesis is that there isn't an uptick in deaths, so this is a good thing. It doesn't talk about the death rate in absolute terms and whether that is acceptable. It doesn't model the economic impact of lock down on future deaths. It also misses the obvious point that the death rate lags around 3 weeks behind the cases, because that is how long the virus takes to kill. There are valid discussions to be had about the economic and human costs of lock down, the worth of human life. In europe the places that locked down hard and early have the virus under far better control and were able to open up their economies with safety measures in place earlier than those that have had to deal with the cost of locking down late. If you look at the number of cases in the US, it is clearly taking off again, and is at a rate higher than the peak in April [1]. [1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
- zaroth 6y ago
  I may not have made it clear enough, the Spectator was just an article I found equally flawed as TFA but from the opposite perspective. So basically I agree with the faults you found with that article. We are absolutely seeing an uptick in cases. Compared to early April we are also testing a lot more, and I’m not sure that the average positivity rate across the US is higher now than it was, e.g. April 1, but at a local level there are definitely places where this is true. Certainly positivity rate has increased dramatically since, e.g. June 1 in many places. We don’t see a concomitant increase in death rates because most cases must be in the 20-30 yrs age range, probably due to that age range predominantly being the ones going out in large groups over the last month. I think everyone is looking for the right balance of policies that minimizes overall suffering and loss of life. I’m not sure which European countries you would consider having locked down “early” rather than “late”. The decision to open economies at this point seems purely a political one and no longer based on objective facts like hospital capacity. I think the simple fact is the US saw a surge over the last month because millions of young adults held truly massive rallies. If rallies subside or the population becomes substantially infected and then immune, case counts will fall rapidly. That age range is largely unaffected by SARS-CoV-2 and the US doesn’t have a large number of multi-generational households, so luckily I think the case counts amount to a lot of smoke with little fire.
panpanna 6y ago
I get the feeling that your own post is very much political.
bamboozled 6y ago
“Where are all the deaths?” Hopefully you don't soon find out!
neilwilson 6y ago
We can hand out as many dollars as people want to save to feel secure. That’s how a sovereign currency works. If nobody wants to save then by definition whatever is spent will be collected by tax. Perhaps read The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton to understand how that works

by zaroth 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

klipt 6y ago

Is it possible that Covid has already evolved to be less virulent? Many a new (to humans) disease has started off unusually deadly, only to evolve to keep its host alive longer to help further its spread.

redis_mlc 6y ago
Possible? Anything is possible. But the current guesses are that the most vulnerable people already died, and less usage of ventilators or more steroids have better outcomes. My personal guess is that our testing methods still don't work reliably most of the time, since the Santa Clara dashboard has extremely low positives (2.86%) considering we had direct flights from Wuhan (and Shanghai) for 2 months after the first hospitalization, and indirect flights after that until even more recently. I mean, come on - one of the most contagious diseases, but only 3% positive?
zaroth 6y ago
I doubt it? I think changing demographics of the people being infected is a more obvious culprit. Hundreds of thousands of young adults (20-30) went out in very large groups over the last month. At the same time we've finally gotten better at actually protecting the elderly. This is the result; https://img.apmcdn.org/6b486323329122674a9b5fbfdcf2e51f9ad83f8d/uncropped/8e1875-20200626-covid-cases-age.png https://img.apmcdn.org/6b486323329122674a9b5fbfdcf2e51f9ad83... The younger demographic happens to be vanishingly unlikely to die, and highly unlikely to even be hospitalized, from a case of SARS-CoV-2.
rsynnott 6y ago
Not very plausible in the time period. It's more likely that we're not seeing a spike in deaths from the US spike in cases because it hasn't been long enough yet; the spike of deaths will be along in a week or so. Deaths within days of detection are fairly unusual. Also, the average age of cases has generally fallen (presumably older people are being more careful than younger people) and younger people are less likely to die.

redis_mlc 6y ago

Santa Clara (SV) basically has no spike unless you use a magnifying glass on the official charts. Nothing's changed in months. Guess that doesn't get clicks though. https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx

jml7c5 6y ago
The positivity rate* increased by 50% in two weeks. That the jump is from 4 pixels to 6 pixels obscures the magnitude of the change. *one week moving average
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > The positivity rate* increased by 50% in two weeks. Wow, 50%. Sounds yuuge! Oh wait, that's a couple dozen people?

DoingIsLearning 6y ago

You mention the importance of having this pandemic dilluted prior to reaching the flu season. Another aspect that I haven't seen discussed in terms of public health is the side-effects of the large scale habits change due to this pandemic. Could this change in social distancing, hygiene habits i.e. Hand-washing frequency, use of desinfectants on hands, public surfaces, parcels, shopping trolleys, etc. could this create a positive pressure on flu viruses promoting a particularly virulent flu in seasons to come? Could the measures used to contain this pandemic provide the selection pressure conditions for a future (worse?) flu pandemic? edit:typo

SomeoneFromCA 6y ago

This is not how it works. You cannot "shift" cases into summer. The cases you "shifted" into summer will become the origin of the second wave - i.e. the more you have it now the more you have it in October or September. I also keep hearing about "hundreds of thousands of death due to side effects of quarantine" and have not seen a single reputable study regarding that. The lowest death rate first of all is still very high, and secondly, it is because the demographic has shifted towards younger population. It will go up back soon. The best thing to do now is a) universal masking; b) close the businesses, causing biggest trouble, such as bars.

chrisco255 6y ago
There's no proof masks stop the spread. There's immense economic damage for shutting down businesses for a year or two, would likely trigger an economic collapse worse than Great Depression, and I have yet to see any scientific evidence that bars are the hot spots for spreading the disease right now.
- SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
  To get a proof about masks ust search the Google by the relevant keywords. Speaking of bars - just switch the news channel on, all the latest outbrakes are from bars and nightclubs. And that would be considered science by the way, just not made by degreed scientists. Unless of course someone is a conspiracy theorist, and distrust the local news when they go to some bar in Michigan, to make a report about a closure.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    Check out Sweden's results: http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/sweden_uk20jun.html http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/sweden_uk20jun.html You really just download your opinions from the top 10 results on Google and whatever the anchor person tells you? Fascinating. As for scientists, they do not agree on this point at all. The virus is nanometers thick and can easily sail through the vast majority of facial coverings people are using. It also easily becomes useless when worn for long periods of time, or when adjusting the mask with your hand or when eating or drinking, etc. How much of the outbreaks are attributed to the massive gatherings and protests of people over the past few weeks? Why are bars blamed for this?

dm319 6y ago

Eughh. You want to strip away the politics, but all your reporting is political. The spectator uses it's arguments to hold a specific political position, using emotive terms like "The coronavirus doomsayers could not even wait until the fall for the apocalyptic announcements of the dreaded second wave.", "those New York death numbers have declined, but they have not been replaced by deaths in the rest of the country. This should be good news. Instead, it is no news." As usual, it is an argument about the behaviour of people and the press on the opposite side of the political spectrum, like every damn discussion in America is about. Some of the points are valid, but it's hard to take the article seriously when it clearly has a political agenda. It's main thesis is that there isn't an uptick in deaths, so this is a good thing. It doesn't talk about the death rate in absolute terms and whether that is acceptable. It doesn't model the economic impact of lock down on future deaths. It also misses the obvious point that the death rate lags around 3 weeks behind the cases, because that is how long the virus takes to kill. There are valid discussions to be had about the economic and human costs of lock down, the worth of human life. In europe the places that locked down hard and early have the virus under far better control and were able to open up their economies with safety measures in place earlier than those that have had to deal with the cost of locking down late. If you look at the number of cases in the US, it is clearly taking off again, and is at a rate higher than the peak in April [1]. [1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

zaroth 6y ago
I may not have made it clear enough, the Spectator was just an article I found equally flawed as TFA but from the opposite perspective. So basically I agree with the faults you found with that article. We are absolutely seeing an uptick in cases. Compared to early April we are also testing a lot more, and I’m not sure that the average positivity rate across the US is higher now than it was, e.g. April 1, but at a local level there are definitely places where this is true. Certainly positivity rate has increased dramatically since, e.g. June 1 in many places. We don’t see a concomitant increase in death rates because most cases must be in the 20-30 yrs age range, probably due to that age range predominantly being the ones going out in large groups over the last month. I think everyone is looking for the right balance of policies that minimizes overall suffering and loss of life. I’m not sure which European countries you would consider having locked down “early” rather than “late”. The decision to open economies at this point seems purely a political one and no longer based on objective facts like hospital capacity. I think the simple fact is the US saw a surge over the last month because millions of young adults held truly massive rallies. If rallies subside or the population becomes substantially infected and then immune, case counts will fall rapidly. That age range is largely unaffected by SARS-CoV-2 and the US doesn’t have a large number of multi-generational households, so luckily I think the case counts amount to a lot of smoke with little fire.

panpanna 6y ago

I get the feeling that your own post is very much political.

bamboozled 6y ago

“Where are all the deaths?” Hopefully you don't soon find out!

neilwilson 6y ago

We can hand out as many dollars as people want to save to feel secure. That’s how a sovereign currency works. If nobody wants to save then by definition whatever is spent will be collected by tax. Perhaps read The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton to understand how that works