4 ms·

We haven't even had one full season, so not calling it seasonal is premature, isn't it? Look at the numbers: We see that deaths are down and that illnesses ar

We haven't even had one full season, so not calling it seasonal is premature, isn't it? Look at the numbers: We see that deaths are down and that illnesses are less severe (ICUs are not overwhelmed), even though daily infections are at all-time-highs in some regions. Coincidence, or perhaps due to seasonality? We also see that the virus can not be brought under control without permanent lockdowns. As soon as you open up, the virus starts spreading again. Countries that now have the virus "under control" have had a significant amount of uncontrolled spread beforehand. I've read several headlines along the lines of "resurgence of cases after opening up" or "second wave under way" in Europe. Then I look at the graphs and it's just not true. Cases are stable, you just have some daily variance.

jxramos 6y ago
I've wondered about the deaths being down and whether or not all the low hanging easy to pick off fruit from the virus' perspective is eaten up. The virus will then work its way through a healthier populace and not result in so many deaths. Do all pandemics work that way more or less?
- gridlockd 6y ago
  I would assume so, but that alone doesn't explain why regions that haven't been exposed strongly until summer fare so much better than regions exposed earlier.
  - dabbledash 6y ago
    Just a guess, but maybe better isolation of the the most vulnerable (so the people getting sick now are younger), and more knowledge about how to treat those who end up hospitalized.
- hinkley 6y ago
  It's hard to have this conversation with people. I believe that the morbidity rate is lower than we have estimated. Sure, we probably have a lot of people who have had the virus and didn't develop symptoms. But we are still on our way to a million dead, so that hardly matters. The other aspect the lackadaisical are ignoring is that the morbidity rate is only where it is because the number of critical patients is hovering around the carrying capacity of our medical infrastructure. More cases means a dog-leg in deaths because they will have to give up on people to save others. There will be no more heroic actions to save mom or dad once you can fill the ICU entirely with people with far better prognoses. Mom isn't going into the ICU because it's already full of athletes and people under 30. She's going on morphine and you can say goodbye over a phone.
raducu 6y ago
Romania is in wave 2, much bigger than wave 1.
- hinkley 6y ago
  It's frustrating to me that this was all documented with the Spanish Flu and we have learned basically nothing in 100 years.
tensor 6y ago
> We also see that the virus can not be brought under control without permanent lockdowns. As soon as you open up, the virus starts spreading again. Countries that now have the virus "under control" have had a significant amount of uncontrolled spread beforehand. I think this is the point. They are not saying it could get worse in winter months, they are saying that summer is not a "low season" and that it will spread just fine without controls. The data supports that.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  How do we know that other seasonal viruses don't also "spread fine" during summer, except that the illness is less severe?
  - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
    Because the elderly experience it several regardless, and so would continue to experience a year round "cold and flu season". Or do you mean the viruses properties change?
  - tensor 6y ago
    Because we don't do anything special in the summer and there is very little flu compared with "flu season." Here is data, just select the US: https://apps.who.int/flumart/Default?ReportNo=1 https://apps.who.int/flumart/Default?ReportNo=1 edit: In fact, take a look at Brazil or India, places that are hot year round. They have very few instances of the flu no matter the time of year. This shows that it doesn't spread much in warm weather. We already know that covid-19 does spread in warm weather.
    - gridlockd 6y ago
      > In fact, take a look at Brazil or India, places that are hot year round. They have very few instances of the flu no matter the time of year. This shows that it doesn't spread much in warm weather. I would argue that it doesn't show that. Nobody is testing for Influenza if it's just a "mild" case. What is being tracked is deaths from pneumonia that are attributed to Influenza. If you look at the mortality in India or Brazil, it's way lower than in countries further from the equator. You also would expect testing capacity to be lower, so there's likely more unknown cases there.
ISL 6y ago
I've spent much less time looking at global numbers after ~April, as our focus has turned inward to making things go well locally. As a matter of experimental practice, however, there should be sufficient information to infer whether or not to expect much seasonal variation in COVID-19 infections. The pandemic emerged at the end of winter in the northern hemisphere. It is now full-on summer. In the southern hemisphere, however, the sign is flipped. It is now full-on winter. Unfortunately, the Covid pandemic is now a high-statistics event. There are oodles of cases in locations that span the full gamut of humidity and temperature distributions. Societal variations (policy, economics, politics, etc.) complicate the experiment, but the opportunity to make a reasonable quantitative statement on the impact of seasonal climatic variation on Covid transmission is surely there.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  > In the southern hemisphere, however, the sign is flipped. It is now full-on winter. There isn't really a "full-on winter" in the southern hemisphere except in the southernmost parts of Chile/Argentina/Australia or in New Zealand. That makes it difficult to compare.
  - ISL 6y ago
    South Africa is reporting ~10,000 cases/day.Chile is reporting thousands of cases a day. The cross-society systematic uncertainties are the major challenge, as every country and culture is attacking this thing differently (and NZ is crushing it). If there is a strong seasonal effect, it should be apparent throughout global datasets, both from a latitude-dependent dynamic in the northern hemisphere and variation with opposite sign for locations with equal and opposite latitude. It is my continued guess that meaningful bounds on any seasonal effect are not inaccessable. From US data alone, it is clear that R_0 is not impacted by a factor of ~2-5 by summertime climate. We're still losing.
thaumaturgy 6y ago
> We see that deaths are down This is false. Deaths were down, but they have been climbing again for the last three weeks. Mortality is a lagging indicator to infections, so what we're seeing right now is mortality from the earliest stages of reopening. > illnesses are less severe This is also false. There may be some factors that are combating more severe symptoms (e.g. greater vitamin D, if that turns out to be a real effect), but the virus hasn't recently become somehow less potent. > ICUs are not overwhelmed False again. In the current hotspot states -- Florida, Arizona, and Texas -- ICU capacity in many areas is strained or overwhelmed as is the rest of the hospital infrastructure: "ICU beds, ventilators in use hit new records as Arizona reports 1,357 new COVID-19 cases": https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-health/2020/07/13/arizona-coronavirus-update-july-13-stress-hospitals-remains-high/5427493002/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-health/20... "Florida coronavirus: 52 hospitals max out ICU capacity as cases increase": https://www.wfla.com/8-on-your-side/investigations/florida-coronavirus-52-hospitals-max-out-icu-capacity-as-cases-increase/ https://www.wfla.com/8-on-your-side/investigations/florida-c... "Texas hospitals are running out of drugs, beds, ventilators and even staff": https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/14/texas-hospitals-coronavirus/ https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/14/texas-hospitals-coro... Note that all of these articles are over a week old. The situation hasn't improved since then.
- gizmo 6y ago
  I think you are mistaken on two counts. The data is certainly not so self-evident that you can simply assert the parent is wrong. Deaths are rising in counties that hadn't had significant exposure to covid19 before, and already the trend is heading down across the board. Deaths will be climbing in a couple of hotspots for the next 2 weeks, but total deaths in the entirety of the USA shouldn't exceed 280k. I agree the virus hasn't become less potent, but hospitals have gotten much, much better at treatment. Remdesivir in particular makes a big difference. Spread in long term care facilities are now tracked nationwide, with terrific results. So the CFR is down by a lot, even though the virus hasn't changed. Nobody in the US is being denied care because the ICUs are full. Yes, some hospitals are strained but this is not at all unusual. You'll find similar articles about maxed out ICUs from 2018, 2016, etc. First hit on google from jan 2018: "Hospitals Overwhelmed by Flu Patients Are Treating Them in Tents" (https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/ https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...). Moving patients to hospitals with spare capacity isn't that big of a deal. Bear in mind that Hospitals are for profit and ICU beds are extremely expensive. As a consequence hospitals target 85%+ ICU utilization throughout the year, otherwise they're losing money. Didn't the Texas Tribune just misreport the data? https://twitter.com/VanceGinn/status/1287940050752286721 https://twitter.com/VanceGinn/status/1287940050752286721

jxramos 6y ago

I've wondered about the deaths being down and whether or not all the low hanging easy to pick off fruit from the virus' perspective is eaten up. The virus will then work its way through a healthier populace and not result in so many deaths. Do all pandemics work that way more or less?

gridlockd 6y ago
I would assume so, but that alone doesn't explain why regions that haven't been exposed strongly until summer fare so much better than regions exposed earlier.
- dabbledash 6y ago
  Just a guess, but maybe better isolation of the the most vulnerable (so the people getting sick now are younger), and more knowledge about how to treat those who end up hospitalized.
hinkley 6y ago
It's hard to have this conversation with people. I believe that the morbidity rate is lower than we have estimated. Sure, we probably have a lot of people who have had the virus and didn't develop symptoms. But we are still on our way to a million dead, so that hardly matters. The other aspect the lackadaisical are ignoring is that the morbidity rate is only where it is because the number of critical patients is hovering around the carrying capacity of our medical infrastructure. More cases means a dog-leg in deaths because they will have to give up on people to save others. There will be no more heroic actions to save mom or dad once you can fill the ICU entirely with people with far better prognoses. Mom isn't going into the ICU because it's already full of athletes and people under 30. She's going on morphine and you can say goodbye over a phone.

raducu 6y ago

Romania is in wave 2, much bigger than wave 1.

hinkley 6y ago
It's frustrating to me that this was all documented with the Spanish Flu and we have learned basically nothing in 100 years.

tensor 6y ago

> We also see that the virus can not be brought under control without permanent lockdowns. As soon as you open up, the virus starts spreading again. Countries that now have the virus "under control" have had a significant amount of uncontrolled spread beforehand. I think this is the point. They are not saying it could get worse in winter months, they are saying that summer is not a "low season" and that it will spread just fine without controls. The data supports that.

gridlockd 6y ago
How do we know that other seasonal viruses don't also "spread fine" during summer, except that the illness is less severe?
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  Because the elderly experience it several regardless, and so would continue to experience a year round "cold and flu season". Or do you mean the viruses properties change?
- tensor 6y ago
  Because we don't do anything special in the summer and there is very little flu compared with "flu season." Here is data, just select the US: https://apps.who.int/flumart/Default?ReportNo=1 https://apps.who.int/flumart/Default?ReportNo=1 edit: In fact, take a look at Brazil or India, places that are hot year round. They have very few instances of the flu no matter the time of year. This shows that it doesn't spread much in warm weather. We already know that covid-19 does spread in warm weather.
  - gridlockd 6y ago
    > In fact, take a look at Brazil or India, places that are hot year round. They have very few instances of the flu no matter the time of year. This shows that it doesn't spread much in warm weather. I would argue that it doesn't show that. Nobody is testing for Influenza if it's just a "mild" case. What is being tracked is deaths from pneumonia that are attributed to Influenza. If you look at the mortality in India or Brazil, it's way lower than in countries further from the equator. You also would expect testing capacity to be lower, so there's likely more unknown cases there.

ISL 6y ago

I've spent much less time looking at global numbers after ~April, as our focus has turned inward to making things go well locally. As a matter of experimental practice, however, there should be sufficient information to infer whether or not to expect much seasonal variation in COVID-19 infections. The pandemic emerged at the end of winter in the northern hemisphere. It is now full-on summer. In the southern hemisphere, however, the sign is flipped. It is now full-on winter. Unfortunately, the Covid pandemic is now a high-statistics event. There are oodles of cases in locations that span the full gamut of humidity and temperature distributions. Societal variations (policy, economics, politics, etc.) complicate the experiment, but the opportunity to make a reasonable quantitative statement on the impact of seasonal climatic variation on Covid transmission is surely there.

gridlockd 6y ago
> In the southern hemisphere, however, the sign is flipped. It is now full-on winter. There isn't really a "full-on winter" in the southern hemisphere except in the southernmost parts of Chile/Argentina/Australia or in New Zealand. That makes it difficult to compare.
- ISL 6y ago
  South Africa is reporting ~10,000 cases/day.Chile is reporting thousands of cases a day. The cross-society systematic uncertainties are the major challenge, as every country and culture is attacking this thing differently (and NZ is crushing it). If there is a strong seasonal effect, it should be apparent throughout global datasets, both from a latitude-dependent dynamic in the northern hemisphere and variation with opposite sign for locations with equal and opposite latitude. It is my continued guess that meaningful bounds on any seasonal effect are not inaccessable. From US data alone, it is clear that R_0 is not impacted by a factor of ~2-5 by summertime climate. We're still losing.

thaumaturgy 6y ago

> We see that deaths are down This is false. Deaths were down, but they have been climbing again for the last three weeks. Mortality is a lagging indicator to infections, so what we're seeing right now is mortality from the earliest stages of reopening. > illnesses are less severe This is also false. There may be some factors that are combating more severe symptoms (e.g. greater vitamin D, if that turns out to be a real effect), but the virus hasn't recently become somehow less potent. > ICUs are not overwhelmed False again. In the current hotspot states -- Florida, Arizona, and Texas -- ICU capacity in many areas is strained or overwhelmed as is the rest of the hospital infrastructure: "ICU beds, ventilators in use hit new records as Arizona reports 1,357 new COVID-19 cases": https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-health/2020/07/13/arizona-coronavirus-update-july-13-stress-hospitals-remains-high/5427493002/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-health/20... "Florida coronavirus: 52 hospitals max out ICU capacity as cases increase": https://www.wfla.com/8-on-your-side/investigations/florida-coronavirus-52-hospitals-max-out-icu-capacity-as-cases-increase/ https://www.wfla.com/8-on-your-side/investigations/florida-c... "Texas hospitals are running out of drugs, beds, ventilators and even staff": https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/14/texas-hospitals-coronavirus/ https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/14/texas-hospitals-coro... Note that all of these articles are over a week old. The situation hasn't improved since then.

gizmo 6y ago
I think you are mistaken on two counts. The data is certainly not so self-evident that you can simply assert the parent is wrong. Deaths are rising in counties that hadn't had significant exposure to covid19 before, and already the trend is heading down across the board. Deaths will be climbing in a couple of hotspots for the next 2 weeks, but total deaths in the entirety of the USA shouldn't exceed 280k. I agree the virus hasn't become less potent, but hospitals have gotten much, much better at treatment. Remdesivir in particular makes a big difference. Spread in long term care facilities are now tracked nationwide, with terrific results. So the CFR is down by a lot, even though the virus hasn't changed. Nobody in the US is being denied care because the ICUs are full. Yes, some hospitals are strained but this is not at all unusual. You'll find similar articles about maxed out ICUs from 2018, 2016, etc. First hit on google from jan 2018: "Hospitals Overwhelmed by Flu Patients Are Treating Them in Tents" (https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/ https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...). Moving patients to hospitals with spare capacity isn't that big of a deal. Bear in mind that Hospitals are for profit and ICU beds are extremely expensive. As a consequence hospitals target 85%+ ICU utilization throughout the year, otherwise they're losing money. Didn't the Texas Tribune just misreport the data? https://twitter.com/VanceGinn/status/1287940050752286721 https://twitter.com/VanceGinn/status/1287940050752286721