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It wasn’t on westerners radars until February in any serious way. It spread through Winter 2019, Spring 2020, and is spreading during Summer 2020 when trying t

by covid2019 6y ago

It wasn’t on westerners radars until February in any serious way. It spread through Winter 2019, Spring 2020, and is spreading during Summer 2020 when trying to “re-open.” Pretty sure measurable science to support the idea exists. Oh sure that trend may change, but come on, RIGHT NOW it’s literally showing no signs of fading away if we “live normally.” Why do you need 18 more months of plotting data to decide on what’s literally happening right before your eyes?

glofish 6y ago
As counter intuitive as it sounds there is reason to believe that currently the penetration of the disease is much lower than in March. The modeling from IMHE claims that in March the number of daily new infections were above 250K whereas today are about 120K. https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america see the tab called Infections and Testing It just that we were measuring a lot many more people now. But it is true that in June there were fewer cases than today, but by far the most cases were in the Winter. How else would be in the situation where 10% of population is already seropostive and at least as many don't develop antibodies since their symptoms are mild, thus we are probably over 20% of people having had the disease.
- knzhou 6y ago
  > The modeling from IMHE shows that in March the number of daily new infections were above 250K whereas today are about 120K. Yeah, but the IHME model is also extremely bad. It consists almost entirely of fitting a Gaussian to the number of cases over time. It’s mathematically impossible in their model for the case count to not go down.
  - glofish 6y ago
    I am not sure I follow. For any epidemic that is well underway it is impossible for the number cases not to go down over time, it is only the time frame that is under question perhaps.
- covid2019 6y ago
  Statistics improve but what’s that mean for raw numbers? Instead of 10s of millions on ventilators, and millions dead it’s millions on ventilators and hundreds of thousands dead? Statistics are great for science but awful for social policy. For the same reason that you don’t want someone deciding what religion you should regurgitate. You could end up in the wrong cohort someday.
  - glofish 6y ago
    Not sure what you are getting at. The original post is on the topic of whether there are more or fewer infections in the Summer, which it looks to be the case.
pier25 6y ago
> It wasn’t on westerners radars until February in any serious way. I'm no scientist but that was the end of Winter and there were very few people with it at the time. Isn't it possible that it is indeed seasonal and it's now in its "weak phase"?
- covid2019 6y ago
  How does that explain the spiking that occurred as soon as states re-opened? Politicians are load balancing the healthcare system, not the infection rates.
  - pier25 6y ago
    Well, precisely because the states re-opened and people got closer to each other.
    - covid2019 6y ago
      The biology of the virus may not have a “weak phase” just because transmission rates went down. We load balanced transmission rates with distance. That doesn’t mean the virus got weaker. Rates go up as soon as distance is removed? Doesn’t seem like the virus wants to slow down as a matter of its “real” physical properties

glofish 6y ago

As counter intuitive as it sounds there is reason to believe that currently the penetration of the disease is much lower than in March. The modeling from IMHE claims that in March the number of daily new infections were above 250K whereas today are about 120K. https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america see the tab called Infections and Testing It just that we were measuring a lot many more people now. But it is true that in June there were fewer cases than today, but by far the most cases were in the Winter. How else would be in the situation where 10% of population is already seropostive and at least as many don't develop antibodies since their symptoms are mild, thus we are probably over 20% of people having had the disease.

knzhou 6y ago
> The modeling from IMHE shows that in March the number of daily new infections were above 250K whereas today are about 120K. Yeah, but the IHME model is also extremely bad. It consists almost entirely of fitting a Gaussian to the number of cases over time. It’s mathematically impossible in their model for the case count to not go down.
- glofish 6y ago
  I am not sure I follow. For any epidemic that is well underway it is impossible for the number cases not to go down over time, it is only the time frame that is under question perhaps.
covid2019 6y ago
Statistics improve but what’s that mean for raw numbers? Instead of 10s of millions on ventilators, and millions dead it’s millions on ventilators and hundreds of thousands dead? Statistics are great for science but awful for social policy. For the same reason that you don’t want someone deciding what religion you should regurgitate. You could end up in the wrong cohort someday.
- glofish 6y ago
  Not sure what you are getting at. The original post is on the topic of whether there are more or fewer infections in the Summer, which it looks to be the case.

pier25 6y ago

> It wasn’t on westerners radars until February in any serious way. I'm no scientist but that was the end of Winter and there were very few people with it at the time. Isn't it possible that it is indeed seasonal and it's now in its "weak phase"?

covid2019 6y ago
How does that explain the spiking that occurred as soon as states re-opened? Politicians are load balancing the healthcare system, not the infection rates.
- pier25 6y ago
  Well, precisely because the states re-opened and people got closer to each other.
  - covid2019 6y ago
    The biology of the virus may not have a “weak phase” just because transmission rates went down. We load balanced transmission rates with distance. That doesn’t mean the virus got weaker. Rates go up as soon as distance is removed? Doesn’t seem like the virus wants to slow down as a matter of its “real” physical properties