totm april 2020 Coronavirus

[fulgur]

It does seem very odd that the numbers plummeted recently, from 100,000 cases / day to just 70,000. That might however be to do with the fact that testing is happening less and less as healthcare systems are overloaded, as even the best systems will be - Italy has a pretty good universal healthcare system, so I'm worried for the USA's individualised, profit focused system.

[mikegarrison]

1 hour ago, Pds314 said:

So, long story short, no data is perfect, but as for faking data, good liars know their lies won't withstand the truth, so they don't make them if they believe being exposed as a liar is both likely and going to have worse consequences for them than the benefits of lying.

It is a mistake to believe that powerful people are good liars or that they are rational about it. In fact, IMO, just the opposite. People who have enough power tend to be lousy liars, because nobody ever calls them out, even when the people they have power over know that they are lying.

[DDE]

2 hours ago, Pds314 said:

This is something even a closed country couldn't hide.

Pyongyang has accepted your challenge.

2 hours ago, Pds314 said:

good liars know their lies won't withstand the truth, so they don't make them if they believe being exposed as a liar is both likely and going to have worse consequences for them than the benefits of lying.

Good liars know that, in the mid-term the vast majority of people will either always believe or always disbelieve what they say, so not only is there no incentive not to lie but there's also no incentive to tell the truth.

Good liars also know that the news cycle is less than 24 hours, and so if tomorrow they reverse their previous position, very few people will notice.

[Hotel26]

Truth is the first casualty in a war, not OF minds, but FOR minds, especially those numerous kind.

 

Edited April 7, 2020 by Hotel26

[Pds314]

2 hours ago, DDE said:

Pyongyang has accepted your challenge.

Good liars know that, in the mid-term the vast majority of people will either always believe or always disbelieve what they say, so not only is there no incentive not to lie but there's also no incentive to tell the truth.

Good liars also know that the news cycle is less than 24 hours, and so if tomorrow they reverse their previous position, very few people will notice.

That's thinking how a tabloid writer does though. Not a government. A government that puts a looming crisis under the rug faces an extremely obvious contradiction with claims vs reality when that crisis starts killing millions, especially since, for a lie like that to be convincing, the public needs to not have evidence that it's spreading out of control. No country, not even North Korea, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia, whatever, can convince the public the outbreak is under control if 70% of the population is sick, hospitals are denying patients with gunshot wounds and heart attacks because they're over capacity, and 3.4% of people in the country die. North Korea couldn't hide a million deaths of essentially random members of the population from anyone, let alone its own people. It couldn't hide a significant famine in the 90s and didn't try to. Instead it reached out for aid (which it got little), removal of sanctions (which didn't happen), and even IMF loans (which didn't happen), and trade with/through China (which happened eventually, and nowadays they actual manufacture clothes and other things marketed specifically at North American westerners, then mark them as being made in China to avoid sanctions, then export them to a Chinese exporting firm that either doesn't care or won't ask questions).

Although a sidenote here it's often wrongly stated that this cataclysmic famine having to do with the fall of the USSR is just the background rate of starvation in North Korea and still happening today. This is far from the case, as external, non-Korean sources cite North Korea's malnutrition death rate at about 1.01 per 100000 per year in 2017, which is pretty unextraordinary, and comparable to that in the Czech Republic, Norway, the Maldives, or Luxembourg. See this link for more info: https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/malnutrition/by-country/

 

If China's outbreak is not in fact under control, then that would imply the government thinks it can hide 40 million random deaths and a billion infections in a few months. Hide them from who? More than half of China would be infected. They gain nothing from pretending they've contained an uncontained outbreak because when the truth is not a Snopes link but a mountain of tens of millions of corpses and a billion sick people, you're not gonna be hiding that, and literally everyone is gonna know you were lying about containing the outbreak and then letting it spread when you could have implemented more of the highly effective "draconian" "forced" quarantines they were initially criticized for.

 

Now, in principle, China could rationally lie about the degree of containment and the extent of the outbreak in Wuhan. Hiding, say, an outbreak triple the size with 250000 cases instead of 85000, and 10000 deaths instead of 3300, and 30000 active cases remaining instead of 1500, MIGHT be doable. Even so though, 7000 unaccounted excess deaths in one city in a month is something that wouldn't be very easy to hide. People are gonna know they're dead. They're gonna know when, and they're gonna know it's an odd spike in death rates. Their friends and family are gonna know they died of the virus. That part's unhideable. The government might still be able to win the propoganda war to an extent but that's not a complete cover up.

And it's still not a faked recovery, just an exaggerated one. A faked recovery would require that the virus is still spreading exponentially and should within 2 months or less infect almost the entire population.

Edited April 7, 2020 by Pds314

[Hotel26]

57 minutes ago, Pds314 said:

If China's outbreak is not in fact under control

It's under control, you can be very sure.

The parameters of this disease will become fully apparent after nature has taken its course.

It's the truth about the source/cause of this disease jumping to humans that will be most difficult to obtain.

Edited April 7, 2020 by Hotel26

[tater]

5 hours ago, fulgur said:

It does seem very odd that the numbers plummeted recently, from 100,000 cases / day to just 70,000. That might however be to do with the fact that testing is happening less and less as healthcare systems are overloaded, as even the best systems will be - Italy has a pretty good universal healthcare system, so I'm worried for the USA's individualised, profit focused system.

~50% of US healthcare has been public for many decades FWIW (for the elderly and the bottom % of income).

Testing once the virus is at large is pointless from a care standpoint. Only when the number of cases is tiny does testing matter much (you have to have so few cases you can contract trace all of them). Flu has well under 2% of all cases ascertained by testing, it's useful to have a feel for flu for planning and vaccine purposes, but it's retrospective, like COVID-19 a test has nothing at all to do with care. If the hospitals were operating as usual, then yeah, a rapid test would be useful, because you'd isolate the patient. When you are shut down except for COVID, then it doesn't matter, everyone sick with the right symptoms is assumed to have COVID anyway (particularly given the fact that all the tests used are fairly lousy, and it's estimated they have a ~30% false negative rate (some of that is how hard it is to swab that far back in the nose).

 

Regarding China. How many deaths do they say resulted from Tienanmen Square? 

 

 

[DDE]

21 minutes ago, tater said:

How many deaths do they say resulted from Tienanmen Square? 

From what?

Spoiler

 

[Hotel26]

My co-worker journeyed to Hunan province in December with his wife and 5 year-old son to spend Chinese New Year with his wife's parents.

This co-worker speaks quite good Mandarin, actually.  He said it was a strain, though, to keep up a conversation with his wife's parents, but he made the effort.

He returned to Australia and to work earlier than his wife and son.  By the time they returned, in early February, I think it was, he voluntarily isolated himself at home with his family for two weeks, working from home, because the enormity of this world-wide debacle had become understood, at least in presage.

He and his family were fine, colleague returned to work and I subsequently met his wife and son, briefly.  (My own first two sons are half Chinese and they live in the States.)

My colleague shocked me by telling me that his wife's parents were both orphans.

His wife's grand-parents, all four, had been murdered in China at the same time and for the same reason.  About this, I cannot say more; not here.  Out of courtesy.

Edited April 7, 2020 by Hotel26

[Hotel26]

16 minutes ago, DDE said:

From what?

"Some people with a tank did something to someone with a shopping bag."

[tater]

17 minutes ago, Hotel26 said:

His wife's grand-parents, all four, had all been murdered in China at the same time and for the same reason.  About this, I cannot say more, not here.  Out of courtesy.

I remember watching what was shown on the news at the time. What amazingly brave people.

On a COVID note:

This is very, very good advice. We had a virtual cocktail party on Zoom over the weekend, and most attendees were in fact doctors, including a hospitalist, and a couple ED docs (used to be ER, now ED ). They were all saying that they've been reading up on the literature, plus talking to people taking care of COVID patients all over, and proning people early is huge, regardless of how they are getting Os (the usual way we all do, or nasal cannula, masks, whatever).

Hey, space and COVID:

 

[kerbiloid]

(Btw. In space they anyway lack taste and smell.)

[StrandedonEarth]

AM is slow. I guess these aerospace companies (BO and ULA) probably don’t have plastic injection molding equipment around? It’s the toy companies that need to be cranking these parts out. Oh wait, I guess those are all in China now...

[Shpaget]

Unfortunately, tooling up for injection molding is fairly slow process. It can be sped up if you're willing to sacrifice surface finish and the item is simple, but complex features require multipart molds that take a while to manufacture. Fortunately this is the case where those compromises can be taken, so yeah, that should be done, but I don't thing there are many toy manufacturers outside of China.

[TheSaint]

20 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

AM is slow. I guess these aerospace companies (BO and ULA) probably don’t have plastic injection molding equipment around? It’s the toy companies that need to be cranking these parts out. Oh wait, I guess those are all in China now...

Just now, Shpaget said:

Unfortunately, tooling up for injection molding is fairly slow process. It can be sped up if you're willing to sacrifice surface finish and the item is simple, but complex features require multipart molds that take a while to manufacture. Fortunately this is the case where those compromises can be taken, so yeah, that should be done, but I don't thing there are many toy manufacturers outside of China.

I hope that if every country learns one thing from this whole crisis....

[Shpaget]

Oh yeah, there are many lessons to be learned from all of this.

[kerbiloid]

Slogan of decade is coming.

"Only homemade toys will save your life&health."

Edited April 7, 2020 by kerbiloid

[StrandedonEarth]

Can’t.... resist... sharing....

 

[magnemoe]

4 hours ago, Hotel26 said:

It's under control, you can be very sure.

The parameters of this disease will become fully apparent after nature has taken its course.

It's the truth about the source/cause of this disease jumping to humans that will be most difficult to obtain.

This, they would need to do shutdown of provinces, or had it run wild, none would be possible to hide. Note it might come back because you have it stay around in some places or more likely come in from other countries. Very likely deaths was under reported also final number of infected. 
See the other post about none violent crimes in the last months of the year. 
However the numbers would not been crazy high above 20k would start getting hard to hide, just the increased in death numbers is hard to hide over time, yes you could drag it out a bit, an common solution to hide failed operations in wars, instead of loosing half an battalion in an stupid failed assault you have increased losses over an month. 

[tater]

 

[tater]

This likely ends up being another valuable weapon against COVID-19.

The real end game here is:

1. Weather this bump over the next weeks. Meaning cases decrease to the point contact tracing is possible.

2. Get people back to work ASAP, and some sense of normalcy. This will include reminders to isolate with flu-like symptoms, and get tested (see #3). People will also wash hands more, probably distance themselves more in crowded places, etc.

3. TEST. In office (15 min) testing of anyone with ILI so that they can be isolated, and contact traced. Quarantines of said people (including contacts).

4. Maintain vigilance over the most at risk populations for the foreseeable future (months, certainly). Ie: special care at nursing homes, and precautions taken by immunosuppressed people, etc.

5. Use what has been learned about care to mitigate poor outcomes. Antiviral drugs, things as simple as prone resting to mitigate lung problems with mild disease, nitric oxide use (possibly the blue pill drug that must remain nameless), etc, ad nauseum.

 

I looked at the NYS stats last night. ~82% of the dead were over 60, and most of those in fact 70+ (63% are 70+). Of the 10,7% who were in their 50s, many had substantial comorbidities (749 commorbidities listed out of 586 deaths, so some had more than 1, and some likely had none, in other countries for all over 50 YOs I saw that with no previous health problems the rate was 0.8% of deaths).

6.9% of deaths were under 50, but deaths are just ~4% of positive cases in NYS, so under 50 if you are concerned enough to get tested, you are still have only a 0.28% chance of death, and most of those people are in their 40s. The actual infection fatality rate is likely below 1.5% (probably well below 1%), which drops death probability if infected and below 40 to well below 0.1 %.

 

Edited April 7, 2020 by tater

[tater]

Don't live somewhere with poor air quality:

https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/covid-pm/files/pm_and_covid_mortality.pdf

[Shpaget]

36 minutes ago, tater said:

You shouldn't have lived somewhere with poor air quality:

https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/covid-pm/files/pm_and_covid_mortality.pdf

FTFY

[tater]

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.01.20049478v1

^^ BCG vax use relationship with mortality.

 

I was thinking about Sweden.

Sweden has done basically nothing, certainly nothing draconian to limit this. This makes them a 1st world "control population." Their pop is on the order of 32X smaller than the US, slightly more than half the pop of NY State.

A retrospective comparison will be instructive. If the US deaths are even close to 32X Sweden, then all the measures in place have been for nothing, and maybe public awareness, better hand washing, etc alone would have done the same.

Using http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ you can see that as of day 16 since the first day that deaths = 1/million pop, the dead in Sweden were 36.1 people died per million pop on that day. The States of LA and NJ were about 88 and 95 deaths per million by day 16 respectively. More than 2X worse. LA closed schools the 16th, and stay at home etc by Mar 23. NJ  stopped stuff Mar 21.  The US is doing worse in most States so far, regardless of restrictions. Most US States didn't do real shutdowns until the thrid week of Mark, though many closed schools before that. If the US States start turning the corner any time soon, and so does Sweden... all of this economic destruction is for very, very little gain.

The final answer will be after the fact, we figure excess deaths as a function of total pop for both countries. The US should be grossly better than Sweden in this calculation given the literally trillions of dollars it will have cost us. If it's not...

Edited April 8, 2020 by tater

[StrandedonEarth]

37 minutes ago, tater said:

I was thinking about Sweden.

I know next to nothing about Sweden, aside from the fact that they produced many great hockey players. But to compare them to the US, I have to wonder about the population density....

A little research tells me that Stockholm has a pop. density of about 13k/sqmi.  The US of A has ten metropolitan regions with at least 13k/sqmi (up to 56k/sqmi for NYC), including roughly 14 million people, compared to 10 million Swedes (almost 9 million urban-dwellers). Given that a virus would spread faster in a denser population, Sweden has a significant advantage there.