totm april 2020 Coronavirus

[AHHans]

2 hours ago, tater said:

What's the masking/lockdown/distancing situation in the rest of Scandinavia?

I don't know. But in the media the Swedish way was always called the unique way, so I assume the government response to COVID-19 in these countries was essentially in line with the rest of Europe.

3 hours ago, tater said:

Regardless, it's entirely rational to look at Sweden as a control when we have so few, and most responses are overly complex.

Well, but in this case I would compare it to countries that are as similar to Sweden as possible and not to countries with known differences in climate and social behavior.

3 hours ago, tater said:

I'd prefer to know what mitigations worked, and to what level they worked.

The problem with doing a detailed and controlled study before implementing general policies is that in the meantime people die. So IMHO it is much better to do something that works now than implementing an optimized plan in two months or so.

[tater]

Ran into a neighbor of mine on the trail today (she's a doc, as is her husband), and she said there were 9 different PCR tests in use in NM right now, the typical Ct used was 40, and none of the threshold data is shared, the tests are simply positive or negative (that's all my wife has ever seen on a chart as well).

She is pretty appalled, as that value (where they decide the test is positive) is incredibly useful information for the clinician.

1 hour ago, AHHans said:

Well, but in this case I would compare it to countries that are as similar to Sweden as possible and not to countries with known differences in climate and social behavior.

I linked a French paper above that shows there is no relationship between government intervention and outcomes, Sweden is still a reasonable benchmark.

1 hour ago, AHHans said:

The problem with doing a detailed and controlled study before implementing general policies is that in the meantime people die. So IMHO it is much better to do something that works now than implementing an optimized plan in two months or so.

Maybe if COVID-19was actually seriously dangerous this would be true, but it was never that. It was clear many months ago that it was at worst some small multiple of seasonal flu in effect, similar to recent flu pandemic events (57 and 68). People were terrorized by BS models (Imperial and the godawful IHME model which has gotten nothing right, ever), and the reporting of "Case Fatality Rate" to people who did not understand that the case ascertainment rate was abysmal. Early in in China a paper linked by one of the first global "dashboards" estimated the ascertainment rate in China at 5%. Divide all the initial bad Chinese numbers by 20. The US ascertainment rate is estimated by the CDC at 9% (best guess in a range of ~4-16%). Divide the CFR and hospitalization rates by 11.

Erring on the side of safety is fine as long as there are no bad effects from the safety action. Keeping everything open, but wearing masks and distancing has effectively no cost, fine, do that. Shutdowns, like we have now? They are deeply harmful. Closing schools is harmful. In the US 700,000 kids a year have home abuse reported to authorities by teachers. Those kids, and no risk from COVID at all (relative to other infectious disease that is more harmful with no mitigations done) get to "take one for the team" and get abused (and "the team" in this case is predominantly the elderly already in long term hospice facilities who will be dead in ~13 months on average regardless). The US has substantial excess mortality this year—but CDC says that only 2/3 of it is COVID-19. The rest of that excess mortality is "not COVID-19," but the result of the actions taken by government. Delayed care, etc. Those deaths will continue. There will be no "dashboard" by my state to show all the people who will get to die in the next couple years because they didn't seek care for their cancer in April out of terror. My wife is already seeing this. The neighbor I mentioned above, she said her husband's heart surgeries are down substantially this year‚ there is no reason fewer people have severe heart disease, they are simply avoiding care, and are likely to die (or might have died already).

So precaution is fine, but it needs to "do no harm," and be sustainable. If COVID-19 was seriously concerning—killed even 10% of those infected, regardless of age, health, etc, then draconian measures would certainly be reasonable. Not for 0.136% mortality, with an average age of the dead being about the average age of death in the pop at large.

[Entropian]

I'm in a country that completely closed its borders and locked down and the number of cases plummeted to under 10.  After they opened up, boom - cases skyrocket.  Now we're in the tens of thousands.  (there was widespread testing, by the way)

5 hours ago, tater said:

Can you imagine the US completely locking the border?

Yes, I can.  I think it's a perfectly reasonable decision, in fact.

5 hours ago, tater said:

That is actually an interesting way to gauge real concern levels, how much would you pay out of pocket to be vaccinated for COVID-19?

I'm not going to answer that, as I like to keep my finances private.

6 hours ago, tater said:

Testing gives you more cases.

Which is exactly the point.  The more people you know have it, the better you can prevent further transmission.

6 hours ago, tater said:

SK did not lock down, BTW.

Yeah, but it doesn't change the fact that the border closure and quarantining worked.

6 hours ago, tater said:

"Cases" that require dayquil are not concerning.

Sorry to say, but they are.  Studies are coming out all over the place on observed heart, lung, and even brain damage even in asymptomatic cases.

6 hours ago, tater said:

many cases in El Paso are from Ciudad Juarez.

Out of curiosity, do you have a source for that?

Also, it might be me but I think this debate is getting a little heated.  Can we cool down the tempers?

[DDE]

On 11/20/2020 at 12:13 AM, The Doodling Astronaut said:

I have noticed that we are getting closer and closer to a vaccine. So it's a good idea to start preparing and if you are of younger age to wait for people who need it more to get it first. teens should get the vaccine last.

Yep. This week my grandfather (early 80s) got pressured into taking Sputnik-V at the threat of being given involuntary leave from the uni.

On 11/20/2020 at 6:03 PM, tater said:

That is actually an interesting way to gauge real concern levels, how much would you pay out of pocket to be vaccinated for COVID-19?

Something-something, socialized medicine, something-something, Evil Bald Man promised it to me for free anyway.

I expect something similar to Moscow's annual flu shot program:

On 11/20/2020 at 12:08 AM, tater said:

You're suggesting that somehow the US should have done better, and acted in a quicker, and more immediately draconian way than Europe? We would have had to immediately ban all travel into the country. We would have to certainly make sure ZERO people entered without quarantine, etc. The hardest hit places in the summer in this region were in fact border counties (as right now). How does the virus know where the border is? Oh, wait, sick people have legs, and there's a lot of open space. Pretty sure harsh border restrictions would have been attacked back before March by anyone in favor of them for the pandemic retroactively (look at the contemporaneous reaction to stopping incoming China flights).

Indeed. Any US containment campaign would have been undermined by non-compliance. Russia's was. And without a draconian restructuring of the entire society, any such meausres would have been unenforceable. You'd have to have working borders between states to confine the red zones, for example, and Moscow is only now getting the requisite video surveillance capabilities to hunt down quarantine violators.

Edited November 21, 2020 by DDE

[Serenity]

Guys, do you think European lockdowns will temporarily stop for Christmas, around 15th December,

I don't know anymore, especially after Toronto went in lockdown, this might mean the world is preparing for a Christmas quarantine

I hope they do even for a little to get some money moving around...

Edited November 22, 2020 by Boyster

[Clamp-o-Tron]

6 minutes ago, Boyster said:

Guys, do you think European lockdowns will temporarily stop for Christmas, around 15th December,

I don't know anymore, especially after Toronto went in lockdown, this might mean the world is preparing for a Christmas quarantine

I hope they do even for a little to get some money moving around...

There's no way that will happen. This isn't one of the WWI or II truces- harm will come of laying off the lockdowns, unlike laying off the weapons.

In the US of A, there's a big hullabaloo about how you shouldn't meet for Thanksgiving, which is especially important since we're basically in a power law in terms of cases even now. I imagine Christmas will be much worse.

[Serenity]

14 minutes ago, Clamp-o-Tron said:

there's a big hullabaloo about how you shouldn't meet for Thanksgiving, which is especially important since we're basically in a power law in terms of cases even now. I imagine Christmas will be much worse.

No offence to the big old U S A but many European countries are doing full lockdowns and mandatory mask everywhere, everywhere.

It will be almost a month of full lockdown, i was just hoping for a short pause to take a breather but i am not very optimistic anymore.

[Clamp-o-Tron]

43 minutes ago, Boyster said:

take a breather

Of viral droplets ?

You can't just end a lockdown because everyone is feeling sad, that will mean you need another lockdown when cases spike again.

[Serenity]

4 hours ago, Clamp-o-Tron said:

Of viral droplets ?

You can't just end a lockdown because everyone is feeling sad, that will mean you need another lockdown when cases spike again.

I know, its just hard and also ops unfortunate choice of word used

Edited November 22, 2020 by Boyster

[DDE]

12 hours ago, Boyster said:

Guys, do you think European lockdowns will temporarily stop for Christmas, around 15th December,

I don't know anymore, especially after Toronto went in lockdown, this might mean the world is preparing for a Christmas quarantine

It would be borderline-criminal. That is provedly how you get a spike in cases. Moscow's been through it this spring.

Rightnow we're bracing for a continuous and increasingly well-enforced lockdown until April.

[Okhin]

And yet, I think it will happens anyway, at least here in France.

It will happens because economy, first. But that's the easy answer. It will also happens because french, especially the church people, will go on holiday anyway. The confinement and the government strategies* are badly understood or explained at all. We have a president that go on TV for the last two weeks talking about confinement I guess? And how it will be prolonged but not? QNd then the government tries to make sense out of the presidential speeches, so we will unconfine soon. But not. Both at the same time.

And if you want people to care about each other and stay at home, you need to tell them that and helps them through it. By guaranteeing their jobs for instance. Or helping students meet ends. Or, anything.

Instead we have a security driven government who's passing hardcore security law (because terrorists kill more people than Covid I guess?), asking journalist to register themselves before covering a protest, and we now have huge protests against that law.

And we have ultra catholic who are praying in the streets to reopen churches to be able to sing in a closed space and infect themselves with Covid.

And there's the vaccines on the way. A lot of the media coverage is about how we will have it by January. While, at the same time, almost half the population do not trust those vaccines (again, there's no trust to this government, so you need information from elsewhere to increase trust, which we don't really have). And, well, the vaccines won't reach the global population before April 5before that there's all the medical staff, and people at risk). But a lot of people, and I think the government, are now thinking that the Covid will end by January.

All that means that yes, I think that there will be a relief made on confinement measures by the end of December for those parties people want to have. And even before that, store will reopen around mid-december, for economy (instead of, for instance, putting restriction on on-line shopping), and we can really expect a rush to the brick and mortar shop. Which scares me already.

Is it a bad idea? Yes. It is.

Is there another way around? Not with this government and political class. Germany are probably a bit better of, and it might be doable there to maintain lockdown for Christmas.

And yet, yesterday there was a party in my house, while I have Covid. And my house mates are going into a fight over this with me. Because I was sick and I tried to fix myself some food, avoiding physical contact with people and wearing a mask, and I blew up the party it seems. Because I was infected with a highly contagious sickness and they don't really care about confinement.

I really think that if you explain things as they are, not with data but with the acceptance of what you know or not, and back your explaination with a well suited and explainable strategy that show that you care about people, you can get people to accept some restriction. But that's not the case here.

I mean, we had more government speech bout islamic terrorism and security than we have for the whole covid thing.

It's not the government priority. They just care about the economy, not about the people. They just need to do the bare minimal, which is what they're doing. Yes, I'm loveing angry about that, and I want to go 1789 all the way on them right now (or just cough on them, give them the stupid virus, and hoping they have serious sequels that will destroy what's left of their hearth).

* Assuming there's one

[tater]

On 11/20/2020 at 2:16 PM, Entropian said:

I'm in a country that completely closed its borders and locked down and the number of cases plummeted to under 10.  After they opened up, boom - cases skyrocket.  Now we're in the tens of thousands.  (there was widespread testing, by the way)

Cases is meaningless, the only thing that matters are people hospitalized for CLI.

On 11/20/2020 at 2:16 PM, Entropian said:

Yes, I can.  I think it's a perfectly reasonable decision, in fact.

Build a wall?

On 11/20/2020 at 2:16 PM, Entropian said:

I'm not going to answer that, as I like to keep my finances private.

It's still a useful measure of people's actual concern levels. Polls have shown that the population at large in the US and Europe grossly overestimate COVID-19 risk. People think whole number %s of the population have died of COVID. Not whole number %s of people who caught it, of the pop at large. In the US people thought 9% of the pop have died, lol (math edu must be awful, since we'd notice 30M dead people, lol).

On 11/20/2020 at 2:16 PM, Entropian said:

Which is exactly the point.  The more people you know have it, the better you can prevent further transmission.

Paper linked above, mitigation is uncorrelated with outcomes.

 

On 11/20/2020 at 2:16 PM, Entropian said:

Yeah, but it doesn't change the fact that the border closure and quarantining worked.

SK did not quarantine. All the very low impact Asian countries are... in Asia. The most likely explanation is probably demographics, and pre-existing immunity at some level (we know for a fact this was around much earlier in 2019 than thought, and SARS-CoV2 is very similar to a sample used for research in China with a name that escapes me, but includes "2013" since that is the year it was collected. The possibility exists that there was a precursor version in circulation, or it might just be cell mediated immunity (large %s of people have T cell immunity conferred by recent cold infections, apparently)

On 11/20/2020 at 2:16 PM, Entropian said:

Sorry to say, but they are.  Studies are coming out all over the place on observed heart, lung, and even brain damage even in asymptomatic cases.

Not true at all.

They have made an effort to detect a handful of people with issues, and many of the issues reported are identical to other viral illness. The number of infeections in the US is around 100,000,000, mostly asymptomatic/mild. If those risks were substantial, we'd all know people with terrible damage. We don't.

On 11/20/2020 at 2:16 PM, Entropian said:

Out of curiosity, do you have a source for that?

Personal communication. My wife is a surgeon at the second largest hospital in the state, and we hang out with docs pretty much constantly (utterly ignoring rules to the contrary, lol). We know there are transfers. The news even briefly reported on it a few months ago since Mexico has been slammed (show up at border, call 911, go to hospital and get treated (no one is ever turned away from a US ER). Mexican patients here is entirely normal, happens all the time. It's funny, American will go south for cheap care sometimes, but people often come up from Mexico (affluent people typically), then present at the ER and get care, my wife has operated on many.

 

On 11/20/2020 at 2:16 PM, Entropian said:

Also, it might be me but I think this debate is getting a little heated.  Can we cool down the tempers?

I'm not even slightly agitated

Seems like a normal conversation to me.

It is reasonable to have a concern level associated with COVID-19, I think the public concern level is grossly disconnected from actual risk, however.

Any shutdown at all, what "multiple of normal concern" does that map to? We should be maybe 2-3X more concerned than we are any other year. If the mitigations are more that 2-3X what we did  last year, the response is broken.

Protect old people, wash your hands, and like every other year stay home if you have communicable disease (respiratory or GI). Anything past that is kooky, IMHO.

 

[YNM]

39 minutes ago, tater said:

SK did not quarantine. All the very low impact Asian countries are... in Asia.

They closed borders and stuff - strongest still is Taiwan, that has closed their borders all the way since February. (ok closing borders doesn't mean entirely not allowing anyone to pass in/out, it means like mandatory 2-weeks quarantine and stuff, but practically this doesn't allow short tourism and business visits. Also SK, Japan, Taiwan and China all barred each other from entering the others, not sure if it's still going on or not.)

Meanwhile Japan which can't enforce any amount of lockdown is getting the 3rd wave and it's larger than ever.

And the country I'm in... idk, I can't trust the government here any longer, not even one iota of it. The daily official count (not cumulative, daily) from provincial-level government and national government is differing by 10% already. So I guess we'll see the impact in the census, if it ever turns up (2020 is supposed to be census year, but given that barely anyone reacted to the online census campaigns I guess we'll wait). The daily case increase graph has never fallen down once - just a long increase - and deaths magically stops at about 100 a day, when all hospitals are overwhelmed and cemeteries are filling out.

Edited November 22, 2020 by YNM

[Souptime]

Stay sfae, wear a mask, try your best not to die

And if you think its fake

you're stupid as hell

[tater]

53 minutes ago, YNM said:

Meanwhile Japan which can't enforce any amount of lockdown is getting the 3rd wave and it's larger than ever.

LOL

http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countries-normalized&highlight=Japan&show=50&y=both&scale=linear&data=deaths&data-source=jhu&xaxis=right&extraData=cases-daily-7&extraDataScale=graph#countries-normalized

http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countries&highlight=Japan&show=highlight-only&y=both&scale=linear&data=deaths-daily-7&data-source=jhu&xaxis=right#countries

It's a nothing-burger in Japan.

 

http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=states&highlight=New York&show=us-states&y=both&scale=linear&data=deaths-daily-7&data-source=jhu&xaxis=right&extraData=cases-daily-7&extraDataScale=graph#states

This would be the best US thing to look at, the only problem is that the "cases" in the spring is of course grossly low, since they were testing 20-1000X fewer people per day than now. Make the "cases" 10X higher across the board, and pay attention to the deaths as the darker line at the bottom (all states are on this graph, only NY is highlighted, you can see the summer "disaster" in TX in the middle, lol). Cases is meaningless. Total population level toll is 0.09% and that is including the fact that COVID deaths are certainly over counted. Anyone who dies of anything within 1-2 months of having a +test is a COVID stat. Hospice patient tests positive? COVID death. If there was a new PCR test, and we tested everyone in the country, and 10% tested positive, what % of the deaths in the US would be associated with that positive test? 10% (280,000), even if the virus had zero health impact. COVID of course has a serious health impact (US hospitalization rate for it is ~0.5% per CDC)

Here's the US as a whole:

http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countries&highlight=United States&show=highlight-only&y=both&scale=linear&data=deaths-daily-7&data-source=jhu&xaxis=right&extraData=cases-daily-7&extraDataScale=graph#countries

Same deal, "cases" tells you nothing except about testing, and the "cases" in spring needs to grossly exceed the "cases" now since far more people died then (if you think there are more cases now than spring, lol). Once you do that, lift the "cases" by about an order of magnitude. The deaths of course will be a straight line near zero, with a bump in spring.

My original take months ago that this mostly kills people who will die soon anyway (obviously there are exceptions!) is none the less still true. Note that ""will die soon anyway" needs to be broadly defined as "was going to die within the next few years." Given the reality that >50% of deaths are in LTC facilities with a mean residence time of 1-3 years (nursing homes vs assisted living widens the range), this is obviously true (since those people die in 1-3 years all the time, minus COVID-19).

27 minutes ago, Souptime said:

Stay sfae, wear a mask, try your best not to die

And if you think its fake

you're stupid as hell

If you think you are at a risk worth worrying about and you are under 30, you can't do math. People under 25 are far, far more at risk from auto accidents (or indeed seasonal flu) than COVID-19 (age brackets for stats vary, hence my under 30 and under 25 switch). My risk (I'm in my 50s) is apparently slightly greater than seasonal flu (which is an unconcerning risk each year). You don't have to "try not to die" unless you are in an age cohort that is likely to die anyway. If you are in your 80s+, @Souptime, by all means, be extremely careful.

COVID-19 is self-evidently not "fake," it's caused by a virus (SARS-CoV2), with a fully sequenced genome. Duh.

COVID-19 is infectious, and associated with excess death, although overwhelmingly in the elderly.

It's not concerning at the level of the reaction, however, and the response to it has been entirely irrational IMO.

 

Edited November 22, 2020 by tater

[Souptime]

6 minutes ago, tater said:

If you think you are at a risk worth worrying about and you are under 30, you can't do math. People under 25 are far, far more at risk from auto accidents (or indeed seasonal flu) than COVID-19 (age brackets for stats vary, hence my under 30 and under 25 switch). My risk (I'm in my 50s) is apparently slightly greater than seasonal flu (which is an unconcerning risk each year). You don't have to "try not to die" unless you are in an age cohort that is likely to die anyway. If you are in your 80s+, @Souptime, by all means, be extremely careful.

Yeah, people die in auto accidents every year. or from the flu and colds. but covid is not like that, we have research the flu and have a cure for it. we do not for covid. we might have research it a whole lot but we dont have a cure, but since im young im not in the risk for it, in fact i could have it but be asymptomatic

But there's one other thing:

Covid spreads

My mom is in her 50's and my dads a retard doesnt think covid is real and never wears a mask, never social distances, basically tries to break covid laws to "Not follow the sheep" or something

He might infect jeremiah (My older half brother), his daughter runa, me, then i or dad spread it to my full brother, then to mom. mom dies and i have to go back to dad

Oh wait

He and jeremiah are dead of covid, me and my brother are orphans

Or i could have actual symptoms and 1. suffer for a few weeks yet survive or 2.

Die

OR i get it from someone is my gym class and spread to others, so on and so forth

OR

The risk  is people spreading it to those more susceptible, then those people spreading then dying

Think of it as kessler syndrome: 1 satellite gets blown up, then 2 more, then 3 more but 2 are not broken but have debris from then in orbit. more sat's get destroyed and more are fine but just damaged. thats a big problem so governments  try to solve it. but their solving satellites get damaged too and now its just a whole thing

Stay safe, wear a mask, and try your best not to die

[tater]

4 minutes ago, Souptime said:

Yeah, people die in auto accidents every year. or from the flu and colds. but covid is not like that, we have research the flu and have a cure for it. we do not for covid. we might have research it a whole lot but we dont have a cure, but since im young im not in the risk for it, in fact i could have it but be asymptomatic

Asymptomatic spread is minor at best. The 3 details contact tracing studies I have read show 1 secondary case in 199 asymptomatic people, 1 in 305, and none in 300. School/daycare studies have shown the same. Dr. Fauci said as much in January, that COVID-19 would be unique among respiratory illness if asymptomatic people were an important source of spread. he was right.

 

4 minutes ago, Souptime said:

But there's one other thing:

Covid spreads

My mom is in her 50's and my dads a retard doesnt think covid is real and never wears a mask, never social distances, basically tries to break covid laws to "Not follow the sheep" or something

He might infect jeremiah (My older half brother), his daughter runa, me, then i or dad spread it to my full brother, then to mom. mom dies and i have to go back to dad

Oh wait

He and jeremiah are dead of covid, me and my brother are orphans

Or i could have actual symptoms and 1. suffer for a few weeks yet survive or 2.

Die

OR i get it from someone is my gym class and spread to others, so on and so forth

OR

The risk  is people spreading it to those more susceptible, then those people spreading then dying

Think of it as kessler syndrome: 1 satellite gets blown up, then 2 more, then 3 more but 2 are not broken but have debris from then in orbit. more sat's get destroyed and more are fine but just damaged. thats a big problem so governments  try to solve it. but their solving satellites get damaged too and now its just a whole thing

Stay safe, wear a mask, and try your best not to die

The risk is not substantial, if you are deeply concerned about COVID, and not deeply concerned about flu (with the same or worse risk within your immediate family given the ages you suggest, similar for your parents, flu is MORE deadly to younger people than COVID-19), your risk assessment is poor. Your chances of death as a kid of an age living with your parents is vanishingly small. My state just had the first kid die last week. He was 12. He was also congenitally blind, with something that caused brain inflammation his entire life that he was continuously treated for, and was wheelchair bound (never had the ability to walk). Healthy, athletic kids die of flu sometimes. The infection fatality rate for COVID-19 is slightly higher than seasonal flu (call it 40% higher)—and that is with annual flu vaccines.

You can avoid auto death by never again getting in car, and your own risk from that is orders of magnitude higher than your COVID-19 risk.

We have socialized with people in a completely normal fashion all year. Many of the them are docs (my wife is a doc), most all are in their 40-50s (as we are). We all tend to be fit people as a group, so we are at reduced risk from the average (which for people 50-59 is very slightly higher than flu risk). If your family is morbidly obese (with the associated comorbidities), then being more safety conscious than I am might be in order, obviously.

One thing I would like to see is a standard for initiating these mitigations.

Ie: at what R₀ and estimated IFR do we shut down everything in future? Clearly it is some small number above 0.1%. Given that most respiratory infectious disease has an associated mortality, and all would be mitigated by the same things (under the assumption that the NPIs actually do anything), should we not then sum all such diseases, and set a cutoff?

Should the entire society shut down because a disease or set of diseases with similar methods of infections and harm mostly kills the very sickest 80 year olds, so sick they literally live in hospitals (nursing homes)?

Acute Respiratory Infection (caused by several viruses, including flu, but also rhinovirus, RSV, etc) kills some 2 million children a year wolrdwide. COVID-19 this year has killed well under 2M people, with an average victim aged around 80. Total worldwide ARI deaths per year is ~4.25M—and only a fraction of those are from seasonal flu, BTW (~1/8).

Since all are mitigated the same way, and the constellation of "not SARS-CoV2" in fact kills 3-4 times more people (and FAR more children), why not lock down forever?

[Souptime]

I can sense and argument brewing right now, lets just respect each others opinions and take them elsewhere

[Entropian]

2 hours ago, tater said:

Anything past that is kooky, IMHO.

Well, for you 'muricans.    I'm far more careful than the average because the healthcare here is not too good and the populace is not well educated in, well, science in general, unfortunately, so the cases skyrocket and given it's a densely populated country I prefer to stay almost completely isolated.  It doesn't hurt that much to be more careful, at least for me.

1 minute ago, tater said:

why not lock down forever?

Because it's not effective for many of the other viruses as they are high mortality but low transmission.

[wumpus]

7 minutes ago, tater said:

You can avoid auto death by never again getting in car, and your own risk from that is orders of magnitude higher than your COVID-19 risk.

Likely only a single order of magnitude, and only if COVID-19 disappears with the next few years (probably more than one order of magnitude if it disappears before you tick age 50).

US - typical death due to car/truck crashes: ~30,000 per year (with an additional 5k motorcycle deaths).  Deaths due to COVID-19,  three times that for less than a year, and rapidly increasing.  No only that, but the distribution of dying in cars is skewed between 20-40, so if you are under 50 you are far more in danger in a car, where if you are older COVID is still a threat.

Don't forget that US pedestrian death is 1/6th the  in-vehicle death (and probably  far, far higher per mile walked than per mile driven).  If you walk instead of drive, you probably haven't helped your chances at all.  Make sure you have all your needs delivered to you and don't leave home.  As a bonus, you won't get COVID-19 either (unless your deliveryperson is positive and not wearing a mask).

[YNM]

9 hours ago, tater said:

...

It's a nothing-burger in Japan.

...

Here's the US as a whole:

...

You're comparing the wrong countries; try Singapore vs. Japan vs. South Korea vs. Taiwan.

If you want to compare the US with something, try it with Indonesia - and not just the numbers, but also the social circumstances. I can even help you put down the timeline of stuff happening here if you want, just to be really sure.

Edited November 23, 2020 by YNM

[KerikBalm]

12 hours ago, tater said:

Asymptomatic spread is minor at best. The 3 details contact tracing studies I have read show 1 secondary case in 199 asymptomatic people, 1 in 305, and none in 300.

No, asymptomatic spread is definitely a concern. Children and youth still shed similar amounts of virus, and at least one stdy found asymptomatic transmission accounts for 44% of new cases:

He X, Lau EHY, Wu P, Deng X, Wang J, Hao X, et al. Temporal dynamics in viral shedding and transmissibility of COVID-19. Nature Medicine. mai 2020;26(5):672‑5.

[KerikBalm]

On 11/19/2020 at 6:03 PM, tater said:

They don't report Ct with "positives." Decent data should do so, since it matters critically. You can't even get an answer if you ask the heath department here. There is simply no reason to test higher than 35 unless the goal is to detect old infections, literally the only positive tests that matter as screening for intervention are people who are actually infectious, treatment is symptomatic.

I don't know what is going on with your area, but the vast majority of scientific papers do so. For reference, a paper we just submitted with 315 positive cases from our testing center, then mean Ct value was 22.5. Also note that Ct values cannot be directly compared across different tests and sample preparation methods.

Furthermore, if you get tested early in the incubation period (as part of contact tracing), the PCR result may be negative (that is, not detected even after 40 cycles). There are two sides to a peak, and Ct<35 doesn't just detect "old" infections - granted that the slope at the start of the infection is steeper than at the end.

[sevenperforce]

On 11/22/2020 at 12:32 PM, tater said:

Polls have shown that the population at large in the US and Europe grossly overestimate COVID-19 risk. People think whole number %s of the population have died of COVID. Not whole number %s of people who caught it, of the pop at large. In the US people thought 9% of the pop have died, lol (math edu must be awful, since we'd notice 30M dead people, lol).

In one Texas prison, 6% of the inmates have died of COVID-19. 

Currently the COVID death rate in Texas prisons is approximately 30 per month and rising. More than half of those who have died in Texas jails were not even convicted of a crime; they were just awaiting trial and were too poor to post bail. And before you protest that it's "only old people" dying, 20% of dead Texas inmates were under 55. That's not negligible. 

On 11/22/2020 at 12:32 PM, tater said:

The possibility exists that there was a precursor version in circulation, or it might just be cell mediated immunity (large %s of people have T cell immunity conferred by recent cold infections, apparently)

Yes, primarily NL63. Since cold infections are regional, this tends to confound case-by-case evaluations of mitigation strategies.

23 hours ago, tater said:

Total population level toll is 0.09% and that is including the fact that COVID deaths are certainly over counted. Anyone who dies of anything within 1-2 months of having a +test is a COVID stat. Hospice patient tests positive? COVID death.

This is simply not true. I know your wife is a surgeon, but you are not accurately describing how cause of death is identified in the United States. If someone is COVID-positive and the attending physician finds that they died of pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, or another pathology related to epithelial or endothelial cell infection, the physician will assess whether the COVID infection was a contributing factor and mark the cause of death accordingly. If the infection was not a contributing factor, it will not be included on the death certificate. 

22 hours ago, Souptime said:

The risk  is people spreading it to those more susceptible, then those people spreading then dying

Think of it as kessler syndrome: 1 satellite gets blown up, then 2 more, then 3 more but 2 are not broken but have debris from then in orbit. more sat's get destroyed and more are fine but just damaged. thats a big problem so governments  try to solve it. but their solving satellites get damaged too and now its just a whole thing

Love the comparison to the Kessler syndrome.

21 hours ago, tater said:

Asymptomatic spread is minor at best. The 3 details contact tracing studies I have read show 1 secondary case in 199 asymptomatic people, 1 in 305, and none in 300. School/daycare studies have shown the same.

Well, then, read this.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2029717

They had 1848 Marine recruits under strict quarantine during basic training. They did regular qPCR testing. Whenever they received a positive test, they sequenced it in order to use phylogenetic analysis to locate the transmission events.

The results? 16 asymptomatic carriers spread the virus to 61 more recruits. More than 90% of the cases were asymptomatic, and daily symptom monitoring did not help reveal asymptomatic cases. Phylogenetic nucleotide analysis showed that the virus spread in six clustered transmission events involving 18 people.

Now, don't draw any big conclusions from the overall percentages here. These recruits were all carefully segregated and in lockdown. They are all also at the prime of their lives -- literally the most COVID-resistant group of people you could find anywhere. But this ABSOLUTELY shows that multiple stages of asymptomatic reinfections are real. Contact tracing underestimates asymptomatic transmission because it doesn't test a large enough population.

With most infectious diseases, those resistant to the illness cannot effectively spread it. That is not true with COVID-19. That is why vulnerable people of all ages are dying.

9 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

I don't know what is going on with your area, but the vast majority of scientific papers do so. For reference, a paper we just submitted with 315 positive cases from our testing center, then mean Ct value was 22.5. Also note that Ct values cannot be directly compared across different tests and sample preparation methods.

Furthermore, if you get tested early in the incubation period (as part of contact tracing), the PCR result may be negative (that is, not detected even after 40 cycles). There are two sides to a peak, and Ct<35 doesn't just detect "old" infections - granted that the slope at the start of the infection is steeper than at the end.

100% right.

[sevenperforce]

On 11/20/2020 at 2:44 PM, tater said:

If COVID-19 was seriously concerning—killed even 10% of those infected, regardless of age, health, etc, then draconian measures would certainly be reasonable. Not for 0.136% mortality, with an average age of the dead being about the average age of death in the pop at large.

Let's look at the actual statistics. The most accurate way of assessing "How many people are really dying here" is not to ask what percentage of the population is dying, but how many people are dying compared to how many people usually die.

The average annual death rate in the United States is 723.6 per 100,000, or 0.7%. In poor places like West Virginia, Kentucky, and Alabama it is higher: 0.9-1.0%. In places like California, Colorado, and Massachusetts it is lower: 0.6-0.7%.

How many people have died from COVID this year compared to how many people usually die in a given state?

• In Georgia, COVID deaths are over 11% of the number of deaths in a normal year.
• In Arizona, COVID deaths are over 13% of the number of deaths in a normal year.
• In North Dakota, COVID deaths are over 16% of the number of deaths in a normal year.
• In Connecticut, COVID deaths are almost 21% of the number of deaths in a normal year.
• In New York, COVID deaths are over 28% of the number of deaths in a normal year.

An average flu season in the United States is responsible for 1.4% of the number of deaths that year.

Stop pretending this is normal. It isn't.