3775

You don’t have a dire opinion about … basically everything and everyone?

A expert is somebody that know a lot about one subject, very litte about others.

A doctor guiding a politician is … basically this, (when you combine all their blind spots deaf spots )

3776

Do you think the numbers we are getting are only confirmed tests? Several regions are including people with symptoms and no test performed.

The point is that your back of the envelope math is crazy.

Another way to look at this. Infections multiply by 10 each 6-12 days. If Italy had 150k infected 2 weeks ago you would have ALL ITALIANS infected by late next week.

3777

The estimate is that 80% of infected patients in China were never recorded or reported(i.e. only 20% were counted). Why do you believe we’re at 100% (excluding asymptomatic patients) in Europe? What’s your evidence?

Covid 19 isn’t estimated to grow at 1000% per ~9 days. Can you provide any evidence for that?

It feels like you’re changing the goalposts constantly.

3778

Weirdly, I feel like the more I know and can mentally model, the less anxious I am. There’s a certain level of precautions you can take, and that’s all you can do. There’s a lot of uncontrollable parameters in the model, and you can fight against that or accept that.

The last 18 months of my life where I’ve seen a therapist partially for anxiety over some really tough medical conditions are really helping me out - I feel like I’ve got the appropriate toolset to deal with this, at least right now. If my family gets sick, I’m sure it’ll be a different story.

3779

Italy March 3rd 2500 cases

Italy March 14th 21000 cases

3780

Your nurse practitioner sucks and you need a new one. 67% of those with coronavirus have a dry cough as a primary symptom. Unless you get a serious fever you don’t need to worry but it’s important you know how wrong she is. That is the #2 most common symptom of the virus and it’s incredibly dangerous she’s spouting misinformation.

3781

You’re still deliberately not getting it. I’m out, peddle your false bullshit all you like.

Deaths are the most useful data points for these analyses. For example, if modelers assume a case-fatality ratio of 1 percent, and that it usually takes 15 days for an infected person to die, then they know a death reported today in a specific region means that 100 people were likely infected there 15 days ago. Add in the time it takes cases to double—Edmunds says it seems to take five days—then modelers can estimate that over those 15 days the number of cases swelled to 800. So, for every death in a region, that means about 800 others are already infected, most of whom will not have been identified. This pattern was verified in Italy, Edmunds says, which as of today has reported 12,462 cases and 827 deaths. When officials tested people living near where someone had died from the disease, in many cases they found hundreds of others were already carrying the virus.

Oh look, more stringent testing led to more reports - but reports aren’t an accurate reflection of the infection rate or growth. Fancy that.

Edmunds is one of the leading US Epidemiologists, but apparently that doesn’t matter because SPAIN MUST BE DEFENDED

3782

Not a symptom, but a complication. I can’t say for sure I’m not infected, but I’ve been self-isolating for a few weeks. And, like I said, I always get a cough, and I don’t have any other symptoms (fever, headache, body-ache, diarrhea, etc.)

3783

So deaths are a better measure than reported cases. Very well:

Italy deaths on March 3rd: 79

Italy deaths on March 14th: 1441.

18 fold increase in 11 days. If you assume overcapacity at ICU beds increased the death rate, you get closer to 10 fold.

But you don’t want to assume that, it seems. So 18 fold it is.

But maybe you can enlighten us in COVID time to 1000% increase? And how that fits your 150k infected in Italy two weeks ago?

Unless death reports aren’t accurate either, but that’s harder to explain, ain’t it?

3784

What a shitty article.

Flattening the curve sufficiently can dramatically save lives. It doesn’t mean no one will die. If you read the comments section (I didn’t before I came to this conclusion) this is just some clickbait shit, with a bunch of poor assumptions. Dude wants to be like the previous medium article that’s gotten 7 million views, but he’s just wrong.

Buy this medium author a straw man to knock down somewhere else.

3785

I’ve been seeing a lot of Medium articles from non-experts floating around lately.

Hey, it’s apparently doing quite a number on emissions, though.

https://www.space.com/italy-coronavirus-outbreak-response-reduces-emissions-satellite-images.html

3786
3787

Oh, this chairwoman?

3788

I’m certainly willing to believe that his assumptions are wrong, but not until I see another model with better numbers.

Arguing that something might be beneficial with no estimate of the magnitude of benefit basically amounts to security theater.

3789


Chefkiss

3790

Yep.

There are bazillion articles and comments online about this thing. Reading all the monetized, amateur hot takes just sparks anxiety. It’s the worst kind of mental junk food.

When these things get linked, the first thing I do is google the author (if it’s not clear who they are already). That filters out those without relevant expertise.

3791

One can’t depend on clinical symptoms. Take fever. It is present in 88% of all COVID-19 cases (hospitalized), but it was NOT an initial symptom for many when they checked in.

3792

Yeah.

If going to the club was an urgent thing, I’d risk it. For now though, just taking a weekend to chill is in order. My mom is 80. I am certainly not going to visit her.

There’s a middle ground between running around getting lap dances and living in an hyberbaric chamber.

3793

Let’s start with the obvious

They have no numbers on the axes. They don’t give you an idea how many cases it takes to overwhelm the medical system, and over how many days the epidemic will play out.

Sure.

They suggest that currently, the medical system can deal with a large fraction (like maybe 2/3, 1/2 or 1/3) of the cases, but if we implement some mitigation measures, we can get the infections per day down to a level we can deal with.

Sure.

They mean to tell you that we can get away without severe lockdowns as we are currently observing them in China and Italy. Instead, we let the infection burn through the entire population, until we have herd immunity (at 40% to 70%), and just space out the infections over a longer timespan.

Who the fuck said that? Strawman said that.

These suggestions are dangerously wrong, and if implemented, will lead to incredible suffering and hardship. Let’s try to understand this by putting some numbers on the axes.

Then he goes off into assuming that when we try to flatten the curve by social distancing that ultimately the same number of people will be infected, and R0 will not change at all. He’s taking it as the area under the curve is exactly the same for both curves - [X%] of the population MUST be infected. Then he argues for containment, AS IF THAT WAS A CHOICE.

It’s not a choice. It was very early on, when tracing infections was an option. At this point, we’re not making a decision between containment and mitigation. That choice has been made by our previous selves a few weeks ago in the US. Now we’re strictly in mitigation mode.

Dude doesn’t get it. So it doesn’t matter how much he massages the numbers. He might as well tell us that we’re making the choice to “accept” gravity after being thrown off the building.

Flattening the curve is not an option for the United States, for the UK or Germany. Don’t tell your friends to flatten the curve. Let’s start containment.

He’s got it ass backwards. You flatten the curve when containment fails. We started with containment in places like Washington state. Horse is out of the barn.

Here’s how actual infectious disease researchers think about it (enjoy the red stop sign):

image
image1644×864 218 KB

Any flattening of the curve will save lives at this point, and that’s all we can hope to do.

3794

I think this is a really important point to remember. I’m with espressojim in thinking that the medium article is bullshit.

“ In a population like the US (327 million), that means between 130 million and 230 million. Let’s assume that 55% of the US population (the middle ground) get infected between March and December, and we are looking at 180 million people.”

China, one of the most populous countries on earth is at 80,930 cases. Even if you suspect them of some obfuscation, that’s a long way from 180 million.

Italy’s at 21,157. It’s concerning that they’re excellent healthcare system got overwhelmed at these relatively “low” numbers but, again, these worst case scenarios are a far cry from 180 million.

The curve is an abstraction which illustrates a critically important concept: Left unchecked the infection rate will grow exponentially but if you takes steps to check the spread, such as the social distancing measures being put in place across the country, the rate of infection will level off. Whether it levels off before or after the healthcare system gets overwhelmed remains to be seen but dismissing the concept conveyed by the graph while blithely assuming 180 million cases is some seriously disingenuous bullshit.

Timex said up thread that he’s worried containment isn’t possible. We may not be taking measures as drastic as Chinas yet but the 3b1b video suggests that small differences to the number of people exposed can have dramatic effects on the rate of infection. There is still some exponential growth baked in but Chinas example shows that it is possible to contain.

It’s obviously impossible to know what the numbers will be and it’s entirely possible that our healthcare system will get overwhelmed. The economic effects are going to be devastating and there may be permanent changes to our lifestyles as a result. So the reality is bad enough without having to resort to alarmist worst case scenarios of 180 million infected. I mean, anything is possible but from what we’ve seen so far that seems unlikely.

But the UK is fucked. I don’t know what they’re thinking. It’s like they’re looking at Italy and saying, let’s let that scenario play out, then react. At some point, like Italy, they will be forced to take dramatic action to contain so they’re still not going to see cases in the millions but their numbers are going to be higher than countries that are being more proactive is trying to limit exposure. That’s the importance of the graph.