Coronavirus

[The Thriller]

We seem to just be content with things

 

[infection]

The death curve continues to decline. The line is the 7-day average for each day.


Obviously, as I’ve said many times, large quantities of death is nothing to celebrate. But when it was being talked about with varying levels of certainty that right now we’d be having 3-5k deaths per day right now as the “new normal,” nothing like that has even remotely come to fruition. We’ve hit 1k in a day only once in the past 10 days. If this outcome was presented for acceptance when this whole thing started, the vast majority of people would have taken this with a huge sigh of relief. But, as this has now arrived, we no longer hear about death counts. We’re now referencing other statistics, and never talk about the death curve. When asked, people would say that there’s no number acceptable, and that’s true, but nobody is running around currently saying “OMG look!” but instead reaching for other metrics that forecast our dire situation. What one has to read between the lines is that people ultimately view this as good, else why are we turning to alternative metrics with no more mention of these?

Then you have the new cases curve.


Obviously, this one has more or less plateaued and is not decreasing as much, so this gets a bit more emphasis. However, you’ll notice that there haven’t been any spikes. The spikes predicted with states opening up 6 weeks ago don’t appear anywhere in this. Yet despite a plateau in cases, deaths rates continue to drop. The total testing of the US is still a bit nebulous. How much has testing increased? We used to qualify small numbers of cases by the fear that we’re under testing.

Preliminary thoughts out of Minnesota is that there won’t be a spike in cases from protests:

https://www.twincities.com/2020/06/...floyd-early-test-results-show-few-protesters/

If the above is jarring to one’s sure testimony of COVID, don’t worry because over two weeks ago I already laid out some apologetics to keep things rolling:

1a. Give it more time.
1b. The people protesting are among the most disenfranchised in society, have the least amount of access to healthcare, and are disproportionately among those without ability to be tested.
2. Videos are everywhere. For such big protests, most people were very responsible and most all worse masks and practiced social distancing.
3. The infrastructure of these communities was hit the hardest, and the testing results were getting now are more reflective of the communities that didn’t get hit with protests and riots, so we’re undercounting because these communities didn’t just “magically” not have COVID.
4. The protestors were only a small fraction of the population, and they congregated in cities but then dispersed back to their home communities, so it’s impossible to measure the spread among those individuals because the actual rates will get distributed across different communities and be difficult to track.

But, as I stated when this all began, that we need to be as accurate as possible in our appraisals and we need to be self-reflective enough to reassess and recalibrate. My concern was that we’d lock in to a position and get tunnel vision. And we’re approaching this as “sides,” or as if we were assigned a position in debate class and we’re mindlessly arguing it because that’s what we do.

But with everyone out at protests, we’re not going to see the kind of spikes that were assured if things like that happened. The kind of spikes that justify not opening the economy. But that’s okay. We’ll have the rest of the summer for that to unfold, while we find other angles to debate about, and, as I’ve promised, we will arrive in late August through September and October where we will revisit the summer virus suppression model. This time, however, the swing will be away from those “ignorant” using it as an excuse for “doing nothing,” to a repackaging and rebranding by those lusting for vindication. When it’s rebranded, it will be done so in a ‘more sophisticated’ and ‘more nuanced’ fashion, as if the original belief was that the summer heat and sunlight was what everyone believed would kill the virus [it wasn’t], but now the belief will be ‘more clear’ that the summer heat facilitated outdoor gathering and congregating in ways consistent with social distancing, and boy hell are we ****ed this fall because the second wave is coming with the colder weather. The summer suppression theory is currently still somewhat alive in stages of mockery from those who believe in #Science! when directed against those deniers. But the summer suppression theory will ultimately hold the vindication for those currently mocking it. It will provide a palatable explanation of why none of the curves are anywhere close to predicted, and it will give fertile ground for the expectation of a second wave. As Christendom expected a political deliverance with the first advent of the Messiah, they struggled with the humble mortality this came through. But the promise of a second coming reinvigorated those wishing for vindication. The arrival of the undeniable, and to tread under the feet those whose lack of faith was so hard to endure. This will be the last stand, and the second coming for those thirsting for fulfillment of foretold prophecies.

 

[infection]

We seem to just be content with things

With the exception of Germany, we’ve had less per capita deaths than all those countries. But compare the death curves:






So Spain’s is a little hard to visualize because the scale is thrown off by the fact that they somehow raised 2k people from the dead at the end of last month.

 

[Eminence]

So Spain’s is a little hard to visualize because the scale is thrown off by the fact that they somehow raised 2k people from the dead at the end of last month.

Now that's something we need to look into.

 

[Scat]

I really wish they would do widespread anitbody testing. I think we would all be astonished at how many people have already contracted and overcome.

 

[Avery]

Sounds like most models predict a decline through June/July and then a ramp starting in September. From a matter of foresight and optics, an increase come election time makes me really wonder why Trump and his team didn't want to stamp this out even further.

Guess they thought it was either the economy or sickness so running the risk with the sickness was a better play as they could play it off on China.

 

[Political Jazz Fan]

 

[Red]

So maybe this will help the sickest patients survive...

 

[infection]

I had previously mentioned that we had hit 1k deaths in a day once in the past 10 (now 11) days. Historically, Tuesday is the largest day in terms of deaths (true for 7/8 weeks), as the tallies on Tuesday come from Monday’s numbers, which clears out the weekend backlogs. The numbers have also historically decreased each successive day of the week (true for 7/8 past weeks). The total number of deaths each Tuesday has been less than the previous Tuesday for, again, 7/8 weeks. With today’s total of 849, what that would suggest, based on history, is that we won’t be seeing us crossing the thousand death threshold, or perhaps even approaching it, for the foreseeable future. Of course, one could say “no way,” with belief that cases will spike, but the daily death rate has continued to fall despite very little reduction in the prevalence of new cases.

 

[Political Jazz Fan]

 

[BabyPeterzz]

You know Twitter is censoring Daddy’s hate speech. If you were a real patriot like the rest of your paranoid bunker buddies you’d boycott them too. and Facebook. And google. And the generals, the Supreme Court, fellow Republicans, and the 60%+ US citizens that support BLM.

Make sure you clean out that bunker. You’re being sent back to the shadows where you belong.

Or....just don’t be ****ing racist and you can come along with the rest of the world. Whatever.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Keefe]

However, you’ll notice that there haven’t been any spikes. The spikes predicted with states opening up 6 weeks ago don’t appear anywhere in this.

Uh, this is exactly what’s happening.

Cases are only plateauing overall because New York and NJ have dropped significantly while others who’ve opened continue to rise.

 

[infection]

Uh, this is exactly what’s happening.

Cases are only plateauing overall because New York and NJ have dropped significantly while others who’ve opened continue to rise.

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Do we have a summary on all states that opened and what their average rates are? If we're appealing to a national plateau in cases being misleading while other places are rising, why has the death rate continued to fall and not plateaued, as well? How are we accounting for increase in testing?

 

[Keefe]

Do we have a summary on all states that opened and what their average rates are? If we're appealing to a national plateau in cases being misleading while other places are rising, why has the death rate continued to fall and not plateaued? How are we accounting for increase in testing?

No idea about the first. So far as the second, my understanding, at least based on what I heard about AZ last week, is that more testing is being done but the positive test results are actually coming back at a greater rate. I assume deaths are going down because of the oft-rumored weather. IDK. But this could be setting up to be a perfect storm of a ******** in the fall imo. We’re all slowly re-opening...deaths and hospitalizations are going down...people will feel more and more comfortable and socialize more and more over the next 3-5 months, and then the fall and winter come. And then bam! Numbers, hospitalizations and deaths could soar. Sort of scary to think about.

 

[infection]

Tl;dr COVID is like the Conley trade. We didn't know exactly what we were getting, but could prognosticate he's a pretty good player and that his floor would even be a good player. But he came out with anomaly after anomaly. When his performance didn't match at all what was promised, it was easy to fall back on the idea that there's no way that continues, that he bounces back. But the further we went along, the less that actually happened. And the more the eyeball test didn't show what we thought, the more many dig in to find advanced stats to say "see, he's playing good." And, of course, you get the occasional game or stretch where people come out of the woodwork to try to call people to repentance.

 

[infection]

No idea about the first. So far as the second, my understanding, at least based on what I heard about AZ last week, is that more testing is being done but the positive test results are actually coming back at a greater rate. I assume deaths are going down because of the oft-rumored weather. IDK. But this could be setting up to be a perfect storm of a ******** in the fall imo. We’re all slowly re-opening...deaths and hospitalizations are going down...people will feel more and more comfortable and socialize more and more over the next 3-5 months, and then the fall and winter come. And then bam! Numbers, hospitalizations and deaths could soar. Sort of scary to think about.

I've got you covered. Here's my post from over two months ago:

For about a month, I’ve been meaning to post my view on this but haven’t gotten around to doing so because it requires adding a lot of context. The tl;dr form of this is that my suspicion is that our debate regarding how and when to open up is going to get us through the next 6-8 weeks. We’ll endlessly debate what effect this is having on infection rates and ultimately my suspicion is that these stay relatively unchanged, if not continue to decrease. If there’s a bump, I don’t see this being something massive, and there are a whole host of reasons that I’ll have to elaborate on later, but I’ll have to settle for just laying out the bare bones with that. We will debate what we’re seeing. If rates don’t spike, we will favor more palatable narratives of how we’ve opened up slower, people are being more cautious, and how we’re still not testing sufficiently (I’m not saying any of these are untrue, just stating what how we’ll be qualifying what we’re seeing). Ultimately, we’re going to arrive in August/September and a different narrative will really heat up: the summer suppression of the virus. Currently, this is an argument castigated as ignorant and wishful (but is and will change). This will become more accepted because the argument will be highlighted as more nuanced: that it wasn’t the summer and the heat killing the virus (as all those ignorant rubes believed), but because the summer facilitated social gathering in ways that were more consistent with social distancing — that people congregated more outside and away from each other. This will allow a few things to come out. One is that it will reinforce the idea of social distancing helping curtail the virus, rather than ‘magic’ or anything implemented by the administration, but it will also reassure and provide a level of vindication for the initial doomsday models of millions dead. After all, those represent one side of the simplistic dichotomy of ‘science and facts’ vs. ‘ignorance and greed,’ and how palatable is vindication that the original models weren’t wrong, just mistimed? Our discussion will shift to the fact that COVID started at the very end of winter, and we had massive casualties. True, it did not reach the millions projected (‘because we acted’), but the summer has provided false hope for all those who deny science, and they’ve prematurely spiked the football in their ignorance and arrogance, but now [end of summer] we’re headed into a full winter where the death toll will be like nothing we’ve ever seen. Lots of talk of “we’re ****ed” and “we have no idea what’s about to hit us.”

That’s the tl;dr. I’ll have to actually clarify most of this, but not now. Maybe this weekend. I’m not saying there isn’t a lot of truth in some of this, but this narrative is and will be coalescing over the coming months.

Give it a couple months before everyone is in a panic regarding going into the fall. There will be a complete 180 on the 'summer suppression of the virus' theory, but it will have to be rationalized anew. Currently the summer suppression model plays to "hey, this will get better." But currently we're only in "**** this is going to get worse" mode, so when the summer suppression model inverts itself (meaning when we're then headed into winter and summer suppression now means "**** this is going to get worse"), people are going to be eating that idea up. But it will be repackaged with 'nuance' so that people feel like they rejected it previously for 'totally different' reasons (even though those reasons had always been around, people just chose to ignore them by rejecting the more ignorant assertions).

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

Tl;dr COVID is like the Conley trade. We didn't know exactly what we were getting, but could prognosticate he's a pretty good player and that his floor would even be a good player. But he came out with anomaly after anomaly. When his performance didn't match at all what was promised, it was easy to fall back on the idea that there's no way that continues, that he bounces back. But the further we went along, the less that actually happened. And the more the eyeball test didn't show what we thought, the more many dig in to find advanced stats to say "see, he's playing good." And, of course, you get the occasional game or stretch where people come out of the woodwork to try to call people to repentance.

The question is can we move Covid for a pick and some Ebola? Maybe we can swap Covid and a first for a few season of whooping cough.

 

[Scat]

The question is can we move Covid for a pick and some Ebola? Maybe we can swap Covid and a first for a few season of whooping cough.

Can we bring back smallpox and polio while we're at it?

 

[One Brow]

Do we have a summary on all states that opened and what their average rates are? If we're appealing to a national plateau in cases being misleading while other places are rising, why has the death rate continued to fall and not plateaued, as well?

A couple of states with the the rise in cases are, quite possibly purely by coincidence, seeing huge spikes in pneumonia this year over previous years (Florida comes to mind) without these cases being classified as covid19.

Also, wasn't there a huge rush to get proper machinery 6-8 weeks ago? If that machinery was collected and distributed, wouldn't the number of deaths go down with proper treatment? I have heard there has also been clarifications on various treatment methods (how/when to use the ventilator, etc.).

Of course, as the actual medical professional, your opinion, [should you ever choose to stop trying to play Socrates on a message board--which generally works poorly, as the Socratic method requires a degree of non-verbal communication] would be superior to mine.

 

[The Thriller]

No idea about the first. So far as the second, my understanding, at least based on what I heard about AZ last week, is that more testing is being done but the positive test results are actually coming back at a greater rate. I assume deaths are going down because of the oft-rumored weather. IDK. But this could be setting up to be a perfect storm of a ******** in the fall imo. We’re all slowly re-opening...deaths and hospitalizations are going down...people will feel more and more comfortable and socialize more and more over the next 3-5 months, and then the fall and winter come. And then bam! Numbers, hospitalizations and deaths could soar. Sort of scary to think about.

Utah just had its second highest day in record 496, has seen its positivity rate double 4 percent to 9 percent, and its ICU capacity increase from 42 percent to 58 percent in just 3 weeks.

Around Memorial Day a “bad” day was 200 new cases. In fact, we had only seen 200 or more cases 5 times prior to Memorial Day. Since Memorial Day, we’ve seen 300+ new cases in 12/17 days.

from personal experience, I’ve seen mask wearing go from 75 percent of people wearing them at stores to 25 percent. Parks were previously closed and now they’re open and no one is social distancing. Dinning in is now an option at restaurants, churches are permitted to have face to face services, and movie theaters are open. Lastly, schools were closed and school sponsored sports were forbidden. Now? They’re completely allowed and operating as normal. Every day we have super spreader events at schools where hundreds of students, coaches, and parents meet for workouts and tournaments. I believe Snow College is Having a tournament where hundreds even thousands will be on campus:

https://snowbadgers.com/sports/2013/2/4/FB_0204135213.aspx?path=football

With businesses returning to normal and sports, it’s not hard to know where this is going. We’re taking the Arizona and Texas approach rather than the new Zealand or South Korea approach.