Coronavirus Thread

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RamblinRed

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@GTNavyNuke @bwelbo The news is confounding. Woke up to “cases in Florida still rising” yet daily total is 60% of the peak & progressively lower the last 3 days. Can’t trust anyone to write anything half accurate anymore. Thank God the actual data is available to look at with our own eyes in many cases.

Whoever coined the phrase “media porn” nailed it.

Daily numbers are not considered an accurate or appropriate way to measure what is happening as different days of the week have different natural tendencies in reporting (this is true for cases, deaths and hospitalizations). Also, sometimes data gets dumped on a day of catch up. So the standard procedure is to use a 7 day rolling average as it smooths out the differences in daily totals (which tend to be lower on the weekends and Monday and higher on Tues-Thur) and any data dumps that occur. So the 7 day rolling avg for FL has increased for basically the entire month of June. Yesterday's 7 day avg was 6,589, Sunday was 5,535, Sat was 4,745, Fri was 4,013 all the way back to May 29th when it was 729. if you look at the graph for the 7 day rolling avg cases in FL its currently an exponentially curve, almost vertical.
There is a good chance that the 7 day avg will decrease at the end of this week in FL due to the huge numbers reported on June 26-27 that the Gov says was a data dump. But there was also the allegation that FL was going to monkey its numbers to make it look like it was going down into July 4th weekend (don't have any clue on the veracity of that) but the dumps of data could definitely make it look like it is going down next weekend. But then the avg could trend up again the following week if the numbers continue to increase.
In FL the 7 day rolling avg of cases has doubled in 7 days - that is basically an outbreak that is considered seriously out of control. Anything taking more than a month to double is considered to be under good control and the ability to control outbreaks is expected to be high. At its peak NY was doubling every 3-4 days.

it is actually more appropriate on a daily basis to compare to the same day previous week than the previous day.
Deaths are another example of that. While the number of reported deaths yesterday was just 332, the 7 day rolling avg (543) actually increased for the first time nationally since Jun 2 as that 332 was considerably higher than one week ago (282), and that was despite AZ not reporting most of its numbers yesterday as its primary lab did not provide its numbers in time, so assuming that is cleared up I expect AZ numbers today are likely to be very bad as it will probably play catch up.

FWIW, the death toll increased by 4,000 this morning. So at least one state obviously went back and updated data or changed its reporting to include probable deaths. That is usually separated from the daily numbers so it doesn't mess with the 7 day avg.
 

RamblinRed

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i just hope the mask wearing and social distancing works to start bringing this back down as I do not fancy what is going to happen if they don't work.
You have parts of Victoria State (Melbourne) going into lockdown, Leicester in England is in lockdown. You had that NW district in Germany that was locked down after a huge outbreak there due to a meat packing plant. When cases surged in Singapore they locked down for a month.

So its pretty obvious if we fail to get a hold of this now there are likely places that will have to go back to more restrictions and if I have to wash my hands any more than my wife already has me doing I may not have any skin left.
 
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From an article I read this morning ---

In Texas the “second wave” propaganda has gotten so bad that the leaders of the four major hospitals in Houston took the extraordinary step late last week of holding a joint press conference to clarify that the scare stories of Houston hospitals being overwhelmed with Covid cases are simply untrue. Dr. Marc Boom of Houston Methodist said the reporting on hospital capacity is misleading. He said, “quite frankly, we’re concerned that there is a level of alarm in the community that is unwarranted right now”.
 

GCdaJuiceMan

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From an article I read this morning ---

In Texas the “second wave” propaganda has gotten so bad that the leaders of the four major hospitals in Houston took the extraordinary step late last week of holding a joint press conference to clarify that the scare stories of Houston hospitals being overwhelmed with Covid cases are simply untrue. Dr. Marc Boom of Houston Methodist said the reporting on hospital capacity is misleading. He said, “quite frankly, we’re concerned that there is a level of alarm in the community that is unwarranted right now”.

An executive from a Texas ER:

 

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From an article I read this morning ---

In Texas the “second wave” propaganda has gotten so bad that the leaders of the four major hospitals in Houston took the extraordinary step late last week of holding a joint press conference to clarify that the scare stories of Houston hospitals being overwhelmed with Covid cases are simply untrue. Dr. Marc Boom of Houston Methodist said the reporting on hospital capacity is misleading. He said, “quite frankly, we’re concerned that there is a level of alarm in the community that is unwarranted right now”.

Here are their more full quotes. I can't figure out how they square this circle:
Despite reaching surge capacity, four hospital CEOs said Thursday there's no cause for "unwarranted alarm."
Those same CEOs signed a letter to Houstonians Wednesday warning, "If this trend continues, our hospital system capacity will become overwhelmed."


30% of patients in the ICU are now COVID-19 in Texas. That's why they're filling up - that's a lot. And the trajectory is up. So while its true the ICU isn't full of COVID-19 patients, that's never really been the goal - the goal is to not overfill the capacity of hospitals because there is always a base utilization of patients there for other things.
 

LibertyTurns

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@RamblinRed I’m extremely familiar with the daily ups and downs, moving averages, etc. I’m mocking blatantly misleading headlines & people’s propensity to not read past the top 2 lines. Sunday and Monday are Florida’s lowest 2 days of the week because they report Friday’s cases on Saturday, etc plus you got the results of the early week testing being received. The newspapers, etc just want people to read news so they can generate advertising revenue. A headline that reads “cases going down” is not click bait, it’s about as simple as that. People fall for it hook, line & sinker. There’s other agendas, but that’s primary.

Death data and case data are going up and down every day until it stabilizes somewhere after about 2 weeks. It’s amazing how this works because the hospital is allegedly reporting every C19 death daily & case to the Dept of Health, deaths thru the county Medical Examiner, their statement not mine. With contact tracing supposedly being what it is, it’s baffling how bad the data is. The ME says it’s because people after the fact are telling him the person had C19 when the listed cause of death is heart attack or car accident & stuff like that. Not that many people die in my county so it should not be rocket science. Just sloppy. They could be the worst government department in my county & that in itself is quite an accomplishment.
 

takethepoints

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Just did. Now I know why their conclusions are so wildly incorrect. They’re using the dates of the “legal” lockdowns. So for example - that would be mid April for South Carolina, as that is when we imposed a fine for being out. But the executive order to shut down businesses of many types came a month earlier. So let that sink in. Bars and restaurants close mid-March, theatres, etc. They closed, trust me. Then the fines for stay at home orders was mid April. Those orders were to keep people home, not to force businesses to close who were ignoring orders. We still had more people out and about than they wanted, and so they wanted to lock it down further. This is even more proof the study has it backwards.
Ok, now read pages 4 and 5, the part where they describe their data. The dataset of weekly customer visits - what their analysis is based on - runs from March 1 to May 16. They used data that included before SIP, after SIP, and local SIP orders; they emphasize county SIPs as well. As you will see, the span of the data is adequate to meet your objection and state-wide SIPs are deprecated in favor of local restrictions. And the estimates support their analysis.

Btw, I missed your post about the progress on the virus in SC. This is too bad, especially since the state was pretty responsible in how it handled things. Could be the tourists. Hope the final hit isn't too great.
 

RamblinRed

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@RamblinRed I’m extremely familiar with the daily ups and downs, moving averages, etc. I’m mocking blatantly misleading headlines & people’s propensity to not read past the top 2 lines. Sunday and Monday are Florida’s lowest 2 days of the week because they report Friday’s cases on Saturday, etc plus you got the results of the early week testing being received. The newspapers, etc just want people to read news so they can generate advertising revenue. A headline that reads “cases going down” is not click bait, it’s about as simple as that. People fall for it hook, line & sinker. There’s other agendas, but that’s primary.

Death data and case data are going up and down every day until it stabilizes somewhere after about 2 weeks. It’s amazing how this works because the hospital is allegedly reporting every C19 death daily & case to the Dept of Health, deaths thru the county Medical Examiner, their statement not mine. With contact tracing supposedly being what it is, it’s baffling how bad the data is. The ME says it’s because people after the fact are telling him the person had C19 when the listed cause of death is heart attack or car accident & stuff like that. Not that many people die in my county so it should not be rocket science. Just sloppy. They could be the worst government department in my county & that in itself is quite an accomplishment.

I do wish FL would include hospitalizations with their public numbers, though it is publicly available if you know where to look for it. (FL has a public Tableau workbook).
Using those numbers FL isn't at a crisis point yet, it is at a point that it should be concerned. As of this afternoon that workbook has ICU availability in the state at 19.81%. Some counties are worse than others Hillsborough is showing 11.67% of ICU beds left (49), Orange is showing 17.43% ICU beds left (57). The numbers in this workbook jumped up on average about 5-6% last week when they changed how they counted utilization and are not back to where they were before and due to the reporting change they are undercounting by it looks like about 5% the utilization.

The news porn over rising cases like reporting 36 states have increasing numbers obscures a lesser but still very serious situation. in my own tracking (where I look at a combination of how fast cases are doubling, how much positive test % are increasing, how hospitalizations are increasing) I currently have 9 states in a red zone and 11 in a yellow zone and not all of those are created equal. But we do have serious issues and have a multitude of states that are currently not in control of their outbreaks, FL and GA would both fall into that for me. Both are in a place where they are not overwhelmed today, but if they don't get control of it in the week or so in about 3 weeks they are going to be in really bad places. What i really like to look for are graphs where the cases and hospitalizations are almost vertical lines. Those are places where they have lost control of any containment and are really going to have to work to get it back under control. Hospitalizations are the most important thing to track if they have good measurements. When hospitals get full that is when deaths will take off as then they can't devote the same amount of time or resources to patients.

I pay basically no attention to deaths as they are such a lagging indicator that they are completely unreliable if you actually want to manage an outbreak in real time. COVID Tracking Project has a great blog on tracking of deaths and the issues with it. First, from infection to the actual reporting of the death takes an avg of 28 days, so if you are waiting on seeing deaths rise than you have lose a month. Second, just the reporting of a death can take 7 days (4-5 business days) - there is alot of bureaucracy in that reporting, alot of steps that have to be gone through.
https://covidtracking.com/blog/why-...raphics-in-the-us-make-death-trends-harder-to

timeline-death-lag__2_.jpg
 

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I do wish FL would include hospitalizations with their public numbers, though it is publicly available if you know where to look for it. (FL has a public Tableau workbook).
Using those numbers FL isn't at a crisis point yet, it is at a point that it should be concerned. As of this afternoon that workbook has ICU availability in the state at 19.81%. Some counties are worse than others Hillsborough is showing 11.67% of ICU beds left (49), Orange is showing 17.43% ICU beds left (57). The numbers in this workbook jumped up on average about 5-6% last week when they changed how they counted utilization and are not back to where they were before and due to the reporting change they are undercounting by it looks like about 5% the utilization.

The news porn over rising cases like reporting 36 states have increasing numbers obscures a lesser but still very serious situation. in my own tracking (where I look at a combination of how fast cases are doubling, how much positive test % are increasing, how hospitalizations are increasing) I currently have 9 states in a red zone and 11 in a yellow zone and not all of those are created equal. But we do have serious issues and have a multitude of states that are currently not in control of their outbreaks, FL and GA would both fall into that for me. Both are in a place where they are not overwhelmed today, but if they don't get control of it in the week or so in about 3 weeks they are going to be in really bad places. What i really like to look for are graphs where the cases and hospitalizations are almost vertical lines. Those are places where they have lost control of any containment and are really going to have to work to get it back under control. Hospitalizations are the most important thing to track if they have good measurements. When hospitals get full that is when deaths will take off as then they can't devote the same amount of time or resources to patients.

I pay basically no attention to deaths as they are such a lagging indicator that they are completely unreliable if you actually want to manage an outbreak in real time. COVID Tracking Project has a great blog on tracking of deaths and the issues with it. First, from infection to the actual reporting of the death takes an avg of 28 days, so if you are waiting on seeing deaths rise than you have lose a month. Second, just the reporting of a death can take 7 days (4-5 business days) - there is alot of bureaucracy in that reporting, alot of steps that have to be gone through.
https://covidtracking.com/blog/why-...raphics-in-the-us-make-death-trends-harder-to

timeline-death-lag__2_.jpg

The only reason (my opinion) hospital beds at this point have any interest is as a predicting indicator of possible deaths. States have been through so much planning that they have a ton of overflow capacity available if they have to use it. So if the ICU fills up, patients don’t end up staying and dying at home like they did in other countries. They have surge capacity they will bring to bear. But it of course is concerning because regardless of whether beds fill up or not, it’s just a matter of math that a higher certain number of people will be dying as more and more people go to the hospital.
 

RamblinRed

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The only reason (my opinion) hospital beds at this point have any interest is as a predicting indicator of possible deaths. States have been through so much planning that they have a ton of overflow capacity available if they have to use it. So if the ICU fills up, patients don’t end up staying and dying at home like they did in other countries. They have surge capacity they will bring to bear. But it of course is concerning because regardless of whether beds fill up or not, it’s just a matter of math that a higher certain number of people will be dying as more and more people go to the hospital.

While you are correct that they have emergency overflow plans, you still have to deal with resource constraints. There is only so many doctors and nurses and they can only work so many hours. There is only so much PPE and medicines. And on a national level we have been unable to restock our national supplies.

And I think you are right, I don't expect to see Americans dying in homes as much as Europe and I don't expect death rates to rise to the kind of levels they did in NY, we are three months farther into our understanding and the average age is younger, but i think you are also correct that as more people end up in hospitals it will increase the death rate as it just signifies more seriously sick people are out there and as you said at that point it is just math.
 

RamblinRed

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In the name of young adults going to be young adults. Students who know they tested positive are showing up at parties in tuscaloosa.
 

LibertyTurns

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Thanks Liberty, that is the site I mentioned that I use for hospitalizations in FL.
Florida has every source of information anyone’s wanting, albeit not very organized but it’s there.

On a side note, last week the biggest hospital here closed down a very large testing site next to the hospital where I live because nobody was showing up for tests. They were allegedly averaging 20 mins in between visitors. The drug store drive thrus similarly shutdown due to lack of business. They were able to accommodate way more than what was needed just inside the hospital. The Urgent Care clinic had no wait either. Today, the hospital reopened the test site and a guy that works for me says the line is 2 miles long. They have someone at the end of the line sending people away because it will take all day to get thru the people already in line. Rumors have it they’re tripling up for tomorrow. Word has it the Urgent Care clinic is exploding. Crazy. Just a week ago it was crickets.
 
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