Coronavirus Thread

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I don't really disagree with regards to the CDC's response to this particular issue, especially in light of the news today that they are conflating viral and antibody test results but if we are going to say that a mission statement defines the job of an organization then there is no organization in the world with more than 1 job.

So there is this saying, this Meme that goes like this: "You had 1 job!". That's the joke we're playing off of. Good gracious golly alive.
 

Techster

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After saying otherwise initially, now the CDC is saying that the virus does NOT spread easily on surfaces.

I'm not sure what's going on at the CDC (though I have some strong suspicions), but I'm taking everything that comes from them with a grain of salt.

When all of this is said and done, there are going to be some interesting stories that will be made public.
 

GT_EE78

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>I missed this in March
CDC now says coronavirus 'does not spread easily' via contaminated surfaces
For those of you still wiping down groceries and other packages amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, breathe a sigh of relief: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now says the novel virus “does not spread easily” from "touching surfaces or objects"
"It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes," the CDC said on a now-archived page from March 28. At the time, however, the CDC did note that this possible method of transmission "is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads."Even so, the CDC now includes "surfaces or objects" under a section that details ways in which the coronavirus does not readily transmit.
https://www.foxnews.com/health/cdc-now-says-coronavirus-does-not-spread-easily-via-contaminated-surfaces


 

takethepoints

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By the way, this debate goes back a few days, but the the argument that "other" deaths are not occurring in large numbers is beginning to face the music of actually begin accounted for.....

https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-deadly-to-fear-the-emergency-room-11589927538?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Just in NYC, almost 5,300 deaths in just over 7 weeks, according to this article. I have not vetted the numbers myself, but if accurate they provide a backdrop to the anecdotal stories we are hearing in large numbers about people avoiding our medical system because of the covid media panic.
Yes, I concede that. We have to remember that a lot of those people didn't show up because the emergency rooms in NYC made it clear that they were swamped and that, unless you really thought you were going to be in extremis soon, you shouldn't show up. I understand why they did that, but, with what we now know about the sudden onset of severe symptoms from the virus, I bet the medical establishment is re-thinking their requests.

And, yes, some people did avoid getting medical care because of fear of the disease. That's one of the things we'll be assessing after we get through this.
 

takethepoints

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Early days for this kind of analysis. What we are seeing now is where the course of the epidemic was 2 - 3 weeks ago; i.e., about when the shelter-in-place regimes ended. We'll have to wait for another month or so to see what the results of "re-opening" are.

Who knows? Maybe we'll be lucky. Maybe not.
 

FredJacket

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Early days for this kind of analysis. What we are seeing now is where the course of the epidemic was 2 - 3 weeks ago; i.e., about when the shelter-in-place regimes ended. We'll have to wait for another month or so to see what the results of "re-opening" are.

Who knows? Maybe we'll be lucky. Maybe not.
Is luck the only explanation for a good outcome/trajectory over next month?
 

GT_EE78

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>Out of the trillions of funny money, wouldn’t it be great if $120,000 was the extent of the misappropriation?
>There's people who truly need it, they can do better
Hospital That’s Closed For Almost A Year Got $121K In COVID-19 Relief Money – Still Owes $1.2 Million In Unpaid Federal Taxes
The federal government gave more than $121 thousand in coronavirus relief money to the Jamestown Regional Medical Center, a hospital that has been closed since June 2019.The Department of Health and Human Services says the hospital received $121,722 from its provider relief fund. Records show the Rennova-owned hospital still owes $1.2 million in unpaid federal taxes.Reports suggest that the hospital has been closed since June 13, 2019
https://conservativeus.com/hospital...ill-owes-1-2-million-in-unpaid-federal-taxes/





 

Milwaukee

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Early days for this kind of analysis. What we are seeing now is where the course of the epidemic was 2 - 3 weeks ago; i.e., about when the shelter-in-place regimes ended. We'll have to wait for another month or so to see what the results of "re-opening" are.

Who knows? Maybe we'll be lucky. Maybe not.

Sounds good, you can wait another month. Or a year, I don’t mind. I’ll keep looking at the positive trends that are right in front of me.
 
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RamblinRed

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Right now we sort of are in a new normal with slow declines largely led by declines in the NYC area with the rest of the country basically being flat to some places with increases. Likely to be that way for awhile. That's alot better than where we were a month ago though. You have positive factors (some percentage of people wearing masks, some percentage of people engaging in social distancing. warmer weather - recent study suggests that could result in up to a 25% decrease in transmission rate) that right now appear to be just offsetting the negative factor (more mobility - though mobility is still well below where it was in early March), keeping the overall R0 just below 1 for the country as a whole.

I tend to keep focus on 2 metrics (7 day rolling avg for both to smooth out the natural data reporting issues)- positive case % (the news people who focus on just cases are overly pessimistic - as you test more you should see more cases - but if your testing is rising faster than the cases the positive % goes down), and deaths (which is unfortunately a pretty significant trailing indicator - but still give some sense of what is going on).
Unfortunately GA is going to have a bad death day today (it is already one of the 8 worst of the pandemic and still has the 7 pm update to go). GA has been basically flat in terms of deaths and cases, but positive case percentage has gone down consistently which is good.
Still avg 20K+ new cases nationwide and 1,300+ deaths nationwide every day is not good on an absolute scale. Yesterday was the worst day yet in terms of reported cases worldwide.
GA is avg about 30 deaths per day and 625 cases. To make a comparison the total confirmed deaths by flu for GA for 2019-20 season through the first week of March was 84. So about every 3 days we are having more people die from the virus than died in 6 months from the flu in the state.

Just sort of a mixed bag. Not great, not horrible.
fivethirtyeight.com has a nice dashboard where they are tracking 9 models. If you use them as an ensemble they have been almost dead on in terms of death predictions with the current US death numbers basically trending right around where the middle of the model projections come out. We are likely looking at hitting 100K deaths the day after Memorial Day and likely somewhere between 150-175K by the beginning of August.

As I said two weeks ago. I'm happy with the direction things are heading, not real happy at the pace. Late June/early July is going to be a time period to watch. That is when some (but not all of the models) project a summer spike - not as large as April but enough to register. We are just barely doing better than treading water which isn't going to allow the economy to take off in any significant way.
This study by 4 UCLA Economic researchers looked to untangle the direct effect of stay at home orders on unemployment claims. They came up with the stay at home orders resulting in roughly 25% of the unemployment claims, the rest were due to other factors (consumer confidence, self-imposed stay at home, supply chain disruptions, etc).
https://voxeu.org/article/unemployment-effects-stay-home-orders

This would largely line up with what we have seen in GA so far where unemployment claims continue to be sky high even 4 weeks after relaxing orders. This past week was the first significant drop in weekly unemployment claims, but they are still 15X above average (180K vs 12K).
It's also been a mixed bag for states that opened up the earliest. GA has been able to keep its transmissions rate likely just under 1 given its positive case %, but Texas is seeing positive case % increase for the last week so even with more testing that suggests that their R0 is likely above 1 right now and they are having some outbreaks.

IMO we are in a better place than we were 1 month ago, but we aren't even close to where we were at the beginning of March and not likely to be there for a long time.
But I do think we are going to get at least some college football later this year and that possibility excites me.
 

RamblinRed

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Is luck the only explanation for a good outcome/trajectory over next month?
Heck no.
If the numbers continue their slow decline that would suggest that the combination of percentages of people using various mitigation measures and warmer weather are more than offsetting the negative of more people being close to each other.
It wouldn't be luck, it would be a combination of factors, just like most things in life are.
 

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This study by 4 UCLA Economic researchers looked to untangle the direct effect of stay at home orders on unemployment claims. They came up with the stay at home orders resulting in roughly 25% of the unemployment claims, the rest were due to other factors (consumer confidence, self-imposed stay at home, supply chain disruptions, etc).
https://voxeu.org/article/unemployment-effects-stay-home-orders
.

LOL. Another idiotic study devoid of science. All they did was try and track stay at home orders with the timing of unemployment claims and anything out of phase was concluded to not be related. Stupid. Some companies like restaurants had to fire people immediately. Others had more money and a slower downturn and had more runway to decide if they should cut headcount to save money or not. Companies are still doing that. Another 2.5m filed unemployment claims last week. It’s not restaurants and hotels filing the claims, so see - it’s not related to stay at home orders, LOL. Ask companies who sell things to restaurants and hospitals and so on if shutting those down and not allowing elective surgeries impacted them LOL. They’ve been hanging on hoping those folks can reopen fast enough to get business back...but many can’t keep waiting to cut costs.
 

takethepoints

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Sounds good, you can wait another month. Or a year, I don’t mind. I’ll keep looking at the positive trends that are right in front of me.
I did leave out another possibility: that Georgians are sensible enough to avoid dangerous situations to keep R low. We'll know if that - and it would be a very positive trend if it shows up - in a couple of weeks. As long as people stay outside when they get into groups and keep their distance, we could be ok.
 

IEEEWreck

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I heard mention on TV tonight of a list of the 50 most dangerous medications, so I decided to look it up. Although this list was compiled in 2016, I doubt there have been many, if any, changes. On the list are a few recognizable names --- aspirin (44), prednizone (42), fentanyl (40), acetamenophine (39), cyclosporine (37), oxycodone (31), and morphine (17). You know what does not appear on the list? HYDROXCHLOROQUINE !!! And yet the media and all the Trump haters have declared, or at least implied in some cases, that hydroxychlorquine is a deadly drug. WOW !!!
https://www.abc15.com/news/national/these-are-the-50-most-dangerous-drugs-on-the-market
Come on, Supersize. I know you're a smarter guy than this.

Analgesics, nerve pills, heart pills?

Only two antineoplastics, and the two most common ones? No antivirals at all?

It's because it's a list of the most adverse reactions. A number that's highly influenced by the number of total people taking it.

This is just lying with statistics. You are much, much more likely to die if you take the most toxic chemotherapy drugs than if you take aspirin. It's just that a lot of people take aspirin and very few take the most toxic antineoplastics, so more people die from taking aspirin.

My goodness, to call out DeSantis without condemning Cuomo is ridiculous. Cuomo sent Covid patients into nursing homes, denied them the right to test them (for fear they would be discriminated against), or refuse them....and you don’t mention that as alikely major contributor to the problems in NY?
Well, talking about Cuomo in a discussion of why FL nursing homes have largely escaped would be pretty silly in the first instance.

But you bring up an excellent example of lying with incomplete information and politically motivated opinion masquerading as news.

First, you're just factually wrong. NY nursing homes were encouraged and given tests to test residents. They just couldn't require a test before admitting someone, nor could they turn down a patient for being CoViD positive.

Is that great? No. But all the whining about it requires that you studiously ignore the actual situation and alternatives. What would have happened to these people if the NY department of health hadn't prevented nursing homes from turning them away?

They would have died. They are a population that requires intensive hands on care to live day to day. Could they have gone to a hospital? Nope, hospitals in NY were dangerously close to overflowing just with the worst coronavirus cases. There was no room or resources for subacute care of a large new population.

Could they have just gone home? Maybe? Those that had a home to go to, or family to take them in. A few very lucky ones might even have enough combined family free time and care to keep them alive. The remainder would have died of starvation, infected bed sores, opportunistic infections, and all the other miserable deaths that nursing homes are designed to prevent.

What I'm saying is that if you look reality square in the eyes like a man you realize it was the right choice. It was the choice that minimized deaths, full stop. And in a better world, a world where a competent federal government was actively acquiring and distributing PPE in a timely manner and funding a robust response effort, there could have been enough people and resources to deal with an influx of infected in nursing homes. Maybe even a set of new ad hoc facilities for infected but not requiring hospitalization nursing home patients.

If only there were some sort of corps of engineers in this country that had the expertise and competence to quickly build that sort of thing. If only there were some sort of center for controlling diseases that could examine these things and anticipate the need for nursing home capacity for the infected.

But these are all pipe dreams.
 
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