Coronavirus Thread

[takethepoints]

Typically on charts like that, you'll find countries or areas that had complete dysfunction with respect to tests. My cousin lives in the UK and took over 2 weeks to get over COVID-19. She had twice a day talks with the doctor, who told her not to get into the hospital unless it was gravely serious...luckily it never got that bad. But he told her the entire time "there are no tests", and he was just treating her under the assumption she had it based on her symptoms. That was going on the entire time. Same in Italy. They had so many people coming into the hospital with the usual symptoms they didn't want to waste tests on them when they'd just be confirming what they knew. They wanted to save the tests for other purposes if possible. The UK at one point was close to 20% mortality rate - there's no way they had that...it just looked that way on the surface due to lack of testing relative to their case count/population.

Or it's like the Belgians say: they (and the others) counted all the actual deaths. Both ways work. Like I said, we'll see after we get a defense and can look at the stats in more detail.

 

[GoldZ]

Or it's like the Belgians say: they (and the others) counted all the actual deaths. Both ways work. Like I said, we'll see after we get a defense and can look at the stats in more detail.

ttp, it may be a looong time before we get a clear, without obfuscation, look at stats in detail. Politicizing any issue, poisons data presentation tremendously. Just look at the posts on here claiming the increase in cases is due to testing---and think about it, that's on THIS board! Imagine others.

 

[Techster]

Everything is bigger in Texas!

 

[Techster]

Texas and Arizona didn't get the memo. If they didn't do so many tests, all these big numbers wouldn't happen.

 

[RonJohn]

ttp, it may be a looong time before we get a clear, without obfuscation, look at stats in detail. Politicizing any issue, poisons data presentation tremendously. Just look at the posts on here claiming the increase in cases is due to testing---and think about it, that's on THIS board! Imagine others.

Some people on this board also ignored increased testing in May. Those people concluded that stabilized confirmed cases meant that total cases wasn't declining even though the percentage of positive tests was much lower.

You are correct that stats can say whatever you want them to, and that too many people are looking for stats that say what they want to hear instead of trying to decipher them. However, don't fall into the trap of believing that everyone who agrees with your assessment is reading the stats correctly and that everyone else is stupid or deceitful. Digging in too hard into a positional belief and ignoring anything anyone else says is exactly what is happening on all sides of this argument.

 

[takethepoints]

ttp, it may be a looong time before we get a clear, without obfuscation, look at stats in detail. Politicizing any issue, poisons data presentation tremendously. Just look at the posts on here claiming the increase in cases is due to testing---and think about it, that's on THIS board! Imagine others.

I think that Ron is right on this. One reason I keep calling for links to the actual studies that so many on this board are citing news stories about is that, provided the studies involved are published in reputable sources, you can be pretty sure that the peer review process will root our probable errors. The results from studies that go through the ringer are almost uniformly more nuanced and more critical - of their own conclusions and others - then what you find in stories about them. It's a lot harder to try to understand what is going on in work done by people who, you know, actually know what they are doing then it is to read a news flash, but it is almost always more profitable. Provided, that is, that you actually want to, again you know, want to find out what is really being suggested by scientific work. I grant that it is sometimes hard to tell if that motive is to be found around here.

Here's the perfect illustration of what I mean:

https://xkcd.com/882/

Yeah. That's it alright.

 

[GoldZ]

Some people on this board also ignored increased testing in May. Those people concluded that stabilized confirmed cases meant that total cases wasn't declining even though the percentage of positive tests was much lower.

You are correct that stats can say whatever you want them to, and that too many people are looking for stats that say what they want to hear instead of trying to decipher them. However, don't fall into the trap of believing that everyone who agrees with your assessment is reading the stats correctly and that everyone else is stupid or deceitful. Digging in too hard into a positional belief and ignoring anything anyone else says is exactly what is happening on all sides of this argument.

Ron, I'm more concerned about those that seem to refuse to understand, that increases in percentages of positives, means that cases are increasing beyond that which is related to increased testing. This is more akin to not understanding basic math(like your May reference illustrates), than it is digging too hard into a positional belief. Hence, my ref to THIS board. If this board is blind to basic math due to politicized science, imagine how bad it is elsewhere.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

I think that Ron is right on this. One reason I keep calling for links to the actual studies that so many on this board are citing news stories about is that, provided the studies involved are published in reputable sources, you can be pretty sure that the peer review process will root our probable errors. The results from studies that go through the ringer are almost uniformly more nuanced and more critical - of their own conclusions and others - then what you find in stories about them. It's a lot harder to try to understand what is going on in work done by people who, you know, actually know what they are doing then it is to read a news flash, but it is almost always more profitable. Provided, that is, that you actually want to, again you know, want to find out what is really being suggested by scientific work. I grant that it is sometimes hard to tell if that motive is to be found around here.

Here's the perfect illustration of what I mean:

https://xkcd.com/882/

Yeah. That's it alright.

Sadly, even studies we’ve discussed here failed that same cartoon test. It’s like saying the more churches there are in a city, the more rapes and murders there are. A ha! It’s churches that are the problem!

We’ve seen that during the coronavirus (drug studies), we see it in climate science...I’ve seen it in other health studies, like heart issues in endurance athletes. It’s an epidemic even with the studies themselves.

 

[Techster]

More math time:

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

As of 6.24.2020:

Total worldwide Covid infections: 9.4 million
Total US Covid infections: 2.3+ million

Total wordwide population: 7.8 Billion
Total US population: 330+ million

The US makes up about 4% of the world's population, but we're responsible for 24% of the world's infections.

American excellence in full view.

 

[RonJohn]

More math time:

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

As of 6.24.2020:

Total worldwide Covid infections: 9.4 million
Total US Covid infections: 2.3+ million

Total wordwide population: 7.8 Billion
Total US population: 330+ million

The US makes up about 4% of the world's population, but we're responsible for 24% of the world's infections.

American excellence in full view.

The problem with that analysis is that not all of the numbers are trustworthy. Do you actually believe that China still only has 84,000 total cases? India shows 25% as many cases, but has only conducted 25% as many tests while they have 4 times the population. If the percentages projected correctly, then India has about 4 times the number of cases as the US. (Not stating that the percentages project correctly).

There have been news reports lately about potential cases of COVID-19 earlier in 2019 than first reported and cases in other parts of the world(including the US) as early as December of 2019. I am not proclaiming that the disease did indeed start earlier than first reported, just pointing out that the epidemiology isn't settled at this point. It is entirely possible that the number of reported confirmed cases is under the actual number of infections by several orders of magnitude.

I think that you are taking some numbers to make a political point, when those numbers don't actually make the point you are trying to make. Your quote should be modified:

"The US makes up about 4% of the world's population, but we're responsible for have 24% of the world's infections publicly reported confirmed cases."

 

[Deleted member 2897]

More math time:

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

As of 6.24.2020:

Total worldwide Covid infections: 9.4 million
Total US Covid infections: 2.3+ million

Total wordwide population: 7.8 Billion
Total US population: 330+ million

The US makes up about 4% of the world's population, but we're responsible for 24% of the world's infections.

American excellence in full view.

Of course that's not true. I hope you don't really think that's true.

For months I have shown how UK didn't have enough tests. Their death rate at one point was close to 20%. I mean of course it wasn't, but that's because they weren't testing much. Same with countries everywhere. Look at Brazil right now - their labs have been out of supplies and unable to run tests, just sitting there idle. Take a look at this article from 1 week ago:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105907/latin-america-coronavirus-covid-19-tests-country/
As of June 15th, Brazil had run 1.6m tests, and had 900k cases. Who among us thinks with a 55% positive test rate that they actually had 900k cases? Health experts down there estimate there are 10-15x that many cases in reality. I hope you really don't believe what you just asserted.

 

[Techster]

The problem with that analysis is that not all of the numbers are trustworthy. Do you actually believe that China still only has 84,000 total cases? India shows 25% as many cases, but has only conducted 25% as many tests while they have 4 times the population. If the percentages projected correctly, then India has about 4 times the number of cases as the US. (Not stating that the percentages project correctly).

There have been news reports lately about potential cases of COVID-19 earlier in 2019 than first reported and cases in other parts of the world(including the US) as early as December of 2019. I am not proclaiming that the disease did indeed start earlier than first reported, just pointing out that the epidemiology isn't settled at this point. It is entirely possible that the number of reported confirmed cases is under the actual number of infections by several orders of magnitude.

I think that you are taking some numbers to make a political point, when those numbers don't actually make the point you are trying to make. Your quote should be modified:

"The US makes up about 4% of the world's population, but we're responsible for have 24% of the world's infections publicly reported confirmed cases."

How is it political? If you've followed me in this thread, sure I think our leaders (both sides of the aisle) are doing too much grandstanding and not enough action, but I blame ourselves (the idiot US population) more than anything. No matter what rules Democrat or Republican leaders put in place, it's up to the citizens to follow through...and not be idiots. Right now, there are more idiots out there running around being negligent to the virus than responsible people.

As for numbers, I don't care that China and India are under reporting right now. What I care about is the US has the best doctors and scientist, and we are ignoring them...and undercutting them by politicizing everything they say or don't say. The fact that we have some of the worst infection rates, and some of the worst mitigation responses with all the resources the United States has it the broader point of my post.

Your reply, and I'm not even singling you out on this, represents the problem with the attitude our entire country is taking on this. Everyone wants to see a political point in everything instead of letting science and data lead us to where we need to go.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

How is it political? If you've followed me in this thread, sure I think our leaders (both sides of the aisle) are doing too much grandstanding and not enough action, but I blame ourselves (the idiot US population) more than anything. No matter what rules Democrat or Republican leaders put in place, it's up to the citizens to follow through...and not be idiots. Right now, there are more idiots out there running around being negligent to the virus than responsible people.

As for numbers, I don't care that China and India are under reporting right now. What I care about is the US has the best doctors and scientist, and we are ignoring them...and undercutting them by politicizing everything they say or don't say. The fact that we have some of the worst infection rates, and some of the worst mitigation responses with all the resources the United States has it the broader point of my post.

Your reply, and I'm not even singling you out on this, represents the problem with the attitude our entire country is taking on this. Everyone wants to see a political point in everything instead of letting science and data lead us to where we need to go.

Everything that you just said here is true. People all over this country are ignoring science and acting foolish and irresponsibly.

But that doesn't mean you can or should make false assertions about the numbers.

 

[Techster]

Everything that you just said here is true. People all over this country are ignoring science and acting foolish and irresponsibly.

But that doesn't mean you can or should make false assertions about the numbers.

What's false about the numbers I provided? I'm strictly reporting from Johns Hopkins website. What from that website am I reporting that is wrong?

I'm not responsible for other countries reporting their data. You think the United States *only* has 2.4 million cases when a certain someone admitted that they purposely suppressed testing to keep infection numbers low? Hell, we couldn't even get a test without an act of God until about a month ago. The fact that the only defense some of you have is "Well, other countries are just as f$cked up as the US" tells you how stupid all of this is getting...and it doesn't reflect well on the country once held as the gold standard for pretty much everything.

In the end, with these numbers, you assume everyone's under reporting or just flat out lying (in which case the US is undoubtedly doing both).

 

[RonJohn]

As for numbers, I don't care that China and India are under reporting right now. What I care about is the US has the best doctors and scientist, and we are ignoring them...and undercutting them by politicizing everything they say or don't say. The fact that we have some of the worst infection rates, and some of the worst mitigation responses with all the resources the United States has it the broader point of my post.

You claim that the US has 24% of all infections in the world, but you don't care if China is under reporting or that India is under testing? If India tested more and it resulted in 4 times the number of confirmed infections reported, then the US would only have 6.25% of the world's confirmed infections. If China actually has similar numbers to India, then the US would have less than 4% of the world's confirmed infections.

I don't know how India's numbers actually look. I only know that they aren't testing at the same level as the US. I don't know how China's numbers look. I only know that their reported numbers are not believable.

How is it political? If you've followed me in this thread, sure I think our leaders (both sides of the aisle) are doing too much grandstanding and not enough action, but I blame ourselves (the idiot US population) more than anything. No matter what rules Democrat or Republican leaders put in place, it's up to the citizens to follow through...and not be idiots. Right now, there are more idiots out there running around being negligent to the virus than responsible people.

Your reply, and I'm not even singling you out on this, represents the problem with the attitude our entire country is taking on this. Everyone wants to see a political point in everything instead of letting science and data lead us to where we need to go.

I agree that people are not taking it seriously enough. I think that many leaders clamped down too hard for too long, even for things with little to zero chance of spreading infections. I think that many people are now not agreeable to any measure no matter how benign, such as wearing a mask.

My response to your numbers was not an attempt to say that you are blowing things out or proportion and that there are no issues. My response is that your assessment of the numbers isn't valid. Confirmed infections is not equal to total infections. I have no idea how many total infections there are in the US, and I have no idea how many total infections there are in the world. The number of confirmed cases is a very poor number to use in comparisons between countries, and even along a timeline in a single country. If you want to convince people that they should practice social distancing and wear masks, don't use numbers that are easily discounted.

 

[RonJohn]

What's false about the numbers I provided? I'm strictly reporting from Johns Hopkins website. What from that website am I reporting that is wrong?

It is your assessment of the numbers. Publicly reported confirmed cases does not equal total cases. It isn't apples to apples. Your assessment of "we're responsible for 24% of the world's infections" isn't a valid use of those numbers. That is not "strictly reporting from Johns Hopkins website." That is faulty analysis of the numbers presented on the website. It is easy to see that your analysis isn't valid. That makes it more difficult for you to reach someone to convince them that they should social distance and wear masks.

 

[Techster]

You claim that the US has 24% of all infections in the world, but you don't care if China is under reporting or that India is under testing? If India tested more and it resulted in 4 times the number of confirmed infections reported, then the US would only have 6.25% of the world's confirmed infections. If China actually has similar numbers to India, then the US would have less than 4% of the world's confirmed infections.

I don't know how India's numbers actually look. I only know that they aren't testing at the same level as the US. I don't know how China's numbers look. I only know that their reported numbers are not believable.



I agree that people are not taking it seriously enough. I think that many leaders clamped down too hard for too long, even for things with little to zero chance of spreading infections. I think that many people are now not agreeable to any measure no matter how benign, such as wearing a mask.

My response to your numbers was not an attempt to say that you are blowing things out or proportion and that there are no issues. My response is that your assessment of the numbers isn't valid. Confirmed infections is not equal to total infections. I have no idea how many total infections there are in the US, and I have no idea how many total infections there are in the world. The number of confirmed cases is a very poor number to use in comparisons between countries, and even along a timeline in a single country. If you want to convince people that they should practice social distancing and wear masks, don't use numbers that are easily discounted.

Read my follow up. What ever you blame China and India of doing, the US did as well. It's really a silly argument you're trying to make because we're just as guilty.

Seriously, the US has 2.4 million infections....and it's about to climb at a faster rate in the next month. Are we seriously trying to bring up countries like China and India to defend our numbers? How low have we set the bar?

 

[RamblinRed]

i doubt we are 24% of the world's infections, that is due to a number of nations that aren't reporting numbers with any sort of accuracy - including most Central and South American countries.
India does very little testing - mainly of its upper castes, so their numbers as bad as they are are way low and China way underreported its numbers.
none of that excuses the US for doing an incredibly poor job in fighting this.

When Europe is planning on excluding Americans from being able to travel there that is a bad thing. I read an article that talked to European scientists and they are just super worried about the US and don't understand why we haven't taken this as seriously as a nation as they did. The scientists mentioned almost every action they recommended to their political leaders came from US Scientist research and they are shocked that they could get their countries to follow what US Science research suggested but the US wouldn't follow it.

As has been pointed out testing increased alot in May which is why looking at positive test rate was so important. Things were clearly improving in May, it is clearly getting worse right now. Our 7 day avg of cases is at its highest level since late April, our daily number yesterday was the highest since April 22nd. Nationally the positive case % has increased over 20% in less than 2 weeks - so even with the offsetting declines in the NE and Midwest the outbreaks across the south, SW, Mountain States and some of the Pacific NW are so high they are now easily overtaking the declines. Our 7 day avg case rate as of yesterday is only down 8% from our absolute peak in April.

It also doesn't help that some states like FL are purposely undercounting to make things look better than they are. They already don't count deaths of non full-time residents in their numbers. Today they are going to change how they report ICU utilization in that they will not report an ICU bed as being used if someone is in it but not using ICU services. There are also allegations (not yet proven) that FL DoH is being asked to delete cases so that the numbers will look better heading into the July 4th Holiday.

Hospitalizations on a national level have started increasing in the last week and in some states the rates of increase have been huge. The CEO of Houston Baptist Hospitals says they are ok at the moment but getting close to a tipping point. Texas Childrens Hospitals in Houston are now taking adult patients in their ICU's as they fill up in the non-children's hopsitals.

AZ is currently at 85% capacity statewide in hospitals and have been told to expect to be in surge conditions by July 4th. I saw a report yesterday that they have almost 1,000 adults younger than 30 in their hopsitals right now. There are volunteer doctors and nurses starting to head there to help.
FL doesn't provide the numbers publicly but i have access to a tableau site that shows remaining ICU availability in FL has dropped from 26% to 19% just this week and in Orange county (Orlando) it is down to 16%.

It's also worth pointing out that most of the states with serious issues are among the worst testing states in the US with avg test rates well below the national avg. AZ and CA are exceptions to that. But TX, FL, SC, UT, OK, NV, MS are all in the bottom third with testing rates of roughly 1.2 per 1,000 citizens.

In SC the school superintendent said yesterday if cases don't start decreasing she doesn't see how they can have kids in schools this fall. in GA our cases and hospitalizations are at all time highs right now - higher than in April.
If you look at the numbers on a national level cases starting increasing 2 weeks ago, hospitalizations starting increasing a week ago. Deaths flattened out the last couple of days. Hopefully they don't start to trend up. they should stay lower than we saw in April/May as the avg age is lower, but I expect like some of the models showed, the deaths will likely climb slowly in July/August. There will likely be a larger lag as the deaths are still concentrated in older individuals so it is taking a little longer to spread to them, its starts first in younger adults and then it transmits to older individuals and then it takes off.

You have the governor of Texas telling Texans to stay home and if they have to go out to wear masks. You have the former Governor and current Senator from FL Rick Scott who said on Sqauwkbox on Monday that cases there are not going up due to testing (actually testing has decreased in FL over the last week), and that they needed to do alot better. That people need to wear masks and stay socially distant and that he believes they will need to do that when the Republican Convention comes to Jacksonville.
The State Epidemiologist for Utah said if they don't get it under control in the next 2 weeks they will be left with locking things down as the only option.

Right now the curve for cases looks almost identical to the curve at the beginning of April (which was just slightly flatter than the curve at the end of March). We need to find a way to flatten it down like we did in April.

Two weeks ago I was optimistic, last week I was nervous, this week I am more pessimistic. From the protests to the congregating in areas with no masks, we are doing this to ourselves.

 

[Techster]

It is your assessment of the numbers. Publicly reported confirmed cases does not equal total cases. It isn't apples to apples. Your assessment of "we're responsible for 24% of the world's infections" isn't a valid use of those numbers. That is not "strictly reporting from Johns Hopkins website." That is faulty analysis of the numbers presented on the website. It is easy to see that your analysis isn't valid. That makes it more difficult for you to reach someone to convince them that they should social distance and wear masks.

So I should have said the US has 24% of the *publicly reported* worldwide infections? Again, what am I reporting from that website that is wrong...where did I stray from the Johns Hopkins website? You want to say "but, but...China and India did this", but you're doing what you'r accusing someone else of doing: You are bringing in the unkown scale (testing and infections in another country) and trying to enter it into debate.

Are we really getting into a discussions of semantics to obfuscate the incredibly terrible way a country with the best scientist and doctors has dealt with a pandemic? This is symbolic of the bigger issue that has kneecapped the US in dealing with the virus.

People are losing the plot about how poorly we are dealing with things because they want to get into the weeds of semantics.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

What's false about the numbers I provided? I'm strictly reporting from Johns Hopkins website. What from that website am I reporting that is wrong?

I'm not responsible for other countries reporting their data. You think the United States *only* has 2.4 million cases when a certain someone admitted that they purposely suppressed testing to keep infection numbers low? Hell, we couldn't even get a test without an act of God until about a month ago. The fact that the only defense some of you have is "Well, other countries are just as f$cked up as the US" tells you how stupid all of this is getting...and it doesn't reflect well on the country once held as the gold standard for pretty much everything.

In the end, with these numbers, you assume everyone's under reporting or just flat out lying (in which case the US is undoubtedly doing both).

Its not that your numbers were false, its that your assertion is false...I think. That's why I said I hope you don't really believe that the US represents 6x per capita the number of cases that it shows on paper. I just gave you a link to Brazil for example, where they're running a 55% positive test rate. Health experts there think right now there are 10-15x as many cases in reality. I think in the US we have a lot of cases out there that are undiagnosed...but I don't for a minute think its 10-15x what we are showing on paper - the positive test rate and the testing volumes don't support that. There are many other countries like Brazil out there - I pointed to Italy and the UK as examples. There's no way their death rates were close to 20% - they just weren't testing enough to know how many cases they actually had. Google 'how many people in Italy actually had the coronavirus' - you'll see tons of articles about people dying by the thousands who never made it to a hospital and who weren't counted in the deaths. If you look at how new daily cases in many countries has dropped massively (think UK, Spain, Italy, etc.), that's even further proof - they had so many cases they basically got close to herd immunity there.

That's the problem everyone has with your statement - it wasn't that you were just reporting numbers on a page - you were making assertions that the United States is 6x more worse off than the rest of the world, which is a patently false assertion when you look at conditions in other countries around the world. You basically sound like Trump right now - if we just tested 1/10th as much we'd look like we were the shining example for the world to follow.