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Author Topic:   Coronavirus and Pandemics
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 616 of 955 (875319)
04-22-2020 12:19 PM
Reply to: Message 587 by Percy
04-18-2020 4:06 PM


Re: The Testing Issue
Nothing much to say today except to express my disappointment at the several expressions here that I'm exaggerating the dangers of the coronavirus. Here's the latest bar graph of the number of new cases per day:
That last bump upward could have several contributors. One is the recent demonstrations against the mitigation restrictions, but I think those were far too small and too recent to have had an impact. Another is the push by both the president and a number of Republican governors for loosening restrictions sooner rather than later. I do think that has had time to make a contribution to the tick upward.
But my hope is that the primary contributor is increased testing.
One of the states inexplicably loosening restrictions is Georgia. Here's their map from ArcGIS Dashboards Classic:
Georgia has an infection rate of .2% and a fatality rate of 4%. Loosening restrictions means their infection rate will rise, and 4% of a larger number means more fatalities.
Some have argued that the increased mortality and permanent effects are just the price we pay for keeping our economy strong enough to prevent it from having its own impact on mortality. This is the "cure is worse than the disease" argument.
This thinking is partly based on the assumption that catching and surviving the coronavirus confers immunity. Obviously this is true in the short term. Anyone who has fought off the virus obviously has immunity, otherwise they'd still be sick. But we're not sure how long that immunity lasts. Some viruses we catch and fight off provide us a lifetime of immunity. Others confer only temporary immunity, and our experience with other coronaviruses is that they fit in this category. Immunity seems to last for about six months to a year.
This means that if we were to allow the coronavirus to just wash across the country and cause a few million deaths and enough infections so that more than 65 or 70% have immunity, which is the threshold for herd immunity for this type of virus, that that herd immunity would be gone within a year. This might be okay if we actually have a vaccine by then, but vaccine's take from 12 to 18 months minimum, so that's an iffy proposition. The coronavirus washing across the country a second time is one of the likely possibilities.
As I said in an earlier post, those states which loosen restrictions will begin to see statistics that reflect their climbing infection rates in about three weeks. We know what states those will be: Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Florida. Trump, ever the liar, was speaking nonsense when he announced this morning that these states were "safely coming back." There's no expanded testing nor expanded PPE, so they could not possibly be safely coming back, and even if they were it requires several weeks before you could know. Trump knows they're safely coming back in the same way he knew that if you wanted a test you could get a test, or that the number of cases in the US would soon drop to zero, or that you've got nothing to lose (other than your life) by taking hydroxychloroquine. The number of coronavirus deaths just passed 45,000. Here's a nice graph of daily deaths from The Washington Post (the bump up in mid April was due to a reporting change when New York City changed the way they classified cause of death, but otherwise we seem to have plateaued for now at about 2000 deaths/day):
Here's a map of deaths per 100,000 population across the US. Does it really look like Georgia should be loosening? I guess you could argue about the other states, but Georgia?
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 587 by Percy, posted 04-18-2020 4:06 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 617 by Big_Al35, posted 04-24-2020 10:50 AM Percy has replied
 Message 620 by Coragyps, posted 04-24-2020 7:06 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
Big_Al35
Member (Idle past 799 days)
Posts: 389
Joined: 06-02-2010


Message 617 of 955 (875368)
04-24-2020 10:50 AM
Reply to: Message 616 by Percy
04-22-2020 12:19 PM


Re: The Testing Issue
I would be interested to know how many people you personally know who have the virus Percy?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 616 by Percy, posted 04-22-2020 12:19 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 618 by Percy, posted 04-24-2020 12:37 PM Big_Al35 has replied
 Message 619 by Coragyps, posted 04-24-2020 12:54 PM Big_Al35 has not replied
 Message 627 by Hyroglyphx, posted 04-26-2020 3:29 PM Big_Al35 has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 618 of 955 (875371)
04-24-2020 12:37 PM
Reply to: Message 617 by Big_Al35
04-24-2020 10:50 AM


Re: The Testing Issue
Big-Al35 writes:
I would be interested to know how many people you personally know who have the virus Percy?
Here's enough information for you to figure out the likely answer yourself. 0.2% of people in the US have been diagnosed with coronavirus. I probably personally know maybe 100 people. Do the math.
Also, I live in a state where less than the average are affected. Only 0.1% of the people in NH have been diagnosed with the virus. Do the math.
A retired doctor friend of mine volunteered his services, and he's been assigned to testing. On Monday they tested about thirty teenagers in a group home who are wards of the state. About half tested positive. I of course do not personally know any of these teenagers.
Looking at the statistics for New Hampshire, about 0.17% of people have been diagnosed with the virus in my county. There have been two deaths, a mortality rate of 0.27%. We're doing far better here than Boston or New York, but we're more rural up here, and that will always be the tale with rural areas. Contagions always wreak their havoc in urban centers first and only later advance into the countryside.
But your question says far more about a certain attitude than any answers to the question can tell us about the pandemic. It's an attitude that trusts anecdotal information more than scientifically gathered data and calculated statistics. It's an attitude where a conversation like this makes sense: "I don't know anyone who has the virus, and you don't either, so I guess this is much ado about nothing. Reopen the country already."
You should instead go to sites like ArcGIS Dashboards Classic or the Washington Post's Coronavirus Update Page. Argue from the data. Here's today's graph of daily deaths. We just passed 50,000 total deaths nationwide around an hour ago:
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 617 by Big_Al35, posted 04-24-2020 10:50 AM Big_Al35 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 625 by Big_Al35, posted 04-25-2020 3:12 PM Percy has replied

  
Coragyps
Member (Idle past 734 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


(1)
Message 619 of 955 (875373)
04-24-2020 12:54 PM
Reply to: Message 617 by Big_Al35
04-24-2020 10:50 AM


Re: The Testing Issue
Hi, Big Al. I live way out in the sticks in West Texas, and I, like Percy, don’t know anyone that I know to have tested positive for Coronavirus. I am, however, related to a mother and a grandmother who died of polio and of typhoid fever. My family are believers in immunization, if that the question you’re getting at. Until we have an immunization protocol for Covid-19, we’re trying hard to follow medical advice about the virus. It’s the sensible, sane thing to do.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 617 by Big_Al35, posted 04-24-2020 10:50 AM Big_Al35 has not replied

  
Coragyps
Member (Idle past 734 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 620 of 955 (875390)
04-24-2020 7:06 PM
Reply to: Message 616 by Percy
04-22-2020 12:19 PM


Re: The Testing Issue
Percy - I was greatly perplexed by your map in msg 616 until I actually, y’know, looked at the caption and discovered that it was presenting deaths per 100,000 population. There are big circles in far southwest Oklahoma and in the desert of the Texas Panhandle that just looked WRONG. But per capita, they are probably spot-on. Castro County, Texas might have 8500 inhabitants, and I know they had a Covid outbreak with at least one death.
SW Oklahoma is probably similar. The only Big City there is Altus, and it has 20,000 population. So it doesn’t take very many to make a big mark if it’s a per-capita map.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 616 by Percy, posted 04-22-2020 12:19 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 621 of 955 (875398)
04-25-2020 8:07 AM


The Latest Data
Here's today's daily death graph:
Here's the projection forward from COVID-19. The shaded area represents error bars:
The error range is from around 50,000 to 120,000 deaths. This particular projection modifies daily. A couple weeks ago it thought the most likely number of deaths was around 60,000, whereas now it's around 68,000.
Trying to look forward is difficult because we don't yet know what the loosening efforts will look like. In barbershops and hair salons that open in Georgia will barber, stylist and customer all be wearing masks? Even if they're just cloth masks I think the mitigation impact will be high. Georgia, South Carolina and Florida have the potential to show the way forward, for good or bad depending upon how they do it.
--Percy

Replies to this message:
 Message 629 by Percy, posted 04-27-2020 11:14 AM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 622 of 955 (875402)
04-25-2020 11:22 AM


An Abundance of Caution
I wasn't going to comment on Is the Virus on My Clothes? My Shoes? My Hair? My Newspaper? - The New York Times from the New York Times, but after a week they're still running it on the front page of the online edition, so I'll finally comment, initially just on this first section:
quote:

Should I change my clothes and shower when I come home from the grocery store?

For most of us who are practicing social distancing and making only occasional trips to the grocery store or pharmacy, experts agree that it’s not necessary to change clothes or take a shower when you return home. You should, however, always wash your hands. While it’s true that a sneeze or cough from an infected person can propel viral droplets and smaller particles through the air, most of them will drop to the ground.
Studies show that some small viral particles could float in the air for about half an hour, but they don’t swarm like gnats and are unlikely to collide with your clothes. A droplet that is small enough to float in air for a while also is unlikely to deposit on clothing because of aerodynamics, said Linsey Marr, an aerosol scientist at Virginia Tech. The droplets are small enough that they’ll move in the air around your body and clothing.
This is just so much nonsense. Yes, the larger exhalation particles will fall to the ground relatively quickly. Where this information goes wrong is to imply that the remaining exhalation particles aren't concerning, which couldn't be more wrong.
To explain let me pose a question whose answer feels counterintuitive to many people: Which has more total mass: all bacteria or all animals? If you guessed bacteria then you're right. And in the same way the amount of total mass in tiny particles that stay suspended in the air far exceeds that in the larger, but far, far fewer particles that drop to the floor.
The estimate that tiny particles remain suspended in the air for a half hour is also incorrect. Yes, there was a study that reached this conclusion, the above quote includes the link to it, and the comments section of the article has a response to precisely this issue, but it still makes the point that studies have found that the virus lingers in the air far longer, see, for example, How Long Does Coronavirus Live In The Air? Here's What We Know. | HuffPost Life:
quote:
The researchers found that airborne coronavirus particles stayed floating for up to three hours before falling and clinging to a new surface.
At their tiny size the air is more viscous than water, and the particles have such low density that they're buoyant. They are not going to sink to the floor. They will over time deposit on surfaces through the normal motion of the air created by people walking around and by any air driven by heating/cooling of the building or of the refrigerator displays or the equipment in the cooking areas.
Which brings us to the other error. The particles suspended in air will not magically move around your clothing through the power of aerodynamics as you walk around. The air is so thick and viscous for particles of this size they're almost like berries embedded in Jello. They are not going to exit the air that touches your clothing. They will remain in that air like berries stuck in Jello.
Also, unlike hard surfaces like shelves and food containers your clothing is permeable to the air. Air will pass through it and act like a filter. Air and particles will enter the outside of your clothing and many of the particles will become trapped in your clothing. Your clothing is a massive filter extracting tiny particles containing virus from the air.
If you still believe that tiny particles suspended in the air will somehow move away from your clothing, consider how often you've entered a smoke filled room and emerged without your clothing smelling of cigarette smoke. Evidently the smoke particles didn't magically through the mechanism of aerodynamics evade your clothing.
So that first section of the article is just so much bullshit. Here's the truth. If you enter a building like a grocery store where some people are not wearing masks then you must assume that the air is filled with coronavirus and that your clothes will be full of it. There have been no studies about the transmission of coronavirus from clothing, so out of an abundance of caution you must assume it is possible. What you do when you reach home will depend a great deal upon the configuration, but your clothes must be washed without coming in contact with anything but you, and you must shower without coming in contact with anything, but wash your hands first so that it's safe to touch things like doorknobs, shower curtains, light switches, faucets, etc.
I know this must sound outlandish and way overkill to people living in places that don't feel the threat yet, but I live in a county where the infection growth rate is on the high side. I think the local grocery stores are playing a significant role, because they don't require masks of their employees or customers, and more people are gathered there than anywhere else. If you're living in a region of the country not yet feeling much effect from the virus do not be fooled into complacency. It will get there. For virus there are no boundaries.
--Percy
PS: The plural of virus is viruses, but I've been using virus as it's own plural, like fish and deer, and I'm sticking with it. I seem to be alone in this.

Replies to this message:
 Message 623 by Phat, posted 04-25-2020 11:50 AM Percy has replied

  
Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 623 of 955 (875403)
04-25-2020 11:50 AM
Reply to: Message 622 by Percy
04-25-2020 11:22 AM


Re: An Abundance of Caution
Amidst all this talk of safety, however...are you not inciting fear as a giant bogeyman in your own mind? Suddenly the world is a hostile place and us humans must prepare ourselves for survival at the expense of enjoying a normal life. I feel as if we are in quarantine on another planet with an unknown threat environment.

The only way I know to drive out evil from the country is by the constructive method of filling it with good.Calvin Coolidge
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." ~Mark Twain "
As the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, so the denial of God is the height of foolishness.-RC Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith

- You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
Anne Lamott
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.~Andre Gide

This message is a reply to:
 Message 622 by Percy, posted 04-25-2020 11:22 AM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 624 by Percy, posted 04-25-2020 1:14 PM Phat has seen this message but not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 624 of 955 (875405)
04-25-2020 1:14 PM
Reply to: Message 623 by Phat
04-25-2020 11:50 AM


Re: An Abundance of Caution
Phat writes:
Suddenly the world is a hostile place and us humans must prepare ourselves for survival at the expense of enjoying a normal life.
How are you weighing the negative impact on "enjoying a normal life" against the possibility of death or permanent disability?
Facts must be the central focus of discussion. Focus on the facts, either the ones I've introduced or your own. Embrace them, discuss them, challenge them, but don't ignore them.
I concede the enormous ambiguity of the value of a human life. If it costs the US government $3 trillion to save 3 million lives, a million dollars per life, is that too much? How do we put a value on human life?
The answer is that you don't put a value on human life, but I can think of several different valid approaches.
One is that you work as hard as you can to reduce the risks as much as you can and save as many as you can. You tote up the costs later. This is pretty much the approach we're taking now, we're just hindered at doing it well by the imbecile in chief.
Another approach is the accountant method where you attempt to balance the cost in human life of the virus at a certain expense amount versus the cost in human life of a diminished economy at that expense amount. We want to find the amount to expend where if we spend more then we'll lose more to the negative economy than we'll save from the virus, while if we spend less then we'll lose more to the virus than we'll save from having a better economy.
But this approach introduces problems for those who want an answer that argues for opening up the economy sooner rather than later, because the costs in human life of a bad economy just aren't that great. If you want to prove that statement wrong then you might start with this Google search, but I don't think you'll get anywhere.
So that leaves arguing on the basis of quality of life and longevity, presumably both negatively impacted by a bad economy. This also seems a tough argument to make.
Amidst all this talk of safety, however...are you not inciting fear as a giant bogeyman in your own mind?
The coronavirus must be feared in the same way one would fear replacing a live light switch or sitting in a garaged running car or touching a hot stove and so forth. These are all legitimate fears, not irrational ones. There's nothing bogeyman-ish about any of them.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 623 by Phat, posted 04-25-2020 11:50 AM Phat has seen this message but not replied

  
Big_Al35
Member (Idle past 799 days)
Posts: 389
Joined: 06-02-2010


Message 625 of 955 (875410)
04-25-2020 3:12 PM
Reply to: Message 618 by Percy
04-24-2020 12:37 PM


Re: The Testing Issue
Percy writes:
But your question says far more about a certain attitude than any answers to the question can tell us about the pandemic. It's an attitude that trusts anecdotal information more than scientifically gathered data and calculated statistics. It's an attitude where a conversation like this makes sense: "I don't know anyone who has the virus, and you don't either, so I guess this is much ado about nothing. Reopen the country already."
Coragyps writes:
My family are believers in immunization, if that the question you’re getting at.
Talk about jumping the gun. You guys seem almost triggered by the question. Calm down. I don't know why you would think that about me.
But there are a few names we have all heard of that have declared positive.
Boris Johnson, Tom Hanks, Prince Charles. You might care to add to this list.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 618 by Percy, posted 04-24-2020 12:37 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 628 by Percy, posted 04-27-2020 10:29 AM Big_Al35 has replied

  
JonF
Member (Idle past 168 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 626 of 955 (875447)
04-26-2020 12:19 PM


Election results

  
Hyroglyphx
Inactive Member


Message 627 of 955 (875454)
04-26-2020 3:29 PM
Reply to: Message 617 by Big_Al35
04-24-2020 10:50 AM


Re: The Testing Issue
I would be interested to know how many people you personally know who have the virus Percy?
Five cases that I personally know, each with varying results. From these results we can deduce that it is a wildly divergent disease. Allow me to elaborate.
The first instance was a coworker, scary enough. And he was very, very ill from it. Interestingly, however, he never infected a single coworker and he did not infect his fiancee who was in extremely close proximity to him.
The next three cases was a very good friend of mine who was on a boat with two semi-friends that I know through him. We were actually on a video chat at the time and I told him what a terrible idea that was. He brushed it off and days later he would return with a positive test.
My friend only lost the sense of smell and taste with very mild cold-like symptoms that passed within a couple of days. His girlfriend, who is an ER doctor, did not get it. My two semi-friends who were also on that boat got it worse than my good friend did, but all things considered, about as typical as average flu-like symptoms. Neither of their significant others got sick.
The last case is my good friend's sister, who is so close that she's my practically my sister too, who contracted it independently from her brother's case. She was very, very sick just like my coworker and thought she was going to die. Said it felt like firecrackers going off in her lungs when she breathed. Her husband did not contract it. She is also 7 years younger than her brother.
This is a pretty small sample, 10 in total if you include significant others. But I did think it was very interesting that not a single spouse or girlfriend were infected and the severity of the cases ranged from nearly symptom free to marginally sick with the flu to damn near deathly ill. While my anecdotes are small, all of the reports seem to indicate the same thing -- that it varies wildly from person to person. This is a strange illness.
Sometimes young, freak athletes who you'd think would do well are placed on a ventilator and some people with preexisting conditions do well. Its all over the place. We know so little about why it effects some people harder than others.
Edited by Hyroglyphx, : No reason given.

"Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine

This message is a reply to:
 Message 617 by Big_Al35, posted 04-24-2020 10:50 AM Big_Al35 has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 628 of 955 (875491)
04-27-2020 10:29 AM
Reply to: Message 625 by Big_Al35
04-25-2020 3:12 PM


Re: The Testing Issue
You don't know why we'd think you would post from a position of determined ignorance? Can I suggest you examine your 10-year posting history here?
You originally asked, "I would be interested to know how many people you personally know who have the virus Percy?" Now you're completely ignoring that you asked this question. To put a finer point on my answer, you apparently think a sample size of one observer of how many known infected people there are is somehow meaningful. This is not quite as ignorant as suggesting that the use of disinfectants and sterilizing light should be investigated, but it's not far off.
I gave you enough information to determine how many infected people I likely know, in a way strongly hinting to you that the issue needs to be examined statistically, not anecdotally. Hyroglyphx, another random person just like myself, apparently knows five people.
So go ahead, gaslight us just like Trump. Tell us it wasn't ignorance but sarcasm.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 625 by Big_Al35, posted 04-25-2020 3:12 PM Big_Al35 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 632 by Big_Al35, posted 04-28-2020 5:28 AM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 629 of 955 (875497)
04-27-2020 11:14 AM
Reply to: Message 621 by Percy
04-25-2020 8:07 AM


Re: The Latest Data
Here's today's death graph. Note the drop yesterday by a factor of two. Is this promising or just the kind of varying data one must expect from the real world?
The bar graph of number of new cases also has a drop, again tantalizing, but not enough data to draw any conclusions:
Georgia is the state getting the most national attention about its plans for gradually loosening and reopening, so here's a table of the number of coronavirus deaths in George for the past week:
DateNumber Deaths
April 20775
April 21818
April 22846
April 23872
April 24899
April 25907
April 26916
Deaths are still rising but Georgia is loosening. Okay, we'll watch with great interest.
It's important to mention that a great deal of the public discussion about reopening has been very responsible. In contrast Georgia has included businesses like hair/nail salons and tattoo parlors among those that can reopen. These are both non-essential and very dangerous because of the risks of close contact they introduce.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 621 by Percy, posted 04-25-2020 8:07 AM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 630 by Tangle, posted 04-27-2020 11:54 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied
 Message 631 by jar, posted 04-27-2020 12:46 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied
 Message 646 by Percy, posted 04-29-2020 12:03 PM Percy has replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


Message 630 of 955 (875498)
04-27-2020 11:54 AM
Reply to: Message 629 by Percy
04-27-2020 11:14 AM


Re: The Latest Data
Deaths usually drop on a Monday - there's usually a reporting lag from the weekend. Probably bump up tomorrow.

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona
"Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 629 by Percy, posted 04-27-2020 11:14 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
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