quote:After 14 days the outermost period at which symptoms are believed to emerge post-infection doctors at area hospitals are now reporting fewer cases than they expected to see at this point, and officials credit the lockdown with stemming the tide of patients they feared would flood into emergency rooms.
The log graph is reducing in slope a bit it looks like (to the fuzzy eyeball) but is it still a nearly straight line with a positive slope.
Isn't that exactly what exponential growth looks like on a log graph?
I'm not sure which part of the log graph you're looking at. Here's today's log graph for reference:
This part of the graph represents exponential growth, a relatively straight line upward, as close to straight as one can reasonably expect from real world data:
And this part of the graph says that growth is becoming more linear because the line is bending downward from its previous straight line upward. Instead of a relatively constant upward slope the slope is constantly lessening as you trace the line from left to right:
This change in character from a relatively constant slope upward to a consistently diminishing upward slope is why the numbers of my original projection were off from day one, because most of the data on which I based my projection came from before the change.
There's a professional consensus out there that we should all be wearing masks, but it is having a very difficult time emerging because of the inertia created by initial statements that the general uninfected public does not need masks. This consensus is gradually getting more and more exposure, as here: CDC considering recommending general public wear face coverings in public
I don't know why the CDC is waffling and dilly-dallying about this, but take the fact that they're considering recommending that the general public wear masks to mean that YOU SHOULD BE WEARING A MASK ANYWHERE THERE ARE PEOPLE YOU DON'T LIVE WITH, AND ESPECIALLY THE GROCERY STORE.
If you have plastic gloves you should wear them also. When you get home take your clothes off and throw them in the washer, being careful to touch nothing you're not going to wipe down with alcohol later, but leave the gloves on. You should rub isopropyl alcohol all over the gloves, or wash with soap and water, before taking them off - they can now be reused, which is important since you can't buy any right now. Now take a shower.
Yesterday I read a horribly misleading article in the Post or Times that said you don't have to wipe down packaging from the grocery store because virus particles only survive a few minutes on surfaces. That is hugely wrong. Coronavirus survives around 24 hours on cardboard and around 72 hours on polypropylene plastic and many metals like stainless steel. Once at home your groceries should sit untouched for three days. Before taking your gloves off sort them into three clean bags, one each for shelf goods, refrigerator and freezer, then put each bag where it needs to be for the three days.
Alternatively you can dump canned goods and many plastic containers (including meat where the plastic wrapping is secure) into a sink full of soapy water.
I record 60 Minutes every Sunday but almost never watch it, but last night I watched this Sunday's first segment about coronavirus. Only 15%-20% of people come down with severe cases, but what happens to those who do is tragic. I'm sure 60 Minutes is available on-line, watch Sunday's first segment. It will convince you to take every precaution possible to avoid catching this disease, and in doing so you'll also help slow the spread.
I noticed that the previous Sunday's first segment was also about coronavirus, so I watched that, and then the previous Sunday's and then the one before that back to the beginning of March. It was horrifying to travel back in time and watch the increasing naivet.
Here's a table showing the mortality rate and the infection rate for the countries with top ten number of infections. Here's the table sorted by mortality rate
Country
Mortality Rate
Infection Rate
Italy
11.4%
.17%
Spain
8.7%
.20%
United Kingdom
7.0%
.04%
France
6.7%
.07%
Iran
6.5%
.05%
Belgium
5.5%
.11%
China
4.0%
.006%
Switzerland
2.4%
.19%
United States
1.9%
.05%
Germany
1.0%
.08%
Anyone care to guess why Italy, Spain, UK, France, Iran, Belgium and China have mortality rates above 4%? Reporting differences? Shortage of ventilators? Overwhelmed hospital system?
Because of the lack of sufficient testing almost everywhere, the infection rate is probably far higher than currently measured, which means the mortality rate is correspondingly lower. My guess is that the mortality rate is closer to the flu's .1%, and if 30 million become infected in the US then the number of deaths will be in the 300,000 range, higher if the shortage of ventilators and sufficient hospital care has a significant impact.
One of the nurses interviewed on 60 Minutes Sunday night made clear why the novel coronavirus is so fearful. She described adult patients younger than 50 who walked in with mild symptoms but who twelve hours later were on ventilators fighting for their lives, their lungs filled with fluid. When it becomes deadly it happens very fast.
Here's a sort on the same table by infection rate:
Country
Mortality Rate
Infection Rate
Spain
8.7%
.20%
Switzerland
2.4%
.19%
Italy
11.4%
.17%
Belgium
5.5%
.11%
Germany
1.0%
.08%
France
6.7%
.07%
United States
1.9%
.05%
Iran
6.5%
.05%
United Kingdom
7.0%
.04%
China
4.0%
.006%
You can see why experts are beginning to doubt China's numbers since they claim only a .006% infection rate. The differences among the other countries could be because of reporting, testing or how long the infection has been spreading.
quote:Please stop covering the President’s daily live campaign rally (thinly disguised as a coronavirus news conference). There is no need to do so. News organizations can monitor the briefings in real time and have your anchors and correspondents quickly share appropriately edited valuable, accurate parts, which will come from medical experts. That will leave the President’s insults, false braggadocio, and outright lies on the editing room floor, where they belong.
I signed it, despite my extreme reluctance to share any kind of personal information. They requested name, email, mobile and zip, and said by signing you agree to receive their email, though you can change this later. Here's the unsubscribe link: Unsubscribe | MoveOn.org
All true. But the behaviour is still exponential isn't it?
Assuming that the epidemic began in the US on January 20, the date of the first reported infection, then it had been about 60 days in when I made my original projection. At that point the graph was obviously in an exponential region corresponding to an approximately x3.1 slope (x = number of days in). Now the graph is closer to a x1.1 slope. That's so close to x1, i.e., linear, that it's not possible to tell whether it's still exponential or not.
I don't think there's enough of a baseline of recent data to know at that level of resolution how fast the infection rate is growing right now, particularly since insufficient testing leaves so many uncounted. And the slowdown might be real, or it might merely reflect our inability to test at faster rates, or it might be something else. I think all that can be said with certainty is that the numbers we have reflect a rate of increase far less exponential than it was.
If we had hospital admission rates, that would be a pretty reliable indication. I saw a report from the Bay area indicating a slowing of hospital admission rates, but that information was anecdotal.
...this is a personal request to please behave responsibly and leave the quackery out of the thread. Someone has already died,
Somebody died of taking fish tank cleaner, not this treatment.
This fish tank cleaner was chloroquine, which Trump suggested as a possible treatment at his briefings, and also at this conference call with governors at FEMA headquarters. It's right at the beginning of this video, and everything Trump says is false. It is not approved by the FDA, it is not safe, and there have been no studies of its effectiveness against the coronovirus, not of chloroquine nor of hydroxychloroquine:
The other occasions where he has irresponsibly and with false information promoted this are also on YouTube, look them up.
It's an opinion piece, and what it describes is anecdotal. The gold standard is double blind testing with statistical analysis of results. Trump should not be promoting drugs at his briefings, and neither should the Wall Street Journal.
It is not within my power to convince you of anything. You won't listen to facts, you won't listen to reason. All I can do is beg you to keep the quackery off the thread. Please keep your focus on what the medical establishment recommends, which is to see your doctor if you're experiencing symptoms. No one should be touting unproven and potentially unsafe drugs.
By "no studies" I of course meant no completed studies. If a completed study had found a benefit it would have made headlines everywhere.
That's why we're talking about it. At least one has been cited in this thread.
I used the search term "*chloroquine*", skimmed the messages it found for links, and couldn't find it. Or by "cited" maybe you didn't mean a link? I did find a link to Malaria Drug Chloroquine No Better Than Regular Coronavirus Care, Study Finds, but it wasn't statistically significant, too small a sample size.
On the off chance that some people misspelled it "chloroquin" I did another search, and that returned a ton of messages because Faith started a subthread where she misspelled it in the title. That's way too many messages to read, but perhaps the citation you mentioned is in one of those.
There has been a frenetic pace of study of the the effectiveness of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine against the coronavirus in the last few weeks. At least 27 clinical trials have been registered in China and the US using chloroquine or hydoxychloroquine to treat coronavirus this year.
Okay, but registering a study and completing a study that finds a measurable therapeutic benefit are not the same thing. Or are you maybe thinking of older studies of other viruses from the coronavirus family, like SARS?
About the FDA, there was an emergency use authorization, not approval as Trump claimed when he said, "The head of the FDA, Dr. Stephen Hahn, got it approved very quickly." (Watch the video). I think emergency use means compassionate use, i.e., a patient is out of options and will die anyway. I think remdesivir has also been approved for compassionate use.
"First, do no harm," is the physicians' guide. That's why they have double blind studies. The medical profession must move very carefully with drugs that haven't been properly studied for use against the coronavirus, else they risk doing more harm than good. The huge amount of attention that chloroquine is receiving is due to Trump's promotion of it out of all proportion to its actual promise. Based on studies involving other viruses in the same family it merits study but not hype. Just the mere fact that Trump is plugging it should give one pause, because he has had bad judgment on just about everything throughout this crisis.
This information comes from ArcGIS Dashboards Classic. Here's the latest graph showing US infections rising to nearly 190,000. The growth rate picked up slightly:
Here's the latest log graph, the last datapoint indicating the pickup in rate
My new projections aren't too far off from the actual number, but the previous three days had seen increases of very close to 20 thousand infections, and yesterday the increase was about 26 thousand:
This is a complete 180 from a month ago when he said passengers on the Grand Princess could not disembark because it would cause infection numbers in the US to go up. 103 were infected and there were 2 deaths. It feels weird to have him do the right thing for a change.
Those advising the general public that masks weren't needed were either irresponsible, incompetent or lying. It was and is untrue. The general public needs to include masks as part of the effort to slow the spread of the virus.
Sometimes you'll hear the excuse that advising the general public to wear masks would mean fewer masks for health professionals, who need them more. That may be true, but telling the general public they don't need them is still lying.
There was no point to the lying anyway because too many people were and are telling the truth. The virus can persist in the air for up to a half hour. More than any other organ the virus attacks the lungs, and that's where the air in exhalations comes from. Of course infected people are breathing virus into the air. If an infected person breathes virus out into the air and you walk through that air then you could breath virus back in.
Unfortunately, this article still presents some misleading information:
quote:...more needs to be done to prevent the spread of the virus by infected people who aren't displaying symptoms. A fabric covering of the nose and mouth could prevent the virus from reaching other people, health experts believe.
This is only true as far as it goes, because it fails to mention that if you're in the presence of an asymptomatic person who is spreading virus into the air, then wearing a face covering could prevent the virus from reaching your nose and mouth. Again, EVERYONE SHOULD BE WEARING MASKS OR AT LEAST A FACIAL COVERING WHEN THEY ARE OUT AMONG OTHER PEOPLE.
We had a minor maintenance emergency this morning that forced me to take a trip to Home Depot. Since I was out and would have to decontaminate upon my return anyway I also visited the gas station and Walmart. I'm happy to report that mask use is increasing. I would estimate mask use at around 10%, maybe a little less. I saw P95 masks (industrial version of N95 mask), homemade masks, bandanas, and winter coats with collars that could be pulled up over the lower face.
We were looking at the town discussion board yesterday and were pleasantly surprised to discover that a number of people have hit upon pretty much same precautions we did with masks and gloves and washing the clothes and taking showers after visiting stores and decontaminating the groceries and so forth. We're still the most extreme in our neighborhood, but not in town.
This virus can kill people of any age. Take extreme precautions, if not for yourself then for the people you might infect.
This information comes from ArcGIS Dashboards Classic. Here's the latest graph showing US infections rising to nearly 215,000. The increase declined slightly from yesterday to around 25K:
Here's the latest log graph, the last datapoint indicating today's slightly smaller increase:
Today's number of infections isn't too far off from my projection, but this will be the last day I include this projection. It isn't that the number of infections is a little too variable to project very far out, though that's true. It's more that I don't trust the infection numbers. I think they greatly underestimate reality by about a factor of a thousand and that there are actually around 5 million infected:
Date
Projected Number Infections by Evening
Actual Number Infections
3/30/2020
164,610
164,610
3/31/2020
185,000
189,633
4/1/2020
207,000
213,400
4/2/2020
230,000
4/3/2020
254,000
4/4/2020
279,000
4/4/2020
305,000
4/4/2020
332,000
There's another website with data, COVID-19, but they project deaths rather than infections:
The two graphs at the top are not consistent with this one. If you project the top two graphs forward to April 15 it yields somewhere in the neighborhood of 600,000 infections, while this graph tells us that deaths will be 32,441 by that date (if you go the webpage the graphs are active and you can hover over them - there's are a selector at the top to select individual states). That's a mortality rate of 5.4%, incredibly high. It's currently around 1.8%.
I think it's safe to assume that the death rate data is more solid since they have a baseline of actual deaths, while the number of infections is a function of testing, which we know is incomplete since they're still making people jump through hoops to get tested in many places. Rather than 600,000 infections by April 15 the actual number will likely be several tens of millions if my belief that the mortality rate is actually around .1% holds up.
Why do so many articles about the coronavirus downplay the risk of infection? Many articles stress that keeping a distance of six feet is sufficient and don't seem to worry much about the risk of infection from the air or from grocery store packaging.
A large viral dose can establish a base and begin expanding faster than the body's immune system can respond. In this case the patient can become very sick and even die.
A small viral dose that takes longer to establish a base and begin expanding will still cause an immune response which will likely win the battle against the virus, resulting in a patient with mild or no symptoms.
Doctors and nurses working on the front lines come in regular contact with very ill people, they risk large viral doses, and they could become very ill very quickly. People walking around in the grocery store not so much.
The article puts it very succinctly:
quote:In healthy people, however, immune systems respond as soon as they sense a virus growing inside. Recovery depends on which wins the race: viral spread or immune activation.
And of course viral spread is a function of the initial viral load.
Assuming infection grants immunity perhaps a mild dose is the best defense against the possibility of severe illness. Of course whether this is safe and what the proper dose is would have to be worked out in double blind studies with volunteers, and that would take time, but it could be available well before any vaccine, which is likely about a year and a half out.
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