Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[AlabamAlum]

[AlabamAlum]

Just remember that where soap and running water are available, hand sanitizer is unnecessary.

[AlabamAlum]

[AlabamAlum]

50% alcohol would be the minimum you want to dilute it to, with 70% probably optimal. Leaving it at 95% is no good. It will mess us your hands and is super flammable.

[AlabamAlum]

[Dr. Strangelove]

Oklahoma Governor is taking a lot of heat for posting a picture of himself with his kids out at a busy Oklahoma City restaurant last night. So much so he took the pic down.

Can't say I'm shocked to learn he's an Anti-Vaxxer

https://www.thedailybeast.com/oklahomas-gop-gubernatorial-candidate-kevin-stitt-is-an-anti-vaxxer

[Jeff Buchanan]

AA, top self advice on Everclear ..... and as I typed this I realized no pun intended. It's great advice.

Most stores are flat out of bleach products like Chlorox (sodium hypochlorite) Lysol (Benzoklonium Chloride/ H2O2) sprays.

Just found a NIH study (an old one) that said 70% diluted, 100 proof grain alcohol outperformed or was equal too most other common household disinfectants.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Italy announces they've had 368 deaths in the past 24 hours. The Chinese figures are almost certainly lies, but that's worse than any "official" single day in Wuhan.

EDIT: Sorry, more detail in this link. Almost 3600 new cases in just 24 hours and the 368 deaths, 1,809 deaths total

https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/coronavirus-headlines-italy-reports-3590-more-cases-1809-total-deaths

[iam416]

Honestly, there's almost no way through this other than to eat it. We can try to flatten or whatever, but are we going to do that indefinitely? It seems like as soon as you go back to life as usual you run the massively high risk of getting back on the similar trajectory. I understand the temporary value in trying to delay the capacity crush as long as possible or to spread it out. But, at the end of the day I think this thing has to run its course.

So, it's time for me to try to find comfort in the odds and keep my fingers crossed that the higher risk folks in my life avoid catastrophe, Good times.

[AlabamAlum]

[Hannibal]

Honestly, there's almost no way through this other than to eat it. We can try to flatten or whatever, but are we going to do that indefinitely? It seems like as soon as you go back to life as usual you run the massively high risk of getting back on the similar trajectory. I understand the temporary value in trying to delay the capacity crush as long as possible or to spread it out. But, at the end of the day I think this thing has to run its course.

So, it's time for me to try to find comfort in the odds and keep my fingers crossed that the higher risk folks in my life avoid catastrophe, Good times.

[Hannibal]

Mike Dewine is ordering the restaurants closed. You can still do takeout, delivery, etc.

Bars are closed too.

[iam416]

DeWine continues to be way ahead of the curve. He explicitly said that during a pandemic it often seems like overreaction and after it seems like not doing enough.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Interest rates cut to zero. $700 Billion in QE announced.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Just finished reading a MedScape subscription article that asks, "what can we learn from Italy." First, as bad as the numbers are there, they are coping. The biggest problem for them is getting the needed care to the sickest patients - ventilators have been in short supply. Importantly, the article brings up the difference between invasive (intubation) and non-invasive (patient wears a helmet). Never heard of "helmets", AA? The second type of ventilation is being provided in large quantities by China. Deaths are occurring not because of poor access to care but because most of them are occurring in patient's older than 80 with 2.5 co-morbid conditions where the likelihood of survival from a respiratory illness (e.g.,pneumonia) due to respiratory failure is low anyway. If you want to get into the weeds on this here's a free link:

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

Italian medical authorities have used tough triage protocols to get critical care to the most likely to survive. The article makes it clear they' don't like going there but have been forced to so so. I thought the language that medical professionals used to describe what are more-or-less "death panels" appropriately euphemistic. OTH, my reading of the article lead me to believe that the Italian Medical System which is a free National Health Service has faced the shortage challenge and found ways to manage the space and equipment problems. The US will face the same same if it gets to that. Hopefully we won't get there. Also at the Primary Care level, as of 3/13, 50 docs had gotten infected with COVID-19 and 2 died. This was attributed to poorly equipped Primary Care Clinics (gowns, masks, gloves) and low levels of training of clinic staff to gown/glove/mask up and deal with infectious disease on this level.

The article stresses the impact of by country testing strategies and data reporting procedures on useful analytics. Because of this, global data is not terribly reliable as a base for predicting outcomes. It's also way too easy to put out some numbers and then declare this and that about COVID-19 that first is likely wrong and second produces unnecessary fear. There are just too many variances between countries on data collection to look at it globally and make sense of it ..... at least as of now.. Still, it's not all bad news. There are private institutions, most prominently Johns Hopkins, that are crunching numbers feverishly to get on top of this ...... it is key to informing policy makers on testing strategies and public health policy for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic at the regional and local level. Actually, it appears that the US is doing a pretty good job of standardizing testing and triage strategies across all state public health agencies.

One of the reasons for the apparent exponential increase in cases and deaths in Italy is that initially, the Italian Public Health Services elected a testing strategy that did not test patients who were not at risk and who presented to public clinics with mild symptoms. This lead to significant underestimation of the presence of infected persons and delayed implementation of strict containment measures. Since about a week ago, that strategy changed. Now the below the waterline of the iceberg is getting reported. The initial strategy greatly under-reported the numerator and made the calculation of death rates much higher than reality. That's now coming down and is predicted by the statisticians to approach that of the China experience - around 2.5% or lower. The Italy experience also highlights the importance of age stratification in the analytics. It's pretty obvious that if you just look at the under 65-70 population world wide, the death rate may actually be below 1%. In over 80, it's approaching 9%.

Slice of data as an injection of sunlight into the darkness of despair that occasionally appears here .......

Date
Global New Confirmed
Recovered

3/13/20
16.2K
1.9K

3/14/20
11.6k
2.4K

3/15/20
6.6K
3.K

Hopefully those trends will continue inot next week and beyond.

Caveats: Data cherry picked but still, small sample size of dates compared to the entire range available (Late December to Present) but, you know me ..... the bright side.

Source: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashb...23467b48e9ecf6