Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[iam416]

It's starting to curve a little, and it's no longer exponential. It's still not good. And I'm sure getting it in Detroit is really bad news.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Noted yesterday from the NYT compendium of charts and data (most of it from JHU), the "flattening" of new cases curve seems to be better represented by a straight line trajectory obtained by connecting the dots over time. As that straight line declines toward zero on the Y axis and then drops below it (GR < 1.0) and stays there, the peak of new cases has been reached and will drop - assuming mitigation and containment that brought those numbers down remain substantially in place. The GR of deaths is a fairly decent proxy measure of control (remember, deaths lag).

Note that while all straight line trajectories in this display are declining and that is good news, adding 20-40% (Y axis) new cases each day (doubling rate between 3-4d, is still a big number.You can go to the NYT web site I linked to yesterday in a post and use the large number of charts interactively to see your community's numbers displayed in different ways. Current as of this morning:.

Growth.PNG

[iam416]

Right. That's the way you want to look at it. M will continue straight up on a linear graph if it continues to add 70 deaths per day. But if they stay between 70-80 per day then the growth rate noticeably declines. And 70-80, while terrible for those who lose loved ones, isn't devastating. I'm not sure where devastating starts, but I think Italy and NYC were/are are there or very close. Anything where you a relatively small population on pace to produce 250,000 deaths is there. That's about 685 per day.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Other stuff I'm watching and writing about:

Among my military buddies I've discussed this with the sense among us that Captain Brett Crosier, who commanded the nuke powered CVN, 71, FDR, took a step that he shouldn't have taken and that was to take his classified discussions with his seniors into the open. There's no doubt he understood the consequences of writing an incredibly detailed and very long unclassified letter that he had to know would go public.

While the public consensus reportedly among his men and the general public is that he's a hero. It's about being overly emotional, upset with whatever efforts were underway to assist him (stupid if you will) and the potential compromise of national security by providing detailed information about FDRs crew status. IMO, he's not a hero.

Apparently the Navy had been working with him for over a week subsequent to a port call in Da Nang, Vietnam in early March where the ship's crew was given full liberty call. Details were not provided about the course of several crewmen who reported to sick call with illnesses after the port call. Reportedly all of them tested negative for COVID-19 but later tested positive for it. Of the 4000 sailors and airmen aboard FDR, 200 had tested positive for COVID-19 by the time Crosier sent his unclassified email that a day later showed up in the SF Chronicle. If you're interested, you can read it at the link:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Exclusive-Captain-of-aircraft-carrier-with-15167883.php

Crosier wanted his entire ship evacuated and 4000 men quarantined in appropriate quarters, unavailable on the ship, for that purpose. if you've ever been aboard an aircraft carrier and seen the berthing areas you can appreciate it to be nearly impossible to stop the spread of the virus. I don't think he gave much thought to how difficult that was going to be. Making his concerns about that public was, IMO, incredibly stupid and unprofessional. Sure, it was a shit-sandwich. Deal with it. He didn't and instead lost it. Some are going to disagree. That's fine. Just know the facts.

Here's SECNAV's detailed explanation of events up to and including the relief of Captain Crosier. I didn't find anything here that looked like some kind of cover-up.

https://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=112537

[*JD*]

Gas price at the local Chillbox, a $1.54 a gallon.

There's one spot in Ann Arbor that's been $1.29 for the last week. Most other places are still in the $1.60-1.70-range.

[*JD*]

Could we have elected(ish) a less capable person for this crises?

[CGVT]

Could we have elected(ish) a less capable person for this crises?

But... Her emaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiils

[Dr. Strangelove]

Louisiana's total cases only went up by 4% today.

However, there's been a pattern both there in some other states that reporting seems to drop significantly on Sundays only to rebound a day or two later to over 30%. I don't know the explanation for that but possibly has something to do with the cycle times or staffing levels at the testing labs.

[iam416]

Ohio update.

Cases: 2902 ==> 3312 ==> 3739 ==> 4043 (8.1%)
Deaths, 65 ==> 81 ==> 91 ==> 102 ==> 119 (16.7%)
Hospitlizations 679 ==> 802 ==> 895 ==> 1006 ==> 1104 (12.4%)
ICUs 222 ==> 260 ==> 298 ==> 326 ==> 346 (6.1%).

[iam416]

[froot loops]

[Jeff Buchanan]

DSL, I see the same thing on FL's dashboard ....... you can see a drop off of testing almost uniformly over the last 4w on the weekends. There are exceptions and those were early and right after the sites in Broward and Miami Dade opened up. Big lines the first 7d that portended huge testing number and case ID numbers the next day.

If I connect the peaks on the dash board that the Public Health guys provide me over the last 5d, FL is experiencing a decline in new cases with a pretty aggressive testing strategy ..... still, I'm not convinced that trend is established. Another 2w maybe.

I'm having an email exchange with several docs in CA about these statistical anomalies - is it because one locale or state is doing things better and should be emulated or is it because of any number of other variables skewing the data?

talent, on the ohio stats ....... I'd like to be optimistic and say new cases will decrease and GF is going to continue to decline toward zero but, I don't think we are their yet - close maybe but no cigar. The messaging coming out of the epidemiology community is that the next two weeks are going to be very tough in the US. I can see Detroit (Beaumont Hospital) and NYC hospitals in toto getting overwhelmed. Sad to see that. Still, if you're paying attention, state authorities and HC professionals are trying their damnedest to keep their heads above water against terrible circumstances.

Some states are going to be spared but I just fear, as you have said, talent, it's coming. Communities that look to have very few cases are going to feel some sort of tsunami like conditions. Monroe Co. in FL - the one that closed US 1 on March 27th to the keys allow the keys to themselves - isn't escaping an upward trend in new cases. I do think the curve is going to be blunted there as that county took very aggressive steps if not about 5d too late ..... lots of folks fleeing metro Miami and even NYC, made their way down to the keys before they clamped down on that.

All you can look at is the experience of other countries that are farther along in this, if only by mere days. Italy, SK, China and Iran all have pretty much flat or slightly down trending slopes that appear to be holding (exceptions are small blips that can just as easily be attributed to statistical errors or bias).

China's and Iran's reporting are not to be trusted for anything. Italy presents a hopeful sign after terrible suffering and cost.

[iam416]

[Jeff Buchanan]

Froot, I worked at Grady Memorial ER in metro ATL(Level 1) and at a rural hospital ER in central GA (Level 2/3 depending on service needed). I can tell you that transport and placement of patient's who needed to be somewhere else for any number of reasons was a nightmare. That was before COVID-19.

What's disturbing to me is that our ER managers, nurses and Docs, all complained about this all the time to hospital administrators. Nothing was done. Ever, while I was working there...... and GA had a working centralized transport and placement system. It just sucked.

None of what Mr. Fox is mentioning is probably new to him. One of the MANY lessons learned here is that compared to hospital systems in other countries who were prepared for some kind of surge due to war or epidemics (not a whole lot of them actually it seems), the US, despite reports that it was well prepared, has fallen on it's ass.

Of course it's regional and the hardest hit systems in NY and Detroit are taking the brunt of this. It certainly gives a heads up to other metro and even micro areas to get ready. That can only help going forward.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Just saw that Boris Johnson has been admitted to the hospital...about 10 days since it was announced he was infected, Still nominally in charge of the government.