Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Jeff Buchanan]

On the valid criticisms of the data...... I found the first web site below on Sunday when the emerging sense of what we're talking about here - bad data informing public health policy - made me doubt the effectiveness of the steps being advocated by the Trump administration, those steps filtering quickly down to the local level in Florida. You gonna close my favorite bars and restaurants in Fort Lauderdale, shelter in place, cancel my cruise? Your gonna crush my retirement portfolio? Wait a minute.....

While the data may be flawed, it's what we have for now and by all accounts, it's not that bad to the extent that CFR and Growth Factor and R0 (infectiousness - I note this because I want to make sure this is what you're talking about, talent) are not exponentially wrong one way or the other. We're not yet at the point where globally or in the US, the curve is flattening.

The other stuff, as has been mentioned here many times, total cases, death counts, are not that useful other than to scare the shit out of those that may not understand or find explanations of CFR, GF, R0 ..... TL;DR.

NB, if this is your first reading of this link, you have to wade through all the intro stuff to get to the graphs.I recommend a skim. If not, go to the graphs/charts. They are current as of yesterday evening.

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

So, all of the shit that's going down involves one fundamental question: does social (physical) distancing work to contain or mitigate the spread of COVID-19? If you want to work your way through this link, the answer is yes. My read, however, is that the accuracy of the entire calculation done at the link rests on an assumed R0 value of 3.5. I think that is is too high, admittedly just a hunch.

TBF, my doubt about the assumed value of R0 is that while I might believe R0 is high, it's not exponentially high such that the conclusion in the SCIR (Susceptible, Exposed, Infected, Recovered) modeling might be wrong - social distancing in all its forms works. The question then is how long do we have to keep this up ..... and when can I go on my next cruise?

https://towardsdatascience.com/social-distancing-to-slow-the-coronavirus-768292f04296

[Tom W]

Yep. And when we're done with this, there will be calls for a "New Deal" of sorts and we'll completely remake our economy into something that is much worse than it is today. The Ds see their chance. They are going to leverage this into Sandersland.

I wish that was as batshit crazy as it sounds. Unfortunately, after the last three years, it probably isn't.

[Hannibal]

Yep. And when we're done with this, there will be calls for a "New Deal" of sorts and we'll completely remake our economy into something that is much worse than it is today. The Ds see their chance. They are going to leverage this into Sandersland.

Maybe. We'll see. At the very least, I expect any emergency relief legislation to have lots of sneaky bullshit hidden in there.

[Ghengis Jon]

The background message is priceless.


pence.jpg

[Jeff Buchanan]

I know many of you don't have the time I have to filter then pour through the information on COVID-19 that's out there. I read the links AA provided and within them were references or links to several other articles that illuminated a point that was being made. I read those too ...... my eyes hurt.

The Imperial College Disease Modeling paper is an important document. When it was published it caused a sharp turn in the messaging and public health policy that the UK's Johnson administration were announcing. It seems the US had already embarked on the stricter suppression and containment measures recommended in the Imperial College paper.

The paper made these important points (correct me if your read was different, AA):

• Mitigation strategies to include case isolation, home quarantine, school closing, restaurant and bar closings, event cancellations, strict social distancing for Age > 70 WORK (what each of these mean is specifically defined in the paper).
• Introducing these measures too early inhibits the development of herd immunity; too late, care capacity is overwhelmed (google herd immunity to learn more).
• Modeling demonstrates that wholesale lifting of suppression measures in the context of no pharmacologic interventions readily available - drug treatments or, vaccines - allows the virus to continue to reinfect naive persons (it's not known once infected how long a person's herd immunity to the COVID-19 lasts - past pandemics demonstrate a wide range of time frames from a couple of months to forever.
• Based on data from the current pandemic, how long do suppression and mitigation steps need to be in place? Looks like 3 months from first case (obviously depends on citizen compliance but this figure set compliance at 75%).
• What is the best approach to prevent wide spread occurrence of new cases once R0 is at 1 (or GF at or below 1.0)? Intermittent re-imposition of containment measures within identified hot-spots using criteria such as a spike in ICU admissions for COVID-19 infections to undertake re-implementation - but may be necessary only within the hot-spot.

[AlabamAlum]

That is correct, Jeff. 3 months of this and then 1 month normal, and then back to isolation, and/or rotating area isolation. Wash, rinse, repeat. Until a viable vaccine can be mass produced and distributed.

A vaccine has been given to a human subject. We do not know if it really works or is safe yet. That can take more than a year.

[Dr. Strangelove]

We flew in 500,000 tests from Italy

https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2020/03/us-air-force-flew-half-million-coronavirus-test-kits-italy-tennessee/163879/

[AlabamAlum]

[Jeff Buchanan]

This is another resource I stumbled upon because there was a link to it in one of the articles I said I reviewed above.

It's also grim in that it effectively argues, life will never be the same during and after (when that occurs) the COVID-19 pandemic. Major changes in our lives, our financial well being and how we go about life in general will change and in some cases dramatically - this occurring predominantly to the poor. It does end with some hopeful speculation about how human ingenuity and the unparalleled British and American resolve will get us through this.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615370/coronavirus-pandemic-social-distancing-18-months/

[iam416]

The 3 months could also be used to build out capacity (rooms and ventilators). That would mitigate some of the deaths. As opposed to entering an indefinite economic death spiral that could end up inflicting even more damage.

We need someone to model the economic consequences of 18 months of cycle. Right now we're getting one side of the cost picture.

[AlabamAlum]

[iam416]

Correct. Same people who called PDJT a xenophoic asswipe when he banned travel to China.

[iam416]

And, for the fucking record, the virus originated in China, probably from someone playing with or eating bats that are known carriers of a plethora of SARS-Corona viruses. Something people in the rest of world have been asking the Chinese to stop doing. So, yeah, the Chinese virus.

[AlabamAlum]

And, for the fucking record, the virus originated in China, probably from someone playing with or eating bats that are known carriers of a plethora of SARS-Corona viruses. Something people in the rest of world have been asking the Chinese to stop doing. So, yeah, the Chinese virus.

[iam416]

Correct.