Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[froot loops]

Re death toll. Man that's been ugly but, among statisticians, this group is starting to question that initial estimate of the US death toll. Even Fauci, as reported up thread, is saying deaths may be far less than in the 100s of thousands that he and Brix scared the shit out of everyone last week with.

Covid Spread.PNG


The entire study is here. Kinda interesting how they did it:

economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/11/why-a-study-showing-that-covid-19-is-everywhere-is-good-news

All the more reason to ramp up the testing to the point where we can do at minimum random sampling tests across the nation to see who has had it already. I think 95 percent of the tests have been on people suspected of having the virus. All of these measures that have been taken is basically because we are relatively in the dark on how pervasive it is and testing was a shit how by the Feds for the month of February.

[froot loops]

Also, the models are going to get better as you get more data. Some of those projections were highly influenced by what happened in Italy, their health system was overrun before they knew what was going on. The US hospital system with maybe the exception of New York and Washington state were probably much better prepared. Limiting visitors, shutting down all elective procedures basically waiting for the COVID onslaught. When you basically shut down hospitals for everything except ICU patients and you turn multiple wards into ICU COVID units you will be in better shape and the numbers will thankfully go down.

Some of the death rate is going to be mitigated as the health professionals learn how to deal with it as well. One thing they are doing is inutubating patients far earlier than you normally would.

[iam416]

[iam416]

[Whitley]

When I ran my numbers I put the number @ 30% of those that get being confirmed cases. And really that is a number I am hoping it is lesser than 30% (otherwise there is going to be a huge total death number).

I really hope that this is really a lot of hype but I don't think so. I think we are not going to get a real handle on this virus (ie is it seasonal like the flu) until the end of next month/first part of June.

[froot loops]

As long as the deaths are.going at this rate, there will be no appetite to open anything up. It's my hope that they are right that it will peak in late April, early May(hopefully sooner). If that is correct there will be a drum beat to get things back up after the peak has passed.

I'll keep on saying it,.to open anything up they need a real plan that is very involved. I hope behind the scenes they are planning this but I have seen nothing to indicate this is happening at the scale it needs to happen.

[Whitley]

As long as the deaths are.going at this rate, there will be no appetite to open anything up. It's my hope that they are right that it will peak in late April, early May(hopefully sooner). If that is correct there will be a drum beat to get things back up after the peak has passed.

I'll keep on saying it,.to open anything up they need a real plan that is very involved. I hope behind the scenes they are planning this but I have seen nothing to indicate this is happening at the scale it needs to happen.

Yeah, this is going to state by state I think.

Have to admit I like how Whitmer handled herself in the press conference today. A reporter brought up how the legislature wants to loosen the restrictions, and she said that she was most worried about saving lives. Changing that into a moral question about saving lives is powerful and a smart tactic.

Even if things loosen up on social distancing....concerts, college/professional sports and things of that magnitude are going to be shut down until there is a vaccine. But the economic side of things will be a long and hard road back. But those are things that can be replaced. People can't.

[iam416]

When I ran my numbers I put the number @ 30% of those that get being confirmed cases. And really that is a number I am hoping it is lesser than 30% (otherwise there is going to be a huge total death number).

I really hope that this is really a lot of hype but I don't think so. I think we are not going to get a real handle on this virus (ie is it seasonal like the flu) until the end of next month/first part of June.

Right. I mean, I'd probably take 30% and be fairly happy about it. If the CFR was actually 1.5% then it's in a range that is less catastrophic. 4-5% is way catastrophic.

Also, the peak is only the peak if we hold all other things equal.

[Jeff Buchanan]

While we may not be hearing much from government officials on a road map to return to work, think tanks are thinking and publishing. I've linked to a bunch of great source documents on the calculations that can be run and ran an example of how to look at a return to work in Broward County, FL. It wasn't hard. What is hard is valuations - of lives, losses in GDP and so forth.

The calculations have to be done regionally/locally and the data to date is becoming granular enough to do that according to the one study I read and posted a link to.

I feel confident that Americans have no appetite for remaining cooped up in their houses much past early May and even that may be a stretch. This in the face of the continuous onslaught in the local and national media of deaths. Sickening and that tends to keep folks willing to hunker down. But, people are probably already becoming numb to death rates.

The reckoning is coming and I will be glad to see leadership and the national and state level to start dealing with it. For now, though, the messaging from those levels is correct - stay home.

[Dr. Strangelove]

The CDC recently released a paper that estimated covid's median reproductive number to be about 5.7. That would make it several times more contagious than the ordinary flu and somewhere along the lines of polio or the mumps

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0282_article

[froot loops]

While we may not be hearing much from government officials on a road map to return to work, think tanks are thinking and publishing. I've linked to a bunch of great source documents on the calculations that can be run and ran an example of how to look at a return to work in Broward County, FL. It wasn't hard. What is hard is valuations - of lives, losses in GDP and so forth.

The calculations have to be done regionally/locally and the data to date is becoming granular enough to do that according to the one study I read and posted a link to.

I feel confident that Americans have no appetite for remaining cooped up in their houses much past early May and even that may be a stretch. This in the face of the continuous onslaught in the local and national media of deaths. Sickening and that tends to keep folks willing to hunker down. But, people are probably already becoming numb to death rates.

The reckoning is coming and I will be glad to see leadership and the national and state level to start dealing with it. For now, though, the messaging from those levels is correct - stay home.

If you were looking at something like early May the government would need to be showing plans what to do right now. Along with the plans, you need the supplies. If you listen to Trump he doesn't understand at all why you need a massive testing and surveillance program. That is with a mass scale up of rapid testing. If you can't easily gets results from a test the same day, you are dead in the water for trying to open things up.

If you open up without a true plan you'll get right back to the position we are in now burying dead bodies is mass graves.

[froot loops]

Here is the kind of news we need to start to think about opening things back up.

[iam416]

If you were looking at something like early May the government would need to be showing plans what to do right now.

They can't. They can't start talking about re-opening until things start to get "better." The media will absolutely excoriate PDJT (and has) for even mentioning opening back up. They can't do it. Not with the most comprehensive fucking plan in the world. Politically -- and make no fucking mistake -- this has a huge political component -- they have to work on a plan well in advance of when they can actually talk about it.

If you open up without a true plan you'll get right back to the position we are in now burying dead bodies is mass graves.

(and Governors) face(s). Period. And if deaths tick back up then the nonsensical "blood on his hands" crowd will be out in full force.

It'll be interesting to see how long the hysteria controls. Fundamentally it's an issue between rich and poor. The "privleged" folks who are still getting paid can afford to abide the safer than sorry approach. The working class folks are getting assfucked and won't/can't tolerate it for much longer -- no matter how much money we print. And then this is where the retort is "welp, they'll just die, then."

As I've said all along -- this is choosing between two catastrophic outcomes and whatever you choose you get to own it because you made the choice. So, you get to own the catastrophe. That's the Hobson's Choice of the situation.

[froot loops]

Trump rightly got criticized for talking about it because he picked a date out of thin air. You can certainly talk about the proposed plan on how you implement it without giving a hard fast date. If they don't like getting criticized, tough shit that comes with the job. It was obvious yesterday he had no clue on what they need to do testing wise for a surveillance system. I mean Acosta spoon fed him the question and he showed he was clueless.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Froot, I certainly understand that you can articulate the steps to reopen the economy but one needs the resources (the ones we've posted about here) to accomplish that.

Something that has somewhat astonished me is the inability of industry to respond to spot shortages of the materials to assemble them and then the assembled products themselves. Test kits of all varieties are just one example ........ here locally, you cannot find respirators (these are the industrial masks that for all intent and purpose are equal to or better at filtering to smaller sized particles than the typical hospital masks, dust masks (less filtering but fine for the purpose they are now intended - protecting others from YOUR cough) or surgical masks. You can't find disinfecting cleaning products either.

I believe there are two related issues that I've read about. (1) supply chains are stressed to the max - that is the physical capacity to coordinate the movement of and then move things. (2) Manufacturers of disinfecting products, for example, have stated publicly that they can't ramp up production to go from needing one unit of product 1 on a daily basis to needing 50X units of product 1. Moreover, many are reluctant to ramp up to that level only to have pallets of unsold product sitting in their warehouses in 90d.

The Trump administration has, for the most part, not directed industries to produce a specific product or produce that product at a certain quantity preferring to let market forces and the companies themselves work this out. Ventilators are the one exception and I may be unaware of others. I can see both sides of the argument. I'm not sure where I stand on it.

The administration of Federal stimulus and safety net programs, I am hearing, are a disaster at the ground level. That is a huge disappointment to me. That banking and financial services along with state government offices tasked with managing safety net programs are so fractured as to not be able to deliver the promised federal trillions in some collective and simple way, leads me to believe that any plan to re-open economies is also going to be a disaster ...... and this is the first time since the start of COVID that I'm particularly pessimistic. Hopefully, the learning curve is a steep one and I'll be happily surprised.