Coronavirus

[eevee-fan]

"Lack of testing" is finally going away. Admiral Giroir showed this chart in today's briefing.

View attachment 524230

This doesn't yet include tests at hospitals and some smaller labs, but it gives the basic idea. More importantly, he said this would continue to increase dramatically in the next period (week). I first heard Adm. Giroir speak at the briefing on Sunday the 15th and it was immediately obvious he meant business. Unlike some of the other suck-up bureaucrats. He heads up the Public Health Service, a military branch I'd never heard of that operates under HHS. At last Sunday's briefing he said they would put a couple thousand drive-thru and walk-up test sites all over the country, each with the ability to collect up to 2000 samples per day. He's already producing results, as shown above, and I believe him when he says testing will continue to ramp dramatically.

The same military guy on TV who said Trump was healthier than him? Hm...

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

front-line MD test results are coming back in 1 day.

FYI, Mike Pence & his wife were tested today and received their results in a few hours.

 

[eevee-fan]

Minute Earth video from 5 years ago talking about bats and corona virus...

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

The same military guy on TV who said Trump was healthier than him? Hm...

No, Admiral Giroir is a different, much less egregious sycophant. He actually seems to have some expertise.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Italy's mortality rate would be comparable with the German one 0.25% if the true infected population was about a factor of 10 higher than the reported 31,000.

I’d expect this fatality rate to go up to 0.7 to 1% or so as time goes by (assuming extensive testing so we are getting the IFR, not the CFR).

That's false: the data doesn't support that view in Italy, nor in Hubei, nor in South Korea, nor on the Diamond Princess.

This isn't cancer, there's seldom any long struggle with such respiratory illnesses where the viral load explodes early on.

Do you have data for that, for South Korea? I have been watching the South Korea numbers for some time, and the fatality rate is definitely going up over time! About a week ago they were at about 50-60 deaths with a very similar case count to now. Guess I need to pull up the Way Back machine on Worldometer.
EDIT: I checked - a week ago they were at 7700 cases with 60 deaths. Now they are at 8400 with 84 deaths. Two weeks ago they were at 5500 cases with 30 deaths.

And, I did turn out to be right about this. South Korea now at 8897 cases with 102 deaths. (1.15%) Unfortunately they have not been able to stop reintroductions from other countries - wonder when they will lock down?

Germany, early in their outbreak, is now up to 84 deaths, 22364 cases. (0.37%)
Germany has an extensive testing program - they do 160k tests per week (more than South Korea does, and about as many tests each week than we've done nationwide in our entire outbreak). So they're getting good capture of most cases I would suspect. And that 0.37% number I would expect to move up to closer to 1% when the outbreak finishes.

And as far as a long struggle with respiratory illness - indeed that does happen with COVID-19 (presumably due to irreparable lung damage or other organ failure due to sepsis or whatever), which explains this long tail of mortality. If you're lucky you die quickly, it sounds like.

 

[X Fan]

This is all anecdotal but testing results are delayed by 1 week or so from time of test (my daughter had a fever and was tested 8 days ago and we just heard today she is negative) Front-line MD test results are coming back in 1 day. I’ve heard some sobering stories about various hospitals in the area being swamped by presumed COVID19 patients (symptoms and/or XR/CT findings). These aren’t showing up in our country’s data yet. As we know the only accurate measure is deaths. And they lag actual cases by days to weeks of course. People are still not in full lockdown here. I went to the grocery store 2 days ago and myself and 2 others were the only ones wearing masks.

masks are virtually impossible to get right now.

 

[Jetex Jim]

Germany, early in their outbreak, is now up to 84 deaths, 22364 cases. (0.37%)
Germany has an extensive testing program - they do 160k tests per week (more than South Korea does, and about as many tests each week than we've done nationwide in our entire outbreak). So they're getting good capture of most cases I would suspect. And that 0.37% number I would expect to move up to closer to 1% when the outbreak finishes.

Interesting. Where did you find the numbers for the testing that Germany is doing?

 

[X Fan]

The same military guy on TV who said Trump was healthier than him? Hm...

And your comment is meant to distort the facts presented? Geez.

 

[loco]

Some nice graphs linked below. Both population adjusted and absolute. Check out London, New York and US in general. I don't want to comment more as I am no expert.

CoVID 19 Growth Rate

 

[ReflexFunds]

I generally agree, but note that Wuhan lockdown was 2 months, not 6 weeks. They are starting to loosen, but it's still extremely tight. I'm also highly suspicious of China's numbers. I don't think it's running rampant -- their controls are very tight. But zero cases? Hmmm.

Test-and-trace fans (like me) took a body blow today, as poster child South Korea is now moving to a soft lockdown:
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/a...ts-147-new-coronavirus-cases-total-8-799-kcdc

6 weeks was how long it took to get new daily cases in Hubei below 10. I think at that stage you can move to a thorough test, trace and isolate strategy, if not several weeks before.
I'm generally sceptical of economic numbers in China, however people I've spoken to in Wuhan (via Chinese friends) have confirmed they know no one that knows of any cases in the past few days (they are careful what they say, but generally can confirm a positive).
The 6 weeks to kill the curve in Wuhan also aligns with common sense given the incubation plus infectious period, virus life on surfaces, infectiousness and household chain infections.

I think Korea has done the best aside from China ex Hubei (which has also largely been a test and trace strategy aside from the first 1-2 weeks).
Korea however should have continued ramping testing further rather than get complacent. They were also far too lax on international travel.

So I think Korea still largely showed the right strategy, but it needs to be iterated on.

 

[ReflexFunds]

LOl. This is like saying - from next Monday everyone should be given an EV and switch over to address climate change.

Aside from the fact an EV costs $40k while a mass produced test should cost $2 and the cost of the alternative to the test is possibly as high as the person's 6-12 month salary.

 

[hobbes]

Getting a bit OT for this thread, so I'll try to be brief: Iceland has a company named deCODE Genetics, which was designed around doing whole-population genetic studies for disease modeling, so the company has been repurposed into doing randomized sampling of the population to look for COVID-19 in people who are not suspect cases - just the general public. They found the disease in around 1% of the general population over a period of a couple weeks (reported 1 week ago) - an implied per-capita rate twentyfold that of the country's official diagnoses at the time of reporting (which in turn has involved one of the most aggressive testing regimes in the world). Over half had no symptoms whatsoever, and the rest, generally just a minor cold.

In an experiment which started several weeks ago, Italy tested the entire town of Vò in a series of rounds and successfully eradicated the disease from the town. Again, this is one of the few cases of experiments of testing of the general population rather than suspect cases. 3% of the population was determined as infected during the first round. 50-75% of them were entirely asymptomatic. Most of the rest had only minor cold symptoms and did not suspect that they had the disease. During the study, asymptomatic cases usually remained asymptomatic, and most minor cases remained minor.

The net picture is that the disease was already widespread even several weeks ago; that people with no symptoms whatsoever are the majority; and of those with symptoms, symptoms so minor that people don't get tested are by far the most common. To match with the death rate (as severe cases almost always get tested), a widespread disease in the population implies a low IFR (infection fatality rate), and implies that places with overloaded medical systems are overloaded not because the disease sends a large percent of its victims to the hospital, but because a large percent of the population has already gotten infected. This implies that the disease will tend to play itself out sooner.

As mentioned, the other study I mentioned (still preliminary) estimated that Wuhan hit a 19% infection rate at its peak, and that the disease had a non-time-delay IFR of 0,04% and a time-delay IFR of 0,12%. They also found (as others have) that the disease is highly prone to nosocomical transmission (spread inside hospitals and clinics, generally by staff) - that is to say, prone to spread to the most vulnerable of patients. I.e. that stamping out nosocomical transmission is one of the most important steps that can be done. Both Wuhan and Lombardy had extensive problems with nosocomical transmission before the severity of the situation was realized.

ED: Well, so much for trying to be brief...

Very interesting! Can you please give links to studies you cite? Thanks!

 

[Sean Wagner]

I first heard Adm. Giroir speak at the briefing on Sunday the 15th and it was immediately obvious he meant business.

That's precisely who the article in the NYT I referred to maybe a week ago [and tried to find again] was about. Had the same impression that this man understands the challenge, means business, and has clear goals. The way I understood it his organization usually is tasked with organizing emergency supplies during natural disasters.

There's a time for dotting the 'i's, and there's a time to trust well-trained experts with essential decision making.

"Q Given what Governor Cuomo has done in New York, is there any more consideration to a national lockdown to keep people in their homes?

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think so. Essentially, you’ve done that in California, you’ve done that in New York. Those are really two hotbeds. Those are probably the two hottest of them all, in terms of hotspots. I don’t think so, because you go out to the Midwest, you go out to other locations and they’re watching it on television but they don’t have the same problems. They don’t have, by any means, the same problem.

They will.


Here in Switzerland, the federal government is reportedly planning to find as many people who have recovered as possible to help with the booming caseload and essential services. Source NZZ Corona: Immune Menschen sollen aushelfen

 

[samppa]

Sweden is doing virtually nothing. Schools are open, business as usual. They recommend people to stay ay home if they have flu symptoms.

I'm having trouble trying to understand swedish approach.

https://www.thelocal.dk/20200320/why-is-denmarks-lockdown-so-much-more-severe-than-swedens

 

[Compton]

Sweden is doing virtually nothing. Schools are open, business as usual. They recommend people to stay ay home if they have flu symptoms.

I'm having trouble trying to understand swedish approach.

https://www.thelocal.dk/20200320/why-is-denmarks-lockdown-so-much-more-severe-than-swedens

It will be over faster and with a smaller total impact on the society. That's why.

 

[samppa]

It will be over faster. That's why.

And you have less pensions to pay.

 

[Compton]

And you have less pensions to pay.

You'll understand after a few months. Sweden tends to do smarter economic decisions than Finland.

 

[samppa]

You'll understand after a few months. Sweden tends to do smarter economic decisions than Finland.

Yeah, that used to be true.. We'll see. I do think they're taking a huge risk here.

 

[cwerdna]

the old guard still thinks the old rules apply.

they don't. when lives are at risk, screw the 'rules'.

they should just make them, don't call them n95 but call them something else (which is honest).

I got some masks from work and they are called kn95 and they are NOT real n95, I don't love them or trust them, but in a pinch, they are better than nothing.

https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media...filtering-facepiece-respirator-classes-tb.pdf has a comparison of N95 vs KN95 and other standards.

If they're genuine masks from a reputable manufacturer and not counterfeits, I guess they're better than nothing.

 

[MD70]

For those of us wondering why the UK strategy was different from everybody else:
The Sunday Times reports today that unelected Dominic Cummings led a Govt. strategy of ‘herd immunity, protect the economy and if that means some pensioners die, too bad”
Cummings is the main advisor to the Prime minister.