Coronavirus

[jhm]

Thanks for reaching out Carter. Always happy to help out a classmate!!

Yes, Moron Spray, the Yahoo Bunghole Steam Gun, and JHM's revolutionary Solabag (solar powered emema) are all on sale his week, to assist our CDC in the treament of the massive idiocy outbreak. Strangely, these outbreaks seem to occur ~ 10 minutes after the WH "press briefings?" Probably just a coincidence . . . .

The lame stream media is not going to tell you Mike Pence's secret weapon for not getting Coronavirus. The Vice President does not need to wear a mask in the hospital. How does he do it? Warm-eyed Pences is a big believer in and customer of SolaBag. Sources familiar with the matter say that Pence uses SolaBag regularly, or whenever he feels the urge. In the photo below, VP Pence explains to a Covid-19 suffer how easy and comfirtable it is to use SolarBag. Mike and the team around him prefer "El Presidente" SolaBag, but smaller, more discrete sizes are available. Clearly SolaBag has made a big change in Mike Pence's life. You can see SolaBag in the twinkle in his eyes. But the Bagless Fake Media refuses to report on this.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Trump says US will be able to run 5 million coronavirus tests per day 'very soon,' despite shortages across states

What has this guy been smoking? We spent most of April around 150k per day and somehow we are going to do 30 times that "very soon"?

Fauci was praying for around 500k per day within the next several weeks and we are supposed to go 10 times that number?

He also said we had tested more people than all the other countries in the world, combined. (Hint: This is not true.)

It seems like more of an aspirational goal.

I’m sure somehow all will be well. It’s going to be interesting to see how things go. There are a few things that puzzle me:
1) Why is Florida apparently looking so good? They have a vulnerable population. Are they really all that careful? Or is public health tracing really good there?
2) Maybe Georgia won’t be so bad...maybe they have a contact tracing plan? Confused about their motivations, though I have heard about budget issues.
3) Why is testing so difficult to scale?
4) Why aren’t masks mandatory everywhere, at least when you will be in proximity to others?

 

[jhm]

Yeah, Sweden is really killing it.

View attachment 536868

Isn't ironic, don't you think, that while Sweden aims to maximize exposure, it has only moderately higher case rates but substantially higher death rates? A little too ironic.

 

[Norbert]

Trump says US will be able to run 5 million coronavirus tests per day 'very soon,' despite shortages across states

What has this guy been smoking? We spent most of April around 150k per day and somehow we are going to do 30 times that "very soon"?

Fauci was praying for around 500k per day within the next several weeks and we are supposed to go 10 times that number?

He is probably confusing that with the total number of tests that were conducted so far, which is 5 million something.

He keeps saying the US has the most tests. It does as an absolute number in total, but it also has the most cases and the most deaths. So that doesn't really count as an achievement. Per capita, many countries have more testing than the US, and although the US has more testing per capita than South Korea, that came late. South Korea has more than 50 times more tests than cases, the US less than 6 times. South Korea has more than 2,400 as many tests as deaths, the US less than 100 times as many.

 

[eevee-fan]

New Stockholm Syndrome?

 

[dhanson865]

Yeah, Sweden is really killing it.

View attachment 536868

Here's a wider comparison, Sweden is higher than the the US on deaths per capita.

 

[dhanson865]

Updated Apr 27

That entire video talks about it as though any chart that looks like that is that. By that I mean they talk about a chart with confirmed cases and how testing affects the numbers (and start it all with "you've seen this chart before" while showing a dozen variations implying they are all the same), but you can make a similar chart for deaths. As in these two examples that might look similar:

 

[TEG]

The lame stream media is not going to tell you Mike Pence's secret weapon for not getting Coronavirus. The Vice President does not need to wear a mask in the hospital. How does he do it? Warm-eyed Pences is a big believer in and customer of SolaBag. Sources familiar with the matter say that Pence uses SolaBag regularly, or whenever he feels the urge. In the photo below, VP Pence explains to a Covid-19 suffer how easy and comfirtable it is to use SolarBag. Mike and the team around him prefer "El Presidente" SolaBag, but smaller, more discrete sizes are available. Clearly SolaBag has made a big change in Mike Pence's life. You can see SolaBag in the twinkle in his eyes. But the Bagless Fake Media refuses to report on this.

Your SolaBag sales are going to go through the roof once the news breaks that COVID can be spread through farts. Regular use of the SolaBag is the only alternative to the "rear exit masks" that will be mandated soon...

 

[TEG]

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

He is probably confusing that

I think that is a very charitable way of describing the activity here.

South Korea has more than 50 times more tests than cases, the US less than 6 times.

This is a good metric. I guess this basically suggests we need about 10x as many tests as we currently have to attain control. So 2 million per day should do it, roughly, assuming the outbreak growth rate does not increase. Not that simple since the Koreans got better efficiency for their tests with early testing, but probably in the ballpark. That would be 60 million in a month; probably would need a bit more than that by the end of May, if we really want to suppress properly.

In other news, relevant here, in California, it looks like Tesla Fremont will open in Stage 2:

Gavin Newsom on Twitter

That presumably would be in about 2-3 weeks, based on...just about nothing.

 

[SageBrush]

The lame stream media is not going to tell you Mike Pence's secret weapon for not getting Coronavirus.

Why did the hospital let that moron flaunt their protocols ?
It will be interesting to watch if he gets infected and then infects the white house.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

In other news about unhinged lunatics:

Elon Musk on Twitter

Also, an actual ML model here.,.might be popular amongst the crowd here:

COVID-19 Projections | United States

For the US they estimate a cumulative number of infections of 9 million as of today, which seems about right.

They have state-by-state breakdowns as well.

COVID-19 Projections Using Machine Learning

Has the right feel: 80-120K deaths by end of May with best guess of 100k.

You can see how much tighter NYS is in terms of outcomes due to their high incidence of the disease. The partial herd immunity limits future explosions, probably regardless of what they do (not sure what measures they are modeling for NYS - would be nice to be able to play with them).

 

[dhanson865]

Not sure if it was mentioned here yet but Ford canceled the Lincoln based on the Rivian platform and blamed it on the virus.

Ford and Lincoln cancel Rivian-powered electric vehicle due to the pandemic


Note that doesn't mean Ford is canceling any Ford EVs, just the one that was going to be branded a Lincoln.

 

[dhanson865]

Guidelines call for 14-day drop in cases to reopen. No state has met them.

As a handful of states begin to ease stay-at-home restrictions, no state that has opted to reopen has come close to the federally recommended 14 consecutive days of declining cases.

Even as the U.S. hit the grim milestone of more than 1 million cases Tuesday — one-third of the world's total — Georgia, Minnesota and other states are pushing to reopen businesses, even though new infection rates are still rising.

Some states, such as Colorado and Kentucky, have reported fewer new cases in the past week. But no single state has had 14 days of decline.

 

[heltok]

Yeah, Sweden is really killing it.

View attachment 536868

Number seem to indicate that Sweden is 4x further along on the path towards herd immunity. Not saying that the strategy is good, but this is following the strategy our health organization has chosen for us. Let’s pray it was the correct gamble. So far health care seems to not be overburdened. There are some selection for who gets invasive care, but in other countries very few survive it anyway so the benefit might not be too large. Also it should be noted that Sweden seems to not underestimate deaths as much as some other countries:

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Guidelines call for 14-day drop in cases to reopen. No state has met them.

These guidelines are dumb. They are not quantitative or data-driven at all. If you had enough testing/tracing capacity, you could open earlier. If not, you have to open later.

They are so vague as to be useless, which is likely the intent (plausible deniability or something). Trump wants to be able to blame the states for what happens rather than taking any leadership role,

His new strategy also appears to be generally taking the position that everything is great and going back to normal. It is going to be painful, I suspect.

My hope is that the summer really does drive down transmission, widespread mask use drives down transmission, and things miraculously go better over the summer than expected (I think there is very little chance of this...but I can hope). The problem with this hope is it means bumping along - it’s not really beating the virus.

The best hope for the economy is to pour resources into completely eliminating the virus, and making that the goal. I think that is going to be the only way to restore sufficient confidence for normal economic activity to resume.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Not saying that the strategy is good, but this is following the strategy our health organization has chosen for us. Let’s pray it was the correct gamble.

Even if this strategy “works,” whatever that means, Sweden is still going to suffer from the same problem that the de facto failure in the United States to suppress the virus will have: economic activity and confidence will not return to normal, and economic ties to countries which are in better shape will be tightly restricted. So it is a long rough road until a vaccine arrives.

There is a better way, of course: eliminate the virus completely. Best to start soon.

Hopefully they’ll be able to take some shortcuts and recruit volunteers for vaccine trials in high risk groups and get a better idea of safety and efficacy faster than normal. And maybe they can pipeline things and do parallelism and produce multiple vaccines in parallel in high volume, before trials are complete. That would cut off additional time. Maybe we could have something by the end of the year or earlier. No idea what the minimum possible turn time is, if cost is no object.

 

[SVMike]

4) Why aren’t masks mandatory everywhere, at least when you will be in proximity to others?

Because, IMO, there is no science to backup that idea...unless you want to wear masks at home.
First, if you are outside and are able to stay more than 6 ft away from everyone not in your household you are safe without a mask.
If you are going somewhere, such as a grocery store, you cannot be sure you are staying 6 ft apart at all times, so you should wear a mask.

If you read this study done in Wuhan of 1245 people infected, 1243 of them were infected indoors.
Coronavirus Transmission: Chinese Study Shows COVID More Likely Spread Indoors | National Review

Staying "at home" indoors seems to be how you get infected. (up to 80% of cases according to the study)
Second place...Up to 34% from public transportation. (Note they allowed multiple transmission methods per case)

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Because, IMO, there is no science to backup that idea...unless you want to wear masks at home.
First, if you are outside and are able to stay more than 6 ft away from everyone not in your household you are safe without a mask.
If you are going somewhere, such as a grocery store, you cannot be sure you are staying 6 ft apart at all times, so you should wear a mask.

If you read this study done in Wuhan of 1245 people infected, 1243 of them were infected indoors.
Coronavirus Transmission: Chinese Study Shows COVID More Likely Spread Indoors | National Review

Staying "at home" indoors seems to be how you get infected. (up to 80% of cases according to the study)
Second place...Up to 34% from public transportation. (Note they allowed multiple transmission methods per case)

Sure. It seems pretty clear we should be putting positive patients up in hotels instead of sending them home, Good for hotels, too.

I just see no significant downside to mandating masks everywhere else (except maybe when exercising alone outside far from anyone else), as long as you make it very clear to people that it does not make you safe (tell people it is protecting others, not you) - otherwise there may be risk compensation that takes place, which would be counterproductive.

For sure masks should be required inside - that is what confuses me - why is this not required nationwide at this point?

 

[Singer3000]

Number seem to indicate that Sweden is 4x further along on the path towards herd immunity. Not saying that the strategy is good, but this is following the strategy our health organization has chosen for us. Let’s pray it was the correct gamble. So far health care seems to not be overburdened. There are some selection for who gets invasive care, but in other countries very few survive it anyway so the benefit might not be too large. Also it should be noted that Sweden seems to not underestimate deaths as much as some other countries:

View attachment 537006

There’s not yet good evidence that presence of antibodies in the blood confers good immunity. Which makes going for herd immunity at this early stage a pretty brave strategy.

Seeing Musk on Twitter today, if I was Chairperson of the Board I’d be pretty tempted to yank him off the field for the investor call and stick in a boring numbers of operations guy.