Coronavirus

[Norbert]

I'm not so sure about that. With a lot of ups and down, there are always problems one way or the other.

If I look at the 4 day moving average, and do an additional interpolation in my mind, I'd think the first value should be around 3.5, and the second around 7. (Although the second depends on how it will continue.)

That's still double.

The main problem is that you have an exceptional upswing at the end, and not enough data to tell if that's an outlier or the beginning of a real trend.

I haven't used 7 day buckets very much yet, but they seem promising to me. If you have the option and patience (or software), it might be worth trying to move the cut off points between the buckets. But in this case you can tell it is still difficult to make a judgement because the 7 day buckets still have a lot of up and down. So you might think of using 14-day buckets in this case, starting at the end going backwards. That will probably show a much more even picture, but not answer your question of what to make of the upswing at the end.

However you do it, I think the problem is in this case you need future data to evaluate the upswing-or-not at the end.

EDIT: If you take your 7 day buckets and combine them into 14 days buckets, starting at the end, you get this sequence:
48, 47, 24, 30.5, 42.5.
This is much smoother, but if you move the cut off points, it probably wouldn't go as low as 24. That may or may not be better. It still suggests a strong incline in the last 6 weeks

Can't edit that post anymore, but need to correct 35.5 for 30.5 :
So the sequence is 48, 47, 24, 35.5, 42.5.

 

[eevee-fan]

I never understood the virtue of that. The same goes for Clorox - killing "99%" of virusses.

A single sneeze contains about 200 million viral particles. If you kill 99% of them there are still 2 million left. It takes just a few thousand to make you sick. So...

 

[Ben W]

I never understood the virtue of that. The same goes for Clorox - killing "99%" of virusses.

A single sneeze contains about 200 million viral particles. If you kill 99% of them there are still 2 million left. It takes just a few thousand to make you sick. So...

Oh yes, if someone with COVID coughs directly in your face or on your steering wheel, you're hosed. That's why ICU docs need full face shields or more, and still sometimes get sick. Fortunately, most droplets from coughing fall out of the air very quickly, and most coughing people are staying home. COVID seems considerably less transmissible through surfaces than aerosols anyway, probably because it's harder to get from surfaces to your alveoli.

Ordinary breathing produces about 30 viral particles per minute (many orders of magnitude less than coughing), and speaking produces about 10x that. So sharing space with an asymptomatic carrier for several minutes can provide an infectious dose, but only just. Mitigations such as mask-wearing and 6-foot distancing are likely to make a difference in those scenarios, as would 99% Clorox or 99% heating. If you combine multiple mitigations (symptomatic people staying home + distancing + masks + gloves + hand-washing + sanitizer + heating), even 200 million viral particles can drop near zero pretty quickly.

Put a totally different way, for math nerds: real-life exposure tends to follow a power law distribution, and a good chunk of that distribution is within striking distance (e.g. 10x) of the infection threshold. So a mitigation that reduces your exposure 10x will make a difference a lot of the time.

 

[SVMike]

I never understood the virtue of that. The same goes for Clorox - killing "99%" of virusses.

A single sneeze contains about 200 million viral particles. If you kill 99% of them there are still 2 million left. It takes just a few thousand to make you sick. So...

Sure, but the ones that still remain are not concentrated, but spread out. Casual touching, say of a counter top that was wiped is highly unlikely to collect enough to the hands and then to your face. Whereas swabbing the area scientifically can probably collect a lot.
Also the ones remaining on the surface immediately begin their half life decay.

Just another thought...just wiping one concentrated viral drop on a surface with only a wet cloth probably spreads the contamination around enough to greatly reduce the odds that touching in transfers enough virus to infect. (I am NOT saying that anyone should rely on this, but it would be interesting to know more details)

 

[RobStark]

After wiping down my countertop with bleach I enjoy licking the entire surface to see if I can pick up the remaining 1%.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

This thread had moved from a morbidity circle jerk to a germophobe fetish forum!

Maybe it's time to move this to an OT forum?

 

[KG M3]

After wiping down my countertop with bleach I enjoy licking the entire surface to see if I can pick up the remaining 1%.

YOU AREN'T LISTENING Inject, not ingest!!

 

[JRP3]

This thread had moved from a morbidity circle jerk to a germophobe fetish forum!

Maybe it's time to move this to an OT forum?

It was never the former and is not the latter. Maybe it's time for you to move on from this thread?

 

[Daniel in SD]

Some good news? Makes sense, Italy has been slowly opening for weeks and deaths have gone way down. New coronavirus losing potency, top Italian doctor says

Or maybe not... WHO and other experts say no evidence of coronavirus losing potency

Zangrillo told Reuters: “We have never said that the virus has changed, we said that the interaction between the virus and the host has definitely changed.”

He said this could be due either to different characteristics of the virus, which he said they had not yet identified, or different characteristics in those infected.

Seems most likely to me that the hosts are trying harder to avoid getting infected.
Good twitter thread from Carl Bergstrom on the doctor's claims and how to identify BS: https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1267576233631469568

 

[AZRI11]

Or maybe not... WHO and other experts say no evidence of coronavirus losing potency

Seems most likely to me that the hosts are trying harder to avoid getting infected.
Good twitter thread from Carl Bergstrom on the doctor's claims and how to identify BS: https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1267576233631469568

Clearly something is happening. Wisconsin has been completely open for a couple of weeks, very low death rate. As other states are opening death rates are not going up or are just slightly higher. This hit like a hurricane and now it's barely a tropical storm. Warmer weather? Or it's burning itself out. Most European countries right now have a lower rate of deaths than same time period a year ago. https://twitter.com/enn_nafnlaus/status/1267584006486401027?s=19

 

[Daniel in SD]

Clearly something is happening. Wisconsin has been completely open for a couple of weeks, very low death rate. As other states are opening death rates are not going up or are just slightly higher. This hit like a hurricane and now it's barely a tropical storm. Warmer weather? Or it's burning itself out. Most European countries right now have a lower rate of deaths than same time period a year ago. https://twitter.com/enn_nafnlaus/status/1267584006486401027?s=19

It's surprising to me too. My theory is that it's a combination of people being more careful and the fact that there still aren't mass gatherings (though these large protests seem like they'll certainly test some theories about outdoor spread).
Authors of a paper on super spreading as the primary driver of the pandemic wrote an editorial:
Opinion | Just Stop the Superspreading
The paper:
Clustering and superspreading potential of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections in Hong Kong
They find that 20% of cases result in 80% of the transmission.

 

[Ben W]

It's surprising to me too. My theory is that it's a combination of people being more careful and the fact that there still aren't mass gatherings (though these large protests seem like they'll certainly test some theories about outdoor spread).

Yes, just the "easy" mitigations (no large superspreader events, conventions, packed bars/nightclubs or subways) immediately lowers R by a very significant factor, so that caps how bad things can get as other businesses reopen. Still, far too many states seem to have R = 1.0 as the goal, where I really think they should try just a _little_ bit harder to get to R = 0.85, which would have the pandemic completely contained in just a couple months, well before flu season. Why universal high-quality mask distribution (e.g. at supermarkets) isn't yet a thing is really mystifying/saddening.

 

[dhanson865]

So we opened up for phase 2, we now have the highest single day total, beating the old record on Apr 8 (almost two months ago).

 

[Ben W]

So we opened up for phase 2, we now have the highest single day total, beating the old record on Apr 8 (almost two months ago).

Is this chart for Tennessee, or just Knoxville? Keep in mind that testing has also increased substantially since April 8, so the actual number of cases may still be less now. A more reliable indicator would probably be new ICU admissions, if that data is available.

 

[dhanson865]

Is this chart for Tennessee, or just Knoxville? Keep in mind that testing has also increased substantially since April 8, so the actual number of cases may still be less now. A more reliable indicator would probably be new ICU admissions, if that data is available.

Knox County only. The county numbers come out at 11am eastern time, the state numbers come out at 2pm Central (4 hours later) so those aren't out for today yet. Also they don't update their chart in the same way

To add to the fun, not all of TN opened to phase 2 on the same date

so you can't point to a phase 2 transition on the state chart.

 

[Daniel in SD]

To be certain I'm still pro cheap mask, just saw this being covered elsewhere and thought it was worth sharing. Anyone pro mask will have to debunk the significance of this for the anti mask crowd.

ACP Journals

"Discussion: Neither surgical nor cotton masks effectively filtered SARS–CoV-2 during coughs by infected patients."

“We do not know whether masks shorten the travel distance of droplets during coughing. “

The authors retracted the paper. Apparently the authors did not understand the concept of LOD (limit of detection).
ACP Journals

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Wisconsin has been completely open for a couple of weeks, very low death rate. As other states are opening death rates are not going up or are just slightly higher.

At first glance it might seem puzzling, but like others here, I suspect the physical distancing and other measures are limiting the R - just by eliminating superspreading you can get substantial reductions. In addition, critically important, testing in Wisconsin has gone way up in the last month to six weeks (a factor of 4 increase or so). This drives down R as well. You can have a more open economy and "get away with it" if you test more!!!

Second, probably good to focus on hospitalizations at this point (testing has been fairly flat over the last few weeks, but increasing, so hard to look at cases). Hospitalizations are trending up in Wisconsin, slightly. Cases are also trending up over the last couple weeks, slightly (testing has been fairly steady over the last two weeks, so cases probably are increasing slightly). Deaths lag by about 2-3 weeks at least, so not good to look at them as a metric for recent success.

COVID-19: Hospital Capabilities - Wisconsin

You can look at the IHME page (be a little careful about them in general, but you can still take good info from the visualizations), and see that the new cases and confirmed cases are converging in response to more testing. If you find more infections you'll have less spread.

IHME | COVID-19 Projections - Wisconsin

So, extremely, extremely unlikely that a change in the virus has anything to do with it. Remember, we have nearly complete control over what this virus does! It can't just do whatever it wants! If we decide to effectively eliminate it, we can effectively eliminate it. If we decide we want to have an open economy while simultaneously reducing infection burden, we can do that too, if we take appropriate measures to accomplish that.

Of course, if we just open things up again without taking appropriate public health measures, that won't end well. But important to realize that there are tens of thousands of public health workers (and more every day!) working every day in this country to drive down infection levels and stop the spread, as we come back online. It's not just magically getting better.

Test and trace, appropriately scaled to disease burden, is a mitigation/suppression measure, and brings down Rt!

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

The authors retracted the paper. Apparently the authors did not understand the concept of LOD (limit of detection).
ACP Journals

No surprises there. People should wear goggles/faceshield as well in higher risk environments. There are some new studies out there of health care workers that suggest they are an important measure (hopefully the new study will stand up to scientific scrutiny - but it makes sense that they would help - even though @SageBrush put me on ignore for suggesting such a thing (he only believes in masks I guess, and at the time I didn't realize he was a doctor and questioned his claim that the eyes have no connection to the nose)).

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31142-9/fulltext

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

News flash (not really): Temperature checks won't be very effective. Hopefully Tesla is following their playbook and has a bunch of other checks in place as well (along with mandatory masking of course). Redundancy of checks & control measures is important to limit risk here (and the risk in Alameda County is substantial given the disease burden and the factory size).

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0916-2.pdf

Hopefully they have disabled all drinking fountains at the Tesla factory, and for the bathrooms allow just one person at a time, have disabled automatic hand dryers, have ensured that all automatic paper towel dispensers are working correctly, and have installed sanitary (foot) door openers on all restroom doors. I didn't see these items in their playbook but I might have missed them.

 

[jerry33]

No surprises there. People should wear goggles/faceshield as well in higher risk environments. There are some new studies out there of health care workers that suggest they are an important measure (hopefully the new study will stand up to scientific scrutiny - but it makes sense that they would help - even though @SageBrush put me on ignore for suggesting such a thing (he only believes in masks I guess)).

I assume that masks plus face shields would help the most. I can't see face shields alone being particularly effective--at least not the kind of face shields I envision with just a curved plastic front and no sealing. Worn in conjunction with a mask the outgoing air would be deflected mostly downwards, limiting the spread from the wearer and would help keep air away from the mask adding a bit more protection than just a mask alone. No idea how much more protection though.