More interesting data regarding Covid

[+ stevenkesslar]

For those trying to figure out the Covid19 death rate, the newest from the CDC with a LOWER figure range and number:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/05/fact-check-cdc-estimates-covid-19-death-rate-0-26/5269331002/

 

COVID-19 Pandemic Planning Scenarios

 

That's the May CDC guidance, which is hyperlinked in the USA Today article. As USA Today notes, some of the data deniers are taking what they see as a victory lap. They are saying this wasn't such a big deal after all. I guess some people forgot that 110,000 people have died, which caused the extraordinary step of lockdowns to stop the exponential growth of the virus. And that 1,000+ people a day are still dying. And that while it may get better, it may also get worse.

 

Part of the good news to me right now is that the grown ups now get to deal with the data more wisely. Which is to say corporate America. As well as small business across America. They all have two survival issues to worry about: physical survival, as in not dying of COVID-19; and economic survival, as in not dying from the ongoing market lock down in consumer demand. So they have every reason to get this right, and to make the numbers go down. Because if the numbers stay where they are, or go up, many of these businesses will be dead by the end of the year.

 

At the high end of the CDC range, 1 %, that would be 3.3 million dead Americans, potentially. (The New York antibody study, one of the largest in the world, suggests a death rate of close to 1 % in New York City.) Even if you take 0.26 %, we're still in the ballpark of 750,000 potential US deaths.

Whatever the number of actual dead, the bigger horror for most businesses is probably their own survival. I posted on another thread one recent survey about the broad lock down in consumer demand. In many of these categories, like going to a movie or an amusement park, a majority say they'd be "very uncomfortable" doing that now. Even on one of the core activities people felt more comfortable with - eating out - 40 % say they'd feel "very uncomfortable" doing that now, as opposed to only 12 % that say they feel "very comfortable". Other surveys I've seen ask people when they might feel comfortable - one month? six months? a year? The best answer seems to be months from now.

 

What we're experiencing now is not unlike March, when people started to first figure out what was going on. They just stopped buying, traveling, shopping, and eating out. It's a broad consumer lock down. So it is an existential threat to businesses across America.

 

Even the good news reinforces this deep lack of interest in consuming on the part of consumers, which will continue to cripple and destroy many businesses. Maybe an unemployment rate of "only" 13 % is a victory. But here's a telling figure from one news report:

 

The biggest gains took place in the leisure and hospitality industry, which added a staggering 1.2 million jobs last month. In April, the industry -- the hardest hit by the virus outbreak -- lost 7.5 million jobs.

 

Do the math. That's five steps backward, one step forward. If the underlying health problem were solved, at least we would know that consumers will be back, sooner rather than later. But the virus problem is not solved. Those 7.5 million jobs won't be back when demand is down 25 % or 50 %, which most of these surveys suggest it is for many core consumer-driven activities.

 

It's too soon to know whether Germany or South Korea or Australia can lure consumers back to consuming. The initial trends suggest that the countries I just named figured out that stopping the virus from killing people and stopping the virus from killing businesses is basically the same thing.

 

This Bloomberg article spells out how in sector after sector - hotels, airlines, restaurants - an "ugly Summer" is looming. Some part of the picture is that some of these "new" jobs were furloughed workers for businesses that got PPP loans. Many PPP loans subsidize paying employees, whether there is organic demand for them or not. I think the original idea was to build a bridge to the other side. Even in countries like Germany and Italy and Spain where cases are down 95 % or so, demand is not simply roaring back. In the US, we still have a much bigger challenge. Those PPP loans don't last forever. So if we don't get the virus under control, we'll likely have a massive and ongoing demand problem.

 

I think the verdict is in globally that the single most important factor, and the single biggest success, is countless individuals who changed their behavior to beat the virus. But that behavior change includes a broad and deep lockdown on most consumer demand. (Amazon is doing well, of course.) So I'm counting on businesses to collectively try to figure out how to avoid their own demise.

 

I'm going to do a separate post on testing and contact tracing. But here's a question with an answer that surprised me:

 

Name the two US states with the highest number of government contact tracers per 100,000 state residents.

 

North Dakota has the most, with 46 paid contact tracers per 100,000 residents. South Dakota is second, with 40 paid contact tracers per 100,000 state residents. California, by comparison, has 11 tracers per 100,000 residents.

 

There are two distinct COVID-19 problems: 1) it's a senior citizen death machine, and 2) it's a massive workforce challenge for employers. In North and South Dakota, it's a workforce issue in places like meat packing factories. When you have to shut down your business because hundreds of workers are becoming sick, or even dying, I suspect that makes corporations like contact tracers real quick.

 

Maybe businesses could solve the problem by testing all their workers regularly. In the US, we don't have the test kits. And even if we did, that doesn't stop a factory worker from showing up at work not knowing she has the virus, because her husband picked it up at church.

 

Data deniers like to argue that COVID-19 is not that big a deal, since maybe 1 in 3 infected people don't even have symptoms. I think that is what makes it hell for meat packing plants and offices across America. How do you even know who is getting people sick? I have to imagine companies across North and South Dakota are hoping that these contract tracers are skilled and quick enough to keep the virus out of their workplace.

 

North Dakota had one of the largest reductions in cases of any state in the last two weeks: a 60 % decrease. South Dakota's trend was flat in the last two weeks. But that follows a huge reduction in new cases after a bunch of outbreaks at factories in the Spring. In the US, I think it's too early to tell whether contact tracing is working. It's likely helping, based on initial data I'll put in a different post. The key point is that this is a primary tool that seems to help employers to catch infections early. Ideally before it gets on the factory floor and makes hundreds of employees sick.

 

Which leads to one final set of data, if we are doing a CDC to CDC comparison to talk about how businesses are still fucked:

 

Estimated Influenza Illnesses, Medical visits, Hospitalizations, and Deaths in the United States — 2017–2018 influenza season

 

Those are comparable rates of illness, hospitalization and death for the 2017-2018 flu season. You can look at any year for the last decade on that link. But I picked that year because about 60,000 people died, making it the worst flu season in the last decade.

 

The numbers are not even in the same ballpark, if you look at this through the eyes of any corporation with lots of middle-aged employees. The hospitalization rate for the flu in the worst year for people aged 50 to 65 was just about 1 % of everybody ill. With COVID-19, the estimated hospitalization rate is 4.5 %. So instead of 140,000 actual hospitalized people aged 50 to 65 with the flu in 2017-2018, we might have 750,000 with COVID-19. And since there is no vaccine or immunity from past infections, like with the flu, we're not talking about 13 % of the population getting infected, like in 2017-2018. With COVID-19, the sky's the limit. In the factories where this actually happened in North and South Dakota, it spread quickly and broadly and silently. So if this were allowed to spread, I think it's safe to say we could have at least ten times as many hospitalizations of middle-aged workers as we did in the worst flu year of the last decade. This is not good news for any employer in America.

 

Of course, the more stories people hear about this happening in factories or offices or schools near them, the more it reinforces the broad and deep consumer lock down that is going to kill many businesses across America. So it is a perfect storm. And despite what fortunately turned out to be better than expected jobs numbers this month, we are nowhere near the end of this problem. We don't even really know if we are still at the beginning. So whatever the data deniers say moving forward, I'm more optimistic that corporations and all businesses will take the numbers as an existential threat. They will have to figure out quickly how to contain the virus in order to prosper. Or even to just survive.

Edited June 7, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[RealAvalon]

Canada has two separate pandemics going on. There is one in Ontario and Quebec, and there is a different one in the rest of the country. Ontario has been recording about 400 new cases a day for the last number of weeks. BC has had about 1 new case a day for the last couple of weeks, the Maritimes a few and Albert, Manitoba and Saskatchewan only a few as well.

 

Part of this has to do with the nature of Canadian federalism, how much (under the constitutional division of powers) the federal government can independently initiate actions, and how much has to be negotiated with the provinces which can be time consuming.

Edited June 7, 2020 by RealAvalon

[+ stevenkesslar]

States Nearly Doubled Plans For Contact Tracers Since NPR Surveyed Them 10 Days Ago

May 7, 2020

 

That article is a month old. But it gives one of the best overviews I've read of what is happening in the US with contact tracing. As the headline suggests, the idea is becoming more popular.

 

It's too early to get a clear read on whether it is working. I think the best evidence so far is anecdotal. I was surprised and delighted when I learned that North and South Dakota have the most contact tracers of any state relative to population. Those people are pragmatists. As I said in the post above, tracers went into areas where hundreds of workers were sick, and meat packing plants had to be shut down. We now know for a fact they were able to trace the spread of the infection and contain it. The closed factories have reopened. To the degree that employers and workers see this as something that actually makes it possible to safely go to work, that's a good thing.

 

Those two states probably have relatively high numbers of contact tracers because they see it that way. And if they see it that way, that is consistent with what contact tracing has done for decades with other infectious diseases, from SARS to all sorts of STDs.

 

Before I say more about what states are doing on contract tracing, there's two other strong impressions I have that put contact tracing in context.

 

The first is that the single biggest driver of change has been a massive change in human behavior all over the planet. That started before any government lock down. But I think it's clear the lock downs reinforced the change in two ways. First, they interrupted the exponential growth of the virus. Instead of doubling every 3 or 4 or 7 days, the virus went to a plateau. And in the worst hit places, from Italy to Spain to New York, the caseloads went into steep decline. All the places I just named have 90 %+ fewer new daily cases now. Second, as the lockdowns end, individual behavior is not going back to normal. Nobody wants to get or spread this virus. So I think the lockdowns were also a massive global medical "time out". The evidence suggests most of us learned our lesson. We are not going to behave in a way that makes it easy for the virus to infect us, or those we love or work or play with.

 

Unfortunately, for anyone who owns a shopping mall, a restaurant, a cinema, or a sports arena, it also means consumers are going to avoid you for now. So people may live. But your business may be dead in three months.

 

My second strong impression is that the countries that made testing and contact tracing a priority from the start have outperformed other countries. South Korea, Australia, Germany, and Iceland are four examples of countries that hammered "test, trace, treat" hard, and effectively. Relative to population, Germany had about the same caseload as the US at their peak. They've reduced their caseload by about 95 %. The US has reduced ours by one third. Better use of testing and contact tracing probably has something to do with it.

 

The first and the second points are related. Dr. Fauci has said from the start that contact tracing works best when it is focused on a limited numbers of people. The CDC definitely screwed up in January and February. Forgivably, no one knew that the virus was spreading through asymptomatic people. Less forgivably, the CDC totally botched test kits. The CDC now says the sheer volume of cases overwhelmed the CDC's infrastructure to do tracing, which worked far better on diseases like SARS. So when Germany crushed the virus through lockdowns, and brought daily caseloads from 7000 to 500 a day, it made the job of contact tracers much easier. The US still has 20,000 new cases a day. Whether that absolute number can be significantly reduced by contact tracing remains to be seen.

 

What U.S. States Are Ready To Test & Trace Today?

 

How We Reopen Safely

Tracking states as they make progress towards a new normal

 

Those are two websites I've been looking at for a month or so. The first is mostly about infrastructure: what is each state currently doing to test and trace new cases. It tells you the number of contact tracers in each state, both in absolute terms and relative to population. The second website puts contact tracing in a broader set of variables. It's one tool in a tool box. The second website is particularly useful because it shows you the short term trends in the last few weeks.

 

Right out of the box, this is NOT great news if you are an American that owns a business, or has a job you want to keep. COVID-19 cases are increasing in more states than they are decreasing. So when the former FDA says that COVID-19 is still on a slow boil all over America, and it wouldn't take a whole lot for it to start to boil over again, he is probably right. If the biggest problem for US business is that about half of US consumers prefer survival to things like shopping or traveling or eating out, that problem is NOT being solved right now. In states like California and Texas and Florida, the problem is slowly but surely getting worse. Is this the frog in the water that is slowly starting to boil? We don't know.

 

Having looked at this about once a week for the last month, my impression is that the states with more contact traces tend to be the ones that have stable or decreasing caseload. A lot of states are still getting the infrastructure in place. California is partway on a goal to 100,000 trained contact tracers. So I think the best conclusion right now is that in other countries this has definitely worked well, and in the US there are some promising signs.

 

Two weeks ago I counted 13 states that had had 25 % or higher increases in new cases in the last 14 days. Meanwhile, there were 14 states that had 25 % or more reductions in caseloads. Of the 13 states with substantially increasing news cases, only one had 10 or more contract tracers for every 100,000 residents. That state was California, with exactly 10 tracers per 100,000 residents. Of the 14 states with substantial decreases, 8 of the 14 had at least 10 contact tracers per 100,000 residents. The state with the most tracers two weeks ago was North Dakota, which had 46 tracers per 100,000 residents and had experienced a 25 % reduction in cases in the last two weeks.

 

I just did the same exercise again. This list is very fluid. So there are now 11 states with new cases that increased over 25 % in the last 14 days. Of those eleven, three have 10 or more contact tracers per 100,000 residents. California is again one of them. It now has 11 tracers per 100,000 residents, and a 34 % increase in cases in the last 14 days. There are now 12 states with new cases that decreased 25 % or more in the last four days. Of those 12 states, 6 have at least 10 contact tracers per 100,000 people. North Dakota is one of them, again. It still had 46 contact tracers per 100,000 residents. It's new caseload went down 60 % in the last two weeks.

 

On the face of it, the states with the highest numbers of increasing cases tend to be those with fewer or minimal contact tracing. The states with the highest number of decreasing cases tend to be those with the most contact tracers. I don't know that it's clear there's a causal relationship there. Anecdotally, it seems that way. Texas brags about how it sends in viral "SWAT teams" to find the virus, trace it, and kill it in factories. They may have a point.

 

There's a few important caveats.

 

The states with massively decreasingly caseloads are largely the ones that became morgues in April: New York, New Jersey, New England. Again, I think the single most important thing that has worked in the US, and globally, is massive changes in individual behavior. Government lockdowns may have reinforced those behavior changes. But they did not cause them. The consumer lock downs started weeks before the government lock downs. And now that the government lock downs are over, or ending, the evidence suggests that the consumer lock downs remain in place.

 

If you are a small business, there is a good chance you will die soon. The virus will kill you. It will kill you by killing your customers, or more likely scaring the shit out of them so that they stop being your customers until you are driven out of business. So the real survival problem for businesses is to figure out how to get consumers who are scared shitless about a virus to consume. Where these contact tracers are demonstrating they can come into towns in North Dakota or South Dakota and find the virus and kill it, people and businesses tend to like that. Is anyone surprised?

Whether that works across America, or whether it helps gradually reduce the consumer lockdowns completely remains to be seen.

 

I left off several states in those tallies above: Alaska, Vermont, and Montana. In percentage terms, all three states just had massive percentage increases in new cases. Alaska's caseload wet up 450 %. But, in reality, Alaska went from 2 cases to 13, Montana went from 2 to 8, and Vermont went from 3 to 7. That is in the entire state. All three states rely heavily on contact tracing. So while the percentages sound scary, the numbers sound good. It could mean that in Alaska the known cases went from 2 to 13 because tracers found a small cluster and contained it before it caused an outbreak. I don't know. But if those three states have a total of 28 cases, that is probably an argument for contact tracing - not against it.

Edited June 7, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[+ stevenkesslar]

Good news, and probably not so good news.

 

Reopening schools in Denmark did not worsen outbreak, data shows

 

Denmark reopened schools and day cares starting April 15th for younger children. It would make a tremendous difference if we could get US schools back up and running by Fall. I read somewhere that several hundred thousand of the "new" jobs created in the last jobs report were day care workers that were able to go back to work. Obviously, having day cares and schools open would make life much easier for working parents. Not to mention that it would be much better for the kids to be in school.

 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

 

At its peak, Denmark had 400 cases a day. If you do a crude adjustment for population, that would be equivalent to about 20,000 cases a day - about what we have in the US right now. By the time Denmark sent kids back to school, they were down to 200 cases a day, or what would be the equivalent of 10,000 new cases a day in the US.

 

Probably even more important, Denmark rolled out a universal testing and tracing program that they describe as an effort to find the virus and crush it in any places it is hiding. Here's a good story and a short CNN video about that:

 

Denmark increases testing, contact tracing to prevent second coronavirus wave

 

COPENHAGEN, May 12 (Reuters) - Denmark will significantly increase testing for COVID-19 and put a contact tracing system in place to prevent a second wave of the coronavirus, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Tuesday.

 

“If the spread reignites, we need to know in time. This is why we need an effective tracing of the virus spreading,” Frederiksen told reporters.

 

“We need to isolate the sick, so we can break the infection chains without having to close down society again,” she said.

 

And the video

 

This country is rolling out universal Covid-19 testing

 

 

In the last week, Denmark has had anywhere from 25 to 65 new cases a day. So they haven't crushed it completely. But they have demonstrated, so far, that they can keep it contained. Their rhetoric suggests that both Denmark and Germany now think they practically eliminate the spread of the virus in their populations.

 

I haven't seen anything about Denmark, or any other country, that suggests children can't spread the virus. The CDC website says that children "can still pass this virus onto others who may be at higher risk, including older adults and people who have serious underlying medical conditions". So the most logical reason to believe children in Denmark did not get COVID-19 or pass it along by going to school is that the pandemic was already being curbed. And universal testing and tracing in Denmark was keeping it from spreading.

 

And therein lies the potentially not so good news for the US.

 

Just 6 states meet these basic criteria to reopen and stay safe

 

That article was originally published April 24th, although it says it was updated a few days ago. I post it because it shows why we could have problems. Two weeks have passed, and it's not clear we are in any better shape then we were two weeks earlier. We still have about 20,000 new cases a day. One of the states named as making "strong progress", Kentucky, actually had a 79 percent increases in new cases - from 126 to 226 - in the last two weeks since that article was written.

 

If, by the Fall, we have fewer then 10,000 cases a day, and we have rolled out universal testing and contact tracing in every state, we would be in the same position Denmark was on April 15th. If Denmark could get to that position in one month, we should be able to do it in two or three. There's every reason to think that with those tools in place, and a public that continues to abide by the rules we learned over the last few months, that we should have the same positive outcome as Denmark.

 

If, on the other hand, we've gradually ramped back up to 30,000 or more cases a day, and testing and tracing is spotty at best, sending kids back to school would seem to be like throwing millions of pieces of kindling on a barely contained wildfire.

 

In the middle of the lockdowns, many people made excellent points about how in the long run it was harmful to keep kids out of schools. True. In the short term, of course, it harmful for children to lose their parents. A few children whose parents were NYC police officers did lose their parents. There's no rational argument that starts with the idea that we'd somehow been better off if we had done nothing and let every city and town in America become like the morgue New York City did. Versions of that did happen in states like North Dakota and South Dakota. It could have and likely would have happened everywhere.

 

So I hope everybody who wants to see kids back in school this Fall is unified around the idea that we have to have testing and tracing ramped up to a high standard in every state by this Fall. That is what Denmark is doing. And North Dakota. And South Dakota. And the same things that keep kids from bringing COVID-19 home from school are the things that prevent meat packers from spreading it at work, and ending up in a hospital, or Granny getting it in a nursing home, and ending up dead.

 

I think people who still see this as a "health versus wealth" debate are ignoring pretty much every basic principle of consumer-based capitalism. We live, and thrive, in a market economy. That market economy started to shut down long before any government ordered it to. And it is still substantially shut down now. And for the foreseeable future.

 

The language being used in Denmark suggests the strategy has almost as much to do with public confidence as it does with childrens' educations. The language is that they want to track the virus down and kill it in any small cluster where it is hiding. I think that is a very good idea. Apart from the value of kids being able to go to school, and parents being able to go to work, I think people seeing kids go to school in the Fall without it ending up in another horrific outbreak would be a big step toward restoring consumer confidence. But if we do that without being prepared in the way that countries like Denmark or Germany were, we are asking for lots of trouble.

Edited June 8, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[+ stevenkesslar]

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

 

Since I was on Denmark, I decided to take a look at Sweden for the first time in weeks.

 

The case for herd immunity is looking worse and worse.

 

Denmark has created the conditions where it appears to be safe for kids to go back to school, COVID-19-free.

 

Sweden has passed their old threshold of new daily infections. They used to have at most about 750 new cases a day. In the last week on a number of days they've had 1000 new cases a day.

 

The number of deaths in Sweden, relative to population, is 4.5 times higher than Denmark. Denmark has had 102 deaths for every 1 million residents. Sweden has had 465 deaths for every 1 million residents.

 

Given that the virus has been beaten back by about 95 % in Denmark, and it has just grown by about one-third in Sweden, the death numbers in Sweden will look much worse a month from now.

 

And a month ago Anders was saying they would perhaps attain herd immunity in a matter of weeks. I guess not yet.

[+ stevenkesslar]

Coronavirus shutdowns prevented 60 million infections in the USA, study says

 

A separate study, also published Monday in the journal Nature, found such lockdown methods may have prevented more than 3 million deaths across 11 European countries.

"The lockdown measures have served an important role in our society to prevent and mitigate unabated spread of the virus probably saving many millions of lives in doing so," said Michael Mina, assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

 

He's concerned the millions of confirmed cases prevented by social distancing restrictions in the spring may reappear in the fall. Most seasonal coronaviruses thrive in the fall, then begin to settle down in February and March.

 

A pretty amazing number. If you buy even a fraction of that number, the US and the world did a pretty amazing job of dodging a bullet. Or more like dodging a whole bunch of nuclear bombs. At least so far.

 

As a reminder, the number of known cases in New York went from only about 100 on March 14th by 11,500 on April 4th. That's in the ballpark of a 25 % increase a day.

 

If New York had done everything the same, but waited one week longer, that suggests that 11,500 cases would have continued to grow exponentially to about 40,000 new cases a day just 7 days later. Is that possible? Sure. In a state with close to 20 million people, I'd bet COVID-19 could have found 40,000 people to infect in one day in New York at the exponential rate it was spreading. And letting it go unchecked one more week, and quadrupling the number of infected, could have resulted in 80,000 deaths in New York alone by now.

 

California's planning was based on the idea that over 20 million citizens could be infected in a matter of months, if we simply allowed the virus to grow completely unchecked at the exponential rate it was growing.

 

Several weeks ago there was a bunch of utterly ridiculous articles arguing that the lock downs had failed. It was based on the idea that the rate of growth of the virus was lower after some states reopened than it was when they were in lock down. Hopefully just reading what I just wrote you've already detected the huge mathematical and logical fallacy in an argument like that. We had a virus growing at an exponential rate of maybe 25 % a day. So the lock down quickly slowed that down. And if you average out the rate of growth during the lock down, it's hopefully going to go from growing more quickly, to growing less quickly. Hopefully, by the time the lock down ends, you have dramatically lowered the rate of growth of the virus. In other words, if the rate of growth is lower after the lock down ends than in the middle of the lock down, you actually accomplished your goal. That was actually the point of the lockdown

 

New York

 

That chart shows a best guess of how the infection rate has actually been working out in New York. It quickly ran up to 3 - meaning each person infected 3 others - and gradually got down to 1 in the first week of April. Especially in the hardest hit states like New York and New Jersey, it worked pretty much like it was supposed to. The exponential growth was stopped, and then gradually shifted into a decline in new daily cases.

 

If the end of lock downs was going to cause a huge spike in cases, or an immediate return to exponential growth like what we had in March and early April, I think we'd know that by now. So I think the other very good news in this is that humans were able to collectively alter their behavior to prevent a far more horrific outcome. And so far, we seem to have managed to keep those behavior changes in place. That said, I think one of the biggest problems in the US right now is we're not fully using the testing and tracing tools that have been in the toolbox of most other large industrialized nations. I think that's hindering us from achieving the kinds of reductions in new cases most other countries have.

 

I think that also may be a good way of thinking about how the consumer-driven lock down is still hindering the US economy, and will continue to do so.

 

There's the theory that at any given moment in time, the stock market is always right. Because you have all these individual buy and sell decisions based on massive amounts of information by millions of market participants priced into the system.

 

When I see that number 60 million, it makes me think a similar thought. If it's true that 60 million Americans were at risk of getting infected, and avoided doing so, that may be priced into our economy right now as well. It is a fact that a massive consumer lockdown started in late March, and rolled quickly through places where the virus was close by - like Seattle, then New York and San Francisco. Dinner reservations were cancelled, plane tickets were refunded. Many people in Florida were staying within a mile of their home by late March, cell phone GPS data shows.

 

Something similar is happening right now, I think. You can say people are just being irrational or overly fearful. But most people actually don't feel that way. And 60 million potential infections suggests all these fears may in fact have been well-placed. So if we want to dig ourselves out of the economic hole that survival required us to jump into, we might need to be clearer about whether or not this is going to continue to be a huge drag on the economy and employment.

 

My read of even the "good news" jobs report is that we restored some percentage of jobs temporarily lost when everything was closed for business. But I think the "V-shaped recovery" crowd is delusional if they think it's now just smooth sailing from here, without really altering the perceptions of the tens of millions of Americans who still see the virus as as big a threat as it was two months ago.

[xyz48B]

The WHO said today that asymptomatic spread is “very rare.” That’s a change from before.

[RealAvalon]

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

 

Since I was on Denmark, I decided to take a look at Sweden for the first time in weeks.

 

The case for herd immunity is looking worse and worse.

 

Denmark has created the conditions where it appears to be safe for kids to go back to school, COVID-19-free.

 

Sweden has passed their old threshold of new daily infections. They used to have at most about 750 new cases a day. In the last week on a number of days they've had 1000 new cases a day.

 

The number of deaths in Sweden, relative to population, is 4.5 times higher than Denmark. Denmark has had 102 deaths for every 1 million residents. Sweden has had 465 deaths for every 1 million residents.

 

Given that the virus has been beaten back by about 95 % in Denmark, and it has just grown by about one-third in Sweden, the death numbers in Sweden will look much worse a month from now.

 

And a month ago Anders was saying they would perhaps attain herd immunity in a matter of weeks. I guess not yet.

I understand, and appreciate, an intellectual curiosity of how Sweden is dealing with this pandemic, but on a practical level, what difference does it make to Americans what Sweden is doing to address COVID? In relationship with the USA is it relevant? (This isn't direct 'at' @stevenkesslar, you just happened to bring it up again.)

 

Whatever the Swedish numbers are, good, bad or indifferent, it's a completely different social context that bares little resemblance to the USA, and the health outcomes would not be transferable in any useful, practical or realistic way.

 

Does the USA have universally available 'free' quality health care?

Does the USA have long standing sick leave provisions that sick people could use to stay home from work (and still eat and pay rent) and not spread the virus?

Does the USA have a coordinated national public health system, that specifically targeted national resources to the most vulnerable population groups?

Does the USA have a work force made up of high quality jobs where a large number of people can stay home and work?

Does the USA have a population with an almost universal sense of the common good rather than individual - and will wear their masks without being resentful?

 

I venture to say that its five no's to those questions. So whether the Swedish model is working or not, is irrelevant. It's not possible to pick out one piece of the Swedish COVID response, without embracing all of the public health COVID realities listed above.

 

It's an apple and orange comparison.

Edited June 9, 2020 by RealAvalon

[Todd Jenkins]

The WHO said today that asymptomatic spread is “very rare.” That’s a change from before.

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/asymptomatic-coronavirus-patients-arent-spreading-new-infections-who-says.html?fbclid=IwAR1YF9KgRIiXgZEFUqvBrein81ryHG_AAACKV9KsHHunxhZkmwxm1EGA_iE

 

Yep, here's the article. To me, this is VERY good news!!

[xyz48B]

@Todd Jenkins – of course all the doomsayers who were just last week screeching “Trust the WHO!” are cautioning to wait.

 

Remember the meteoritic spike in cases we were inevitably going to see two weeks after Memorial Day, too? I’m still waiting for that and it’s been two weeks…

[+ keroscenefire]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/asymptomatic-coronavirus-patients-arent-spreading-new-infections-who-says.html?fbclid=IwAR1YF9KgRIiXgZEFUqvBrein81ryHG_AAACKV9KsHHunxhZkmwxm1EGA_iE

 

Yep, here's the article. To me, this is VERY good news!!

 

Yeah that is a very interesting statement from the WHO. Apparently it's based on contact tracing. An infected and symptomatic individual gives COVID-19 to someone, but that person is asymptomatic, they are only rarely infecting other people they contact and they are basing that on contacting those individuals and finding them COVID-19 negative.

 

I mean, it makes sense. We know that COVID is primarily spread through aerosol droplets especially from coughing and sneezing. If someone isn't coughing or sneezing because they are asymptomatic, then yeah they probably aren't spreading the disease too much. But you do also wonder if some of this is also because people are generally being more careful..they are wearing masks and washing hands and not being around people for a very long time.

 

The WHO is also making a distinction between "asymptomatic" and "presymptomatic." Asymptomatic people truly do not appear to be spreading COVID very much, but those who are maybe just beginning to have symptoms can and are spreading the disease. There might be people who are maybe just having a headache or slight fatigue who end up having COVID and are spreading it around before they get more sick. So definitely anyone who is feeling even just a little sick should consider staying home and getting tested, especially now as it becomes more available.

[xyz48B]

I wish I could stay home every time I had a headache…

[+ keroscenefire]

@Todd Jenkins – of course all the doomsayers who were just last week screeching “Trust the WHO!” are cautioning to wait.

 

Remember the meteoritic spike in cases we were inevitably going to see two weeks after Memorial Day, too? I’m still waiting for that and it’s been two weeks…

 

Actually there have been some really big outbreaks and spikes in COVID in more than a dozen states since Memorial Day. 14 states and Puerto Rico have seen their highest-ever 7-day averages of COVID cases. Mostly in rural areas in the South and along the west coast and southwest.

[+ keroscenefire]

I wish I could stay home every time I had a headache…

 

Well this is why from a policy perspective, it'd be a great idea to have paid sick leave in every job and encourage people to work from home if possible.

[RealAvalon]

@Todd Jenkins – of course all the doomsayers who were just last week screeching “Trust the WHO!” are cautioning to wait.

 

Remember the meteoritic spike in cases we were inevitably going to see two weeks after Memorial Day, too? I’m still waiting for that and it’s been two weeks…

It's amazing how much they/we are learning about the virus, how much more we know and how much more we still need to know about it. I found it very interesting today, the explanation from our Medical Health Officer that the virus mutes same as the flu, but because it mutates at a slower rate that strains of the virus can be traced back to their source. So there was genomic testing done of virus samples from all the provincial cases to identify the various stains in circulation. Public health was then able to trace back where our location infections/outbreaks originated. In our case it was mostly Europe and the East Coast, because the Chinese strain that arrived first was better contained by us initially.

Edited June 9, 2020 by RealAvalon

[xyz48B]

@keroscenefire – it depends what data you look at, a situation that is infuriatingly confusing. John Hopkins Data

 

“Numbers don’t lie but liars use numbers.” You can make data say what you want it to say.

 

I thank God that the data released by Massachusetts has been trending positively for some time now.

 

Also – better healthcare is a must.

[Guest]

Actually there have been some really big outbreaks and spikes in COVID in more than a dozen states since Memorial Day. 14 states and Puerto Rico have seen their highest-ever 7-day averages of COVID cases. Mostly in rural areas in the South and along the west coast and southwest.

Well, I also heard on the NBC Evening News tonight that some states had "spikes" in Covid-19 cases, although he quickly added "Although that may just be because they're testing more." First of all, what's important, especially when testing becomes many times more available, are not the diagnosed "cases," but rather hospitalizations and, even more importantly, of course, deaths. Please look at the hard data, even those just for "cases":

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/states-reopen-map-coronavirus.html

This is what a "spike" means:

We have 50 states to look at. In which state is there a spike? Not one. Right. Some have a bit of an increase in diagnoses, some a decrease. I heard there was rally with 50,000 walking shoulder to shoulder in LA, one of the relatively harder-hit areas. We'll soon find out if that will be a disaster, and if so, how bad. Every time I hear a reporter state that there's a "spike" of cases in a state, I feel like punching him in the face 50 times (not that I would ever entertain doing such a thing, of course). Meanwhile, tens of millions are losing jobs, housing, health insurance, etc., because some officials are not looking at data and basing their decisions on facts rather than disproven suppositions.

[chirob]

Actually there have been some really big outbreaks and spikes in COVID in more than a dozen states since Memorial Day. 14 states and Puerto Rico have seen their highest-ever 7-day averages of COVID cases. Mostly in rural areas in the South and along the west coast and southwest.

Most of those are from the U.S. taking in patients from Mexico. Not Americans.

[xyz48B]

@Unicorn – How silly of you to want to contextualize! And most of all remember all these efforts were originally about keeping hospitals from being overwhelmed – not escaping the virus outright...

[+ Charlie]

After reading the article posted above, I then went on to another linked article on cnbc, in which the WHO a little later walked back the claim that Van Kerkhove had made in the interview about spread by asymptomatic spreaders being very rare. Trying to keep up with these things is really difficult.

[xyz48B]

Nobody knows shit. That’s the take away from all this for me.

[RealAvalon]

Most of those are from the U.S. taking in patients from Mexico. Not Americans.

Hopefully the Canada/USA border closure will continue past June 21st. Immediate family members can now cross as of today, in addition to essential trade and medical staff going to the USA to work.

[RealAvalon]

After reading the article posted above, I then went on to another linked article on cnbc, in which the WHO a little later walked back the claim that Van Kerkhove had made in the interview about spread by asymptomatic spreaders being very rare. Trying to keep up with these things is really difficult.

New virus. A lot more to learn. Policies have to adapt to the increasing scientific knowledge being amassed.

[Todd Jenkins]

After reading the article posted above, I then went on to another linked article on cnbc, in which the WHO a little later walked back the claim that Van Kerkhove had made in the interview about spread by asymptomatic spreaders being very rare. Trying to keep up with these things is really difficult.

it's not difficult, IT IS FUCKING EXHAUSTING!!!!!!!!!!!! This expert says this, but wait, they really meant this. And this study says this while this one says this!! WE WON'T BE ABLE TO HAVE A NORMAL LIFE UNTIL 2024, but wait, NYC is very likely / possible going to open bars / nightclubs in phase 3 which may start in JULY. I AM EXHAUSTED, STRESSED, DEPRESSED and FUCKING OVER IT!!

[+ keroscenefire]

Well, I also heard on the NBC Evening News tonight that some states had "spikes" in Covid-19 cases, although he quickly added "Although that may just be because they're testing more." First of all, what's important, especially when testing becomes many times more available, are not the diagnosed "cases," but rather hospitalizations and, even more importantly, of course, deaths. Please look at the hard data, even those just for "cases":

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/states-reopen-map-coronavirus.html

This is what a "spike" means:

We have 50 states to look at. In which state is there a spike? Not one. Right. Some have a bit of an increase in diagnoses, some a decrease. I heard there was rally with 50,000 walking shoulder to shoulder in LA, one of the relatively harder-hit areas. We'll soon find out if that will be a disaster, and if so, how bad. Every time I hear a reporter state that there's a "spike" of cases in a state, I feel like punching him in the face 50 times (not that I would ever entertain doing such a thing, of course). Meanwhile, tens of millions are losing jobs, housing, health insurance, etc., because some officials are not looking at data and basing their decisions on facts rather than disproven suppositions.

Did you even look at the link of my article. It specifically says that in 14 states (and Puerto Rico) they are having the most COVID-cases then they have ever had. Some states are having more than 1,000 cases a day for the last week including Florida and California. Arizona is running out of hospital beds and ventilators and has declared an emergency for its hospital system. North Carolina has reached a record for the number of COVID hospitalizations, so has Texas. It's definitely true that in many parts of the country, things are getting better and it may be appropriate to loosen some of the social distancing rules in certain areas. But if you are truly following the data, then you it strongly suggests many areas should not be opening up (and for what it's worth I 100% support things like increased unemployment benefits, so people don't lose their housing/health insurance, etc.)