Georgia's numbers are mostly false. The hospitalizations are going down slightly (I work there), but the numbers are false. They are counting antibody tests as COVID tests (which are always negative for COVID) and moving the test date days after the tests for silly reasons.

Well when the president says it's a hoax, how are citizens to take it seriously?

We're also testing 300K a day. I think Spain has pretty much stopped significant testing. If we stopped testing, we would stop seeing new cases too. The more you test, the more cases you will find:

Total COVID-19 tests - Our World in Data

According to the data I could find, these are numbers from 5/27.

Tests per thousand people:

USA - 45.04
Spain - 47.51
Italy - 59.66

edit: The data for yesterday doesn't include Spain, but Italy was over 100 tests per confirmed case while the US was at 17.59.

Spain and Italy also have about 1/5th of the population each in land masses smaller than several single states.

I think a large part of the problem is that people have migrated to one of two extremes in their line of thinking about this. Either that it's a hoax and we should do nothing, or that we should never leave our houses again. In my opinion as other countries have demonstrated, there's a workable middle ground here. Both sides need to give in a bit, leave politics out of it and just follow science and reason. We don't need to lock down to a large extent maybe, if we also follow social distancing procedures to an extent in public. In America right now on any issue it seems too many people migrate to extreme positions on any issue, and ignore the middle ground.

My point was about the reduction in cases. Places like Italy and Spain have seriously slowed down on testing (which is going to cause a pretty big reduction in new cases).

Italy has done 300,000 tests in the past 7 days and Spain has done even less. The US has done 3.3 million. So when I see this:
A lot of that has to do with how much testing you are doing. If we dropped to 30-40K tests a day, there's a chance we'd be in the 800-1,500 range, but I wouldn't feel any better.

If the number of tests per thousand is roughly equal and the number of tests per positive is way different, that doesn't say that the difference is just population.

Italy has mostly gotten the virus under control outside of Lombardy. Likely the reason they don't need to test as much anymore. Same with Spain.

Germany was crushing everyone in testing but is slowing down because they have gotten the virus under control too.

Testing can be a misleading stat at times. If you don't have sick people, you don't need to test as much.

Come on. Basically nobody is saying never leave our houses, and to be fair the polling suggests the number of hoaxers is small, too. Most people(60-70% depending on the poll) say they want to reopen with an eye towards safety.

And That's how I feel as well. I guess let me clarify as I was being a bit hyperbolic, the narrative is being pushed to play two sides against each other in my area. One side says open with 0 restrictions, my liberty and all that. They characterize the other as saying we should never go out. The reality is more middle grounded. I happen to fall into the category of re-open safely and take precautions to minimize infections. In my own area people have kind of gravitated towards extremes and it's getting pretty nasty. The most concerning thing I'm seeing is that those who believe in Science and reason are being vilified within my community.

Yeah I don't see anyone saying don't leave your house unless you are highly vulnerable. For the most part it's keep some social distancing and wear a mask and we're all good.

Sorry to be blunt, but that is just not true. The US doing more now ? Yes. Spain or Italy not increasing as much now anymore ? Obviously. But doing less or "pretty much stopped significant testing" is simply false.

Italy is doing roughly 60-70k tests every day recently with the average per day going up if anything, was about 50ish 2-3 weeks ago and 30k in early April.

COVID-19 pandemic in Italy - Wikipedia

(Statistics >> dails covid cases by region >> far right on the table is total tests). And yes, they use the numbers straight from the italian health ministry.

Spain release that number weekly, next should come tomorrow but here are the last 3 weeks

15-21st May = 302k
8-14 = 294k
1st to 7th = 274k

https://www.mscbs.gob.es/gabinete/notasPrensa.do (press notes from 9th, 16th, 23rd, PDF at bottom of each)

They did nowhere near that in March or April

Quick note on Worldometer:

they fuck up a lot when taking data from non-english language sources. Sometimes they take PCR + Antibody tests, sometimes they mix up critical condidition by adding Ventilated patients to ICU (so "3000 ICU, of which 2000 ventilated" becomes 5000) and for France the active cases are bogus because the french don't keep track of recoveries outside hospitals. So Worldometer takes total cases, subtracts hospital discharges and deaths. Which leaves some 60k that never got admitted to a hospital in the first place.

Cases and deaths usually line up, everything else is grain of salt territory when countries don't release english language information.

My answer was in response to the idea that Italy and Spain are around 1,000 new cases a day and the US is at 15,000. The US is running close to 400K tests a day (which is about a week of Spain or Italy). Clearly Italy and Spain are seeing fewer cases (and running fewer tests), but it's not like they are at 1K and we are at 15K doing the same number of tests.

The current setup in the US is very regional. About 1/4 of the new cases and about 40% of the daily deaths are in the NE. You have a small pocket in Chicago that is still hot, but the rest of the US seems OK. Even places like Texas and California that are getting more cases (because of ramped up testing) have fairly small death numbers. 70% of the states have less than 200 deaths per million population. That's better than nearly every European country than Germany and on par with Canada. So, we are in an interesting time of much of the south, midwest and west being somewhat "safe" to move around in while we have hotspots in the NE and places like Chicago and Pittsburgh. It's an odd situation to be in as a country. What we need is to really social distance in these hotter areas over the next two months.

Pittsburgh has been good. Philadelphia on the other hand is a hot spot.

People's opinions on risks. See nice graphic in link.

https://www.politico.com/interactive...-is-safe-poll/

You literally said they find that much less than before mostly because they test less than before, because they seriously slowed down or almost stopped testing.
That does not invalidate your Points about the US, but it also absolutely false. They look harder and find less, so to speak.

And the european countries have those same few pockets with large parts of the country virtually case free despite testing every contact and doing series-testing in homes or even stuff like postal facilities or meat plants.
Be telling what happens when travel picks up now.

WHO guidance: Healthy people should wear masks only when 'taking care of' coronavirus patients

Follow the Science? :confused:

Did you even read that?

Seriously? Now the world, God, simulation, bad timeline, or whatever is just fucking with us

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKBN2351KV

Headline: "Monkeys steal coronavirus blood samples in India"


SI

Wasn't this the first scene of one of the newer Planet of the Apes movies?

I assume COVID makes monkeys super-smart and vicious and gives them the ability to enslave us.

Ah well, we had a good run.

Well at least we left them climate change to deal with :devil:

Dr Zaius already solved it!

Because I can never resist posting this:

I’ve always loved the line ‘From ChimpanA to ChimpanZ’. Genius :D

Edit: although after watching the clip that’s obviously from a different clip :confused:

The clip I posted is an edited version of the show focused on the Dr Zaius song.

Here's a clip with the line you love. (As do I)

That’s reassuring, I’m ‘self-medicating’ after burning my hand earlier, and was slightly confused without the extended clip!

Any word on when Wal Mart is planning on moving back towards a more normal operating schedule. Stores closing at 8:30 really leads to a time crunch.

Their operating schedule - and inability to manage pickup or delivery for most of the past couple months - here has pretty much taken them out of my routine entirely. I have my doubts it'll ever return in any serious way.

Saw something tonight I hadn't seen previously: a restaurant that couldn't quite get the alternate seating thing figured out.

Booths - table row - booths, a pretty standard set up. Everywhere I've seen before handles that the same way: think of it as "odd-numbered" booths in use, with tables in use on the "even-numbered" spaces (i.e. next to the unused booths)

Not this one, nope. They used the odd numbers on all three, skipping the evens on all three.

Not sure if that was to get them an extra table in each section or if it was simply not quite grasping the concept (they only reopened in the past few days, so it's still pretty new to them in practice)

And not opening until 7 sucks donkey balls. Especially since Sams is screwing its Plus members, too. (I can usually get in at 7. Now I have to wait until 9.)

Welp, one of the participants of the shit how Lake of the Ozarks party has tested positive for covid 19

Let the 2nd wave begin.

We've had very good luck with our pick-up orders at Wal-Mart, and I normally hate going to Wal-Mart.

Even DG closing at 9pm instead of 10 is majorly cramping my style.

Do we really want to encourage these retail stores to open earlier than 7am and close later than 8:30pm? I think the Europeans have it right where their stores have reasonable hours so their employees can have semi-normal working hours.

If you need to get a six-pack or baby formula or milk, plan better. Honestly, first world / North America problems.

Oh, that is not good.

We've had to deal with it periodically due to my 91 y/o mother-in-law's inability to grasp that Walmart is not the only place on the planet that stocks grocery items. WM is her ride-or-die.

The average lead time required for pickup here has been 2-3 full days, with some occasions having no available delivery in a 7-day window.

No other store in the area comes close to that (and I'm pretty sure we've done delivery from virtually every chain here at some point).

Absolutely.

It's a 24 hour world, and I expect retailers to live in that if they'd like to remain relevant and competitive. My patronage is significantly dependent on how convenient you make the opportunity for me to give you money. If it's not to my liking, I'll increasingly skip your store and have Amazon (et al) deliver it and they can largely rot afaic.

Not to mention plenty of people work hours that 7am-7pm for any shopping just won't work for them (think of people who work 12 hour shifts at hospitals).

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My SIL is a nurse and yes she does work long shifts but she works 3 or 4 days a week.

I get the convenience factor (and I certainly benefit from it) but do we really need my local grocery store, Waffle House etc. to be 24 x 7?

Rhetorical question - is the additional $X in sales/revenue really worth the cost of collective employees' family life? Majority of Europe and majority of Asia seem to do okay without the 24 x 7.

What I don't understand about the stores that offer pickup is why aren't all items available for pickup, especially cleaning products? Are they that desperate for foot traffic that they can't make those items available?

If a demand didn't exist, neither would the hours.

And even in a small "city", one of the busiest sandwich shops is in Athens is the one located across from our largest (of two) hospitals. They have a literal lunch rush at around 3a daily. Wanna tell them they shouldn't be open? Or if that's fine, then wanna tell their competition (basically 3-4 fast food places nearby) they shouldn't be too?

Or all the places that serve patrons & employees (definitely goes back to the WH example) in a town that has night life til 2a roughly 6 days a week for nine months of the year?

Reality: those folks you're talking about are likely unemployed if those 3rd shift jobs don't exist, because most of that commerce doesn't time shift, it ceases to exist entirely.

I haven't bought groceries in daylight hours regularly in about a couple of decades now. That's what suits me best, so that's what I do.


Certainly given the new competitive landscape that exists, shortened hours means I'd just shift the vast majority of my buying over to an Amazon-like operation, because my animosity toward the other options that chose not to serve my needs would be intense, I'd actively be hoping they crashed & burned (much the way my feelings have been leaning toward WM being the most limited hours operation in the area now)

Among the many factors to consider about foot traffic is the significant amount of revenue that all big box stores generate from "shelf allotments" or "slotting" and from display positions (endcaps, etc). Reduce the value of those and you're looking at noticeable price increases on the shelves sooner or later. And those negotiations are already tough at best, only going to get tougher as vendors start to wonder how much extortion is too much.

Ah, makes sense. Thanks for the info.

Also it’s not the fucking 1980s so the world closed at 9pm is highly unrealistic.

To my knowledge (and I did work tangentally to this for several years) at this point there's nothing aside from store brands inside a big box retailer that hasn't written a check to be there, a point that was reached probably around 10 years ago. Every inch of space is monetized.

And then that space is leveraged against the manufacturers. Ever notice how the space allotted to, say, Frito-Lay brands vs store brands vs 3rd party brands fluctuates? That's a function of money changing hands, not of consumer preference.

And when the range for manufacturers goes from about 15% of their total sales to 80% of their total sales (probably higher for some niche products) being directly related to Walmart, not paying what amounts to extortion is a hard option to consider. It's one of the reasons that certain brands only appear in one big box vs multiple big boxes, they can't bite off on the up front payment needed to get slotted into more than one.

I'm with Jon on this one. It's been a number of decades since 'nine to five' had any significant relevance. I don't think normal working hours actually means anything anymore.

stumble out of bed and crawl to the kitchen
pour myself a cup of ambition

Foot traffic leads to impulse buys and more revenue.

Retailers will limit what can be picked up based on available inventory. They want to avoid it being out of stock when they go pick your order because somebody else walked in and bought so there is a minimum amount of inventory required to make it available. Given high demand for those items that minimum may be higher now than it is in normal times.

We've gotten good about planning a week ahead for the pick-up. You can add to the order up to the night before, so as long as we get a delivery slot, we can make the actual order closer to the pickup.

To some extent, we've always done this (we tend to make a menu for the week and buy the things we might be missing but I would also buy things on sale to stock up or something that looked good). So it's not that different for us. The only difficulties that pop up now are the things that are out. But that even popped up before from time to time, just less often.

SI

Speaking of Walmart, my wife is laughing at me today. I picked up three packages of no-nitrate uncured bacon, two packs of organic grass-fed bitter, and a dozen avocados. Apart from occasionally grabbing cooking oil or a loaf of bread for the kids’ morning toast. The three items mentioned are the only groceries I ever get at Walmart. Yeah, I go to Walmart to buy Whole Foods groceries. *shurg*

(In fairness, the same brands of those three items that we used to get at WF are crazy cheaper at our WM, and the latter is much closer to boot.)

Yeah, doesn't really work when dealing with a 91 y/o. (Lots of things don't really work well when dealing with a 91 y/o ... but I digress)

It ain't entirely accidental that we borrowed her car while ours was in the shop and just sorta haven't gotten around to returning it. Kinda sneaky perhaps but I don't believe she'd have behaved this long had it been there for her to drive either.

What are the odds all these mass protests in big cities cause another mini outbreak in coronavirus cases this week?

Pretty good I would imagine.

Seems pretty high.

So someone in my family works at a cancer hospital. They have been taking a ton of precautions there but, at the end of the day, you still have to see patients. To the patients, it doesn't matter if they die by COVID or if they die by cancer: death is still death.

I think something similar applies here. If you think you're risking dying just by going out in public, death by COVID vs death by police brutality: death is death.

SI

Yeah, I've thought along the same lines when they were talking about covid hitting poor, minority communities hardest....if you live in a community where drug/street violence is a real, daily threat, of course the concern & insistence that you should stay home, so you don't get sick in a couple weeks, is going to ring hollow.

That's actually a good point. When you live in a community facing daily violence from gangs, police and others, how scary is a disease that kills less than 1% of the people who get it?

FWIW I'm down 10 pounds following a Nutrisytemish system since this post.

My county borders St. Louis county but is pretty rural. A few cities of around 10k or less. One of maybe 20k.

We opened up 2 weeks ago. Wide open. We have had one new case in our county in that time period.

I think this is turning into an urban issue. As well as, a nursing home and meat packing plant issue.

Well it makes some sense due to density. Though I still see Albany GA being hit super hard a few months back and think it can hit even smaller cities. I do think rural areas have more distancing just by design which helps.

And it's been these cities that have had protests - anti-lockdown and now anti-police brutality - folks like to march on City Hall after all.

A county with almost no cases will not suddenly see many. It is more and more safe to say that this is not spread in 3s an 4s but in 1s and 15s.
Those maybe 5-10 concurrent infected in your county first need to be at one of the, for Arguments sake, 10% open businesses that pose an elevated risk and be there at the right time (peak infectiousness is a short period). 5 of 10 might be most infectious on days they don't go out much. 2 might not go out much in general.
At low levels, chance comes into play. Which is why it took time to go from imported cases to catastrophe. Critical Mass is a concept that originated in Epidemiology, after all !

Household transmission is generally 1 in 4 chance with the highest propability by far being the spouse (which makes sense).Lots if places are safe, especially with basic precautions (even just keeping a bit distance, not stop in the same place and talk for a long while), but lots more avenues than Meatpacking Plants, too ...

In Germany we have very few cases and excellent contact tracing (not SK et al level but just about the next best thing) so the true number now will not be as much larger by far than in March.
And still in the last 2 weeks we had: 2 church outbreaks of 60-100 cases, a private even at a restaurant (30+), a series of private family Parties (scope yet unclear), a UPS sorting center (50+). This does not happen via droplets, this is Aerosol infection.

The place does not matter as much as These Basic conditions:

- indoor vs outdoor. Air displacement outdoors just mitigates a lot
- lots of people literally sharing the same air
- staying stationary for 15 + minutes OR moving around the same space over and over along with everybody else
- close contact and face-to-face interaction up close
-loud and animated speaking, singing or heavy breathing

The problem is that it would be guaranteed desaster if everything was done the same as a year ago, everything will be super if done like in April. Finding the sweet spot in between is the hard part.

As for retirement homes: These are vulnerable to spread the same way all closed systems are (a Party same as a meatpacking plant). However, it is much easier to keep the virus out in the first place when few peope carry it in general and with less draconic measures (isolating them for months or a year is NOT desirable) It's just Basic propability.

These propabilities come into play Rural vs Urban as well. How many Potential spreading events happen in a big city vs a small ? How many events with different people is one likely to infect ? How likely is it contact tracing works because participants knew each other ?

If it happens and is missed, the virus does not care much. Look of Heinsberg or Tirschenreuth in Germany or Vo in Italy. One party gone wrong = things spreads like wildfire.

Had a friend over yesterday for a pool play date with the kids. She is a nurse at a busy hospital here in the Jersey shore. Said things have calmed down a lot at her hospital. She then said they are still very nervous and making preparations for things to get really bad again between the protests, people relaxing, and huge influx of tourists here on the shore.

So your thoughts on risks re:

1) Being in an airplane with masks, an empty seat inbetween (even though the air is recirculated and filtered)
2) Being in a crowded beach without mask, social distancing with strangers but close with friends, but breezy

#2 may depend on the amount and distancing your friends did. But if it's a small amount and they have all self isolated for a few weeks as well, that should be pretty safe. Outdoor spreading, especially while distancing seems to be very low.

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Remember i am merely reading up on this and know a few people that work in research or in the 'field'. There are no definitive answers and if there were, i would not know them all.

One general thing: The empty seat is to prevent droplet infection. Right now best guess is that it is sth like 50/50 between droplet and aerosol (surface transmission vers much a distant afterthought)
With the former happening more often, but the latter affecting more people at once if the conditions are right.

Planes i think you have a strange Mix of pros and cons (and i know tons of experiments are made on both this and trains/busses right know) but many experts seem to veer on the side of "might be less of an issue than you'd think".

At a beach i am fairly certain that everything that happens there happens at close contact between people and is not adding to the problem if is people that know each other and have that contact elsewhere as well. Might as well have it there rather than a closed space.

I think it is virtually impossible to transmit to someone over more than a few feet there, as there virus is immediately exposed to Air currents and displaced (even with no breeze!). Remember you do not get infected by any amount of virus, it needs to be a decent amount (AND some research indicates that more initial exposure = sicker.).
That is why stores are negligible as well imo, with everybody walking around without much/long social/physical interaction.

Might have posted this before: How coronavirus spreads outdoors vs. indoors - YouTube

The only way to be 100% safe is not meeting anybody, but that is not sustainable or healthy or even necessary. It was crucial in march to stop a lot of transmission chains, fast. And to give science and health infrastructure time to catch up.
Next best thing is limiting contacts from the normal, maybe try to not visit the most popular or 'beautiful' beach/places at the same time as anybody else. That sort of thing is how i handle it.

And maybe limit your interactions to people you know, because that is the other thing: Say one of you gets mildly ill (remember, this is NOT Ebola or some shit for younger folk), either you get tested and can tell public health workers who to contact or you have at least informal information "hey guys, coming down with sth" which then results in everybody being careful for a week or whatever, avoiding their older relatives or that nurse they know, or getting tested themselves.

Meeting mainly people you know rather than party with a bunch of strangers or semi-strangers ("I also talked to a guy for 20 minutes, Whatshisname, guy with a mole on his cheek. Ah, can't remember, sorry") immediately lowers the risk for the general public because odds are much lower at a continouus chain of transmissions and much higher odds it hits a dead end because people get notice sth might be up.

So we rescheduled my kidney doctor appt from april until about 2 weeks now. So I went to LabCorp where I get my blood tested. No problems with getting that done, but the lab and waitng room are very small, and it was a Monday so busy times with the lab. About a 1/3 of the people in for testing didn't wear masks and LabCorp was not requiring them to wear any. They had added some extra chairs and a bench outside the office for overflow and COVID social distancing, but with it being a small office, you couldn't really do that anyway.

Traffic was back to pre-COVID levels I would say as well.

Two of my boys and I got haircuts today. First in 5 months. Our stylist was the only one in the entire salon and we were the only customers the entire time we were in there. Did some shopping where the store was metering the number of people inside the store and forming a queue when needed. Lots of people in the store didn't really care about anything and were going on like nothing had changed (like I said earlier about KY). But the store had sanitary barriers, and the cashiers had to wipe the station down after every customer. Then we went to a restaurant for the first time since March. The employees were all very good, most of the seating was in the parking lot, but they also had inside seating with every other booth blocked off and tables on the floor very spaced out. I don't know how it'll last, but it was nice to have those normal, pedestrian things to do again.

Anecdotally I'd say that health services (from simple visits and/or tests to full blown surgeries) are all over the place with regulations to some extent.

Less than 10 miles apart a couple hospitals in ATL range from one having the surgical waiting room open pretty much as normal (even for outpatient stuff) to another only allowing 2 people to attend the bedside of a literal dying (as in removing life support) person and going so far as to count someone adminstering last rites against the 2-person limit.

That's a pretty wide gap in restrictions, so I'm not really that surprised by what you posted.

Emory is mask only, Children’s (where I work sometimes) is mask, limited visitors, and temp check. We return to labs at Emory this week and they are very low density, masks, and possibly random temp checks and tests.

I’m currently in Blairsville GA and went to Walmart. I thought somebody was going to punch me for wearing a mask. It was like I was the devil. Saw some ice cream stops and BBQ joints that had large crowds and no masks.

Coronavirus Antibody Testing Shows Lower Fatality Rate For Infection : Shots - Health News : NPR

let's go with the low end, 0.5% sounds great, let's hurry and re-open everything, i guess

maybe half of America will get the virus before we have treatment? we've heard that sort of number, right? and as we get everyone back into the pool and bar and Bonnaroo and so forth, maybe it happens...

hmmm... half of 330m is 165m, 1% of that is 1.65m, half of that is 825,000 Americans dead

sounds fine

hope it's wrong

Who ever thought the realistic number would be 5%? I thought worst case would be about 2%, best case about 0.5%. Best case is still pretty damn bad.

There's no course of action that will ever keep the direct & indirect deaths as low as under a million. That's a gift that I will readily take.

And let us not forget--that's the number dead.

That is not the number that get so sick that the spend weeks on a ventilator and have permanent lung damage or other conditions.

So 800,000 dead is horrible. But it will be worse than that.

Yeah, 0.5 is still a lot for a diseases with that much potential to spread and infect people in the first place and rapidly. And while there are a lot of people with mild symptoms or no symptoms (those are 'only' guessed at 20-25 % btw, 15ish for the Flu so not like it does not happen there), there are also a lot of hospitalisations or people not needing that but still sick for 2 weeks.
Even in Germany (and we got off easy) doctors will tell you they saw more people with serious Pneumonia symptoms (by that point the test often is not even conclusive btw) in a week this march/april than they ever saw before by a country mile. Same with people in care homes. Of course folk die there and more in winter than other times, but you don't get to a place where it looks like an ER with sofas and pictures on the wall.
And the recovery time after hospital is very long as well.

And 0.5 - 1 was the sort of number assumed by serious scientists even before any antibody tests could be done, including those offering advise to governemnents and pushing for strict containment and/or mitigation measures.

Take this paper from March: DEFINE_ME (Link from the Lancet Journal)

Fauci himself estimated in March that it will be much closer to a bad influenza season than SARS (9-10 % i think).

That 5 % was always a 'placeholder' to put any sort of value on it AND it is the number (Case Fatality Rate) that is used for other diseases as well. This is not an unusual way to do this, at all. And it is a highly relevant number in any case, because as far as healthcare sector goes you care about cases more than infected (the number of missed infected is a problem in the spread)
Of course it was misinterpreted by the media etc. and used wrongly/misleadingly. What else do you expect ? But behind the scenes, nobody made decisions based on that 5% number or anything close to that.

0.5 is still 3-5 times higher than the Case Fatality Rate that is attributed to the flu (it is the closest analogue, i can see why people make that comparison) in a bad year. Remember that some years you have very few people dying and others a lot based on prior exposure, change in virus distribution, virus mutation and vaccine effectiveness and distribution.

That particular CFR is likely much closer to the IFR than with Covid because deaths are missed as frequently as infections (and that also tells you sth re: hospitalisation rate) but there is little reason to think it isn't significantly smaller here as well. There are credible estimates of the IFR for the flu still being 2-3 times smaller than the CFR.
And consider this: with the Flu you don't ever actually find/look for any asymptomatic cases (which there are, just a good chunk less and spreading it for fewer days) or people with symptoms so mild they just stay in bed for a day or two or maybe just cough a bit.

So the CFR being so high for SarsCov2 here actually shows something as well: Despite comprehensive efforts to identify mild cases (as opposed to just registering really sick folks) you come out at a pretty damned high CFR.

How is this done for Influenza ?
Counting every doctors visit where the doctor puts "flu" on the doctor's note (of which a lot will be the common cold for example or just a sympathetic doctor understanding the plight of the working man/student) or even just put into the internal system when just giving him the advise to drink some fluids and send him on his way with a prescription of cough syrup and no doctors not. Then taking a guess how many of actually sick people went to the dorctors.
And then you count everybody dying above the average number (which in a bad winter can have multiple reasons other than the flu) for the season.

Doing both those things you come out at that guessed-at 0.15ish CFR for the flu, that being the way it is done in Germany at least.

https://twitter.com/ChristoPhraser/s...38443756384259

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

I would like to see the # deaths compared year-over-year as in Feb-Mar-Apr-May 2020 compared to 2019. That delta should give us a good approximation of coronavirus related deaths.

To clarify: Again, i am not saying this means "Lockdown forever" or even an aproximation of it re_ restrictions. But it is the basis on which that decision is made, that trade off.
Saying "we know 0.5 - 1 % is a lot, but we still have to do this or that less strictly after thinking about the ramifications long and hard" is a whole different thing than saying "see, it is only 0.5 - 1 %, what is the fuss all about ?"
The former i can live with, the latter makes me irrate ;) And here in Germany i have way more trust in the former being the thought process so i don't feel i need to fuss about opening this or that or loosening faster than might make sense looking at only the virus or when thinking about what might
happen in the fall/Winter.
Where we have no way of knowing how bad the flu hits, i do not want to imagine a repeat of 2018 running alongside a big Covid19 resurgence ...

Also: I do think IFR will go down if anything from here on out, simply because a) treatment is better by leaps and bounds already (knowledge and experience matter), b) the health care system is better geared towards identifying them early (not having flu/cold running alongside it in the summer helps, too), c) people have a better understanding of where there is risk and who is at risk more than others.

Those are available on the CDC website as weekly numbers with one caveat: Registration lacks behind (always, not specifically now) so what you see there will be lower than what you see looking at the same tables in a month. Someone a while back made a comparison how the first week in April went from virtually no excess deaths when looking at it mid april to 30+% looking at the same week but doing so in mid may.

Excess Deaths Associated with COVID-19

Seeing 2018 here as well is useful as well, because that was a bad flu season.
Summary of the 2017-2018 Influenza Season | CDC

The CDC data also shows pretty clearly that the flu season this year in the US (as in most of the northern hemisphere) has been below average with no excess mortality. Small favors and all that ...

If you are interested, a similar table is available for a bunch of european countries collected by an EU project since 2015 (scrolling down will let you select individual countries), with the same caveat of the last few weeks not being accurate yet.

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

That comparison shows pretty well btw how the flu truly is seasonal and wanders across the globe and how it hits different countries at different times and sometimes different years depending on factors mentioned above. Also shows how SarsCov2 moved essentially South to North within Europe.

And while obviously people do suffer (and die ! I don't want to minimalize that) from not getting treatment or postponing treatment, either out of fear or (like NY) because they literally can't get it in time due to the health care system crashing and burning, a lot of other causes are still hidden covid causes.
Because covid does cause heart attacks and strokes and organ failure and plainly does get missed as a diagnosis as well or a death may go without a diagnosis at all. (the CDC actually has a category for "unusual illness/symptoms" which was up big time in march and april).

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...ew-jersey.html

My post of the story wasn't to say "hey, it could be only 0.5%, let's go back to having 100K in a football stadium!!". The point was that this looks to be much less deadly than many thought back in March - which is a very good thing. Everyone should keep social distancing and wearing masks when possible - but a death rate of 0.5-0.7 is a lot better than 1-5% (as many on this board thought would be the case two months ago).

Never meant to imply that, sorry if it came across that way !


But since i know that position is out there i figured i might as well engage with that number and what i figure it means, then point out why it bothers me. (heck, a pretty famous scientist involved in that deeply flawed and politicised Santa Clara study then turned around and twisted around a bunch of other studies* to convince people it is like 0.25 and totally not worse than the flu, without ever even comparing how one arrives at those numbers.
*Like excluding all studies from the upper spectrum of results, taking the lowest estimate every time (so 0.3.- 0.6 = 0.3), taking studies looking at people under 70 exclusively, making a regions population 8 times higher than it is etc

It's no biggie. There just is a reflex on this thread to equate "hey we may have a little good news" with "Hey, were are good to go! Let's all go mud wrestling in Strip Clubs!!!"

Although, if it's outdoor strip clubs...

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True and maybe the mud would act as a natural mask?

I have a feeling it will settle between 0.5-1%, too. But part of those higher estimates was the idea that the medical system was going to be overwhelmed, as we saw in parts of China and Italy, no? That's where the whole flattening the curve came from to begin with. Wasn't the idea that if we did nothing, you give it a 4-5x multiplier because of overwhelmed medical resources and inability to treat treatable patients?

SI

0.5-1% is still high for a virus we have no immunity to and no idea on long term effects.

If just 20% of the population gets it that is half a million million dead.

I wouldn't have imagined this 3 months ago but makes perfect sense.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/02/how-...obs-in-us.html

Wasn't someone asking a couple of days ago for a job that most people can do if they're unemployed?

SI

Yeah, I think that's a good point.The difference between 1% and 0.7% might be in having a really strong health care infrastructure. I think the high rates in Italy were due to the testing initially involving mostly people who were very sick because of the initial blitz it did on their health care system. I think had we not social distanced early on, we could have had a similar high load in many places. But, I do think our geography, health care infrastructure and spread out way of living (not a ton of mass transit or high density areas) helped even without the impressive distancing effort we did.

I am seeing more people out and about. And most of them are wearing masks for things like stores, and not wearing masks for things like walks in the park.

If that's how it is going to be, then I think that we will be OK here.

Of course, that leaves huge open questions about schools and sporting events. But we will let future North Carolina worry about those questions.

Yeah, CFRs for those few weeks in Italy where they were overwhelmed are probably insanely high. I bet they are close to that 3-5% range.

SI

dola:

Oh, the big thing is the upcoming messy divorce between the RNC and North Carolina for the GOP Convention in August.

It seems pretty clear that NC/Charlotte does not want the chaos of a convention at this point. And that the GOP would rather reward Georgia or Florida with it. But, of course, the RNC can't tell swing state NC to suck it. And NC does not want to look anti-Republican. So they are now doing this dance where the RNC keeps sending letters saying that they want to come, but the state needs to be reasonable in terms of what it will allow. And the state keeps sending the RNC letters saying that they want the RNC to come, but the RNC needs to be reasonable in terms of expectations.

I think that it will end with the convention moving and each side blaming the other for being unreasonable.

This is us. There are exceptions but most people are wearing masks at stores, restaurant pick-ups etc. However when we are walking around the neighborhood or doing a trail, no one is wearing masks.

Re: colleges, my daughter did her orientation via remote last week. They are planning to re-open and have regular class in the Fall. I have a friend at a smaller FL college, they are planning to re-open in Fall also.

My daughter has a roommate and dorm room assigned. I asked her if orientation said anything about special measures etc. in dorms and she said no.

My guess is re-opening will be in full swing for schools, businesses etc. by Fall with social distancing measures.

This is fantastic news if we can pull it off.

https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/...0fa5ee17285938

Was just on a COVID 19 conference call for my Church's Synod and apparently Alabama is getting scary - Montgomery's ICU beds are full and they are shipping people to Birmingham. Tuscaloosa is about to run out of beds. And late May and June cases are spiking.

I would certainly volunteer for the vaccine test.

I saw a chart that had ten states with over 70% usage of ICU beds right now. Maryland was well over 90%.

And these are all pre-protest cases.

Funny, the Alabama numbers on the Worldometers site don't look bad at all, comparatively.

Maybe 2 weeks after the first group for me.