Experts Say More Widespread Testing Needed To Safely Reopen The Economy
[guest post by Dana]
On the heels of President Trump’s new guidelines to “opening up America,” medical experts are pointing out that increased testing needs to happen in order to get back to business as usual:
Testing for the coronavirus would have to be at least doubled or tripled from its current levels to allow for even a partial reopening of America’s economy, public health experts say, but it is unclear how soon such an ambitious goal could be reached amid persistent shortages of testing supplies and a lack of coordination from the Trump administration.
Without diagnostic testing on a massive scale, federal and state officials and private companies will lack a clear picture of who has been infected, who can safely return to work, how the virus is spreading and when stay-at-home orders can be eased, public health experts say.
“We are an order of magnitude off right now from where we should be,” said Dylan George, an expert in infectious disease modeling who advised the administration of President Barack Obama in combating the Ebola epidemic. “Testing is the perpetual problem here.”
Current rate of testing in the U.S. is about 1%, per Dr. Dan Hanfling, who worked in the National Healthcare Preparedness Program during the Obama and Trump administrations. He considers this an indicator that we are nowhere we need to be with testing if want to get back to business as usual.
Dr. Tom Moore, an infectious disease specialist, also cautioned about the need for more testing:
To avoid a second wave of viral spread you have to do what South Korea and other countries, including Germany, have done. You have to have testing in place, and aggressive testing. We don’t have to test everybody, but we definitely need to test a significant portion of the community.
This is a Herculean task. I don’t know how it’s going to be solved in the immediate future, but it needs to be.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, physician and public health expert who served as President Donald Trump’s first FDA commissioner, was asked in a recent interview, what it would take to see social distancing end and life return to “normal:
We’re doing a lot to increase testing capacity, but we’re going to hit an upper limit. Getting from 100,000 tests to a million tests is going to be a lot easier than getting from a million tests to 1.5 million tests. The reason is that what we’ve done so far is take platforms and labs that already existed and made them available for coronavirus testing. That’s why we’ve been able to increase testing. By the end of this week, we’ll probably be at a million tests a week in terms of capacity. Next week, we’ll build on that.
But getting to the point where you have a 2-3 million test capacity per week — which is probably where you need to be initially as you do this transition — is going to be very hard. We’ve tapped out the available platforms and now we’re dependent upon creating new platforms and new supply chains to fuel those platforms. We’re approaching an upper limit in spare capacity. The question is how fast can Abbott and other companies build new testing platforms? And how fast can LabCorp and Quest scale up new labs that didn’t exist before? That’s a harder exercise.
When will we get there? I don’t think we’re gonna get there by May. I think that we’re still going to be under-testing relative to what is optimal from a public health standpoint. I think we have the ability to get there by September…
Further, the Association of American Medical Colleges wrote to Dr. Birx, White House Coronvirus Task Force Coordinator, reiterating the need for a sufficient amount of available equipment to maximize diagnostic testing:
…The promise of these tests is that labs that already own the relevant machines can start running the tests quickly, provided that the machines are in working order and that the labs have the proper reagents, transport media, and specialized equipment for the specific test; adequate training of technicians to run the complex test; and sufficient swabs and personal protective equipment (PPE) for collecting the specimens without endangering the health of the health care provider. As we have come to learn over the past several weeks, despite the best efforts of all parties, not one of these components is readily available in sufficient quantities to each and every lab that needs them. Widespread but uneven shortages in one or more of the essential components for testing have resulted in a situation where few labs are able to maximize the testing capacity of any one machine, platform, or test.
Ongoing shortages of testing equipment continue to hamper increased testing efforts, resulting backlogs of testing. Lab around the country are now having to get creative to find work arounds because of supply chain issues.
–Dana
Hello.
Dana (0feb77) — 4/17/2020 @ 2:16 pmSure appears to be a lot of people who’d like the economy to remain shutdown for as long as possible.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/17/2020 @ 2:20 pmThe testing isn’t accurate.
There’s a high false nagative rate. (at least 18%)
But you may ot need that many tests.
If most people are negative, you can combine samples.
Say 11 contacts. Test all at once. If positive, divide into 4-4-3.
If only one is positive 1-1 (if both are negative the third may be considered positive) or 2-1-1.
Sammy Finkelman (3bf6ea) — 4/17/2020 @ 2:25 pmI posted this in the other thread, but I think it bears repeating here:
Antibody tests for the coronavirus now being used have been rushed through approval by the FDA, without testing to ensure that they actually work, or measurement of how well they work (the false positive and false negative rates, which are crucial to interpreting the results). This because of the crisis created by earlier testing screwups that left us blind and without sufficient capacity.
According to a National Academy of Sciences doctor who is being consulted by the White House, many of these tests give false positives by flagging antibodies to the coronaviruses responsible for the common cold.
So skepticism of these tests is in order, especially when they suggest extremely anomalous results like the Santa Clara test.
Read the full article (from Wednesday):
Prominent scientists have bad news for the White House about coronavirus antibody tests
Dave (1bb933) — 4/17/2020 @ 2:26 pm@ Col Haiku,
Sure appears to be a lot of people with medical expertise who’d like the economy to open safely, and for as long as possible.
Dana (0feb77) — 4/17/2020 @ 2:31 pmWell, I guess this means the WH will get behind more testing being available. There are several options already that are better than what we had a month ago.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/17/2020 @ 2:51 pmSure appears to be a lot of people who’d like the economy to remain shutdown for as long as possible.
Or at least have the government owning the means of production.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/17/2020 @ 2:51 pmThere’s a high false negative rate. (at least 18%)
With which test? Some of them are so bad, 18% false negatives sounds good. But it seems like a new test is being announced daily. I’m more interested in a good treatment than a good test.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/17/2020 @ 2:53 pmAntibody tests won’t really tell you about an emergent condition. That’s a big problem. They tell you what you HAD, not what you HAVE.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/17/2020 @ 2:55 pmKevin M comes out in favor of socialism…
🙂
Dave (1bb933) — 4/17/2020 @ 2:58 pmAntibody tests won’t really tell you about an emergent condition.
But that is NOT their purpose.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/17/2020 @ 3:07 pmThis s**t isn’t political at all, is it? It’ just common sense. It’s for our own good. You wouldn’t want someone’s grandma to die, would you?
Gryph (08c844) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:07 pm2. Some of us were shouting warnings from the rooftops weeks ago.
Gryph (08c844) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:08 pmIf people are ignoring the orders and congregating in a way that causes the spread to spike, and a decline in number of cases is a prerequisite for ending the lockdowns, then of course it’s possible that the protests will create a situation that prolongs the lockdowns.
This is just an elementary extension of “the lockdowns have to continue until the rate of new cases falls below a threshold” and “public gatherings increase the rate of new cases”.
Inferring punitive intent says a lot about the person making the inference and nothing about the person about whom the inference is made.
aphrael (7962af) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:12 pm14. Wait a second. I thought flattening the curves would prolong the spread while decreasing the number, and that letting the curve go would shorten it even though the numbers would be through the roof. You’re contradicting what the experts have been telling us for a month.
Gryph (08c844) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:15 pmWrong then, wrong now. To quote Emerson…
The topic is “Experts Say More Widespread Testing Needed To Safely Reopen The Economy” Somehow I don’t think you were saying we need extensive testing to begin to lift the social distancing.
Gryph responds: “Well, if it’s an expert, I obviously know more with my extensive cheesesteak based research”
Colonel Klink (Ret) (305827) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:16 pmNot likely.
Colonel Klink (Ret) (305827) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:17 pm> Wait a second. I thought flattening the curves would prolong the spread while decreasing the number, and that letting the curve go would shorten it even though the numbers would be through the roof. You’re contradicting what the experts have been telling us for a month.
Flattening the curve either prolongs the curve while decreasing the overall number or prolongs the curve while keeping the overall number constant (but keeping the *number at any one time* below a threshold), depending on many variables.
But this is a different question. How do we know when we can lift the lockdowns safely? We know that when the rate of transmission through the community falls below a certain threshold. A bunch of people congregating and increasing the rate of transmission *above what it would be with strict adherence* results in a new curve which takes longer to get below the acceptable transmission threshold.
This depends on someone in the gathering being infected and spreading it, of course. That may or may not be the case, which is why the whole thing is wrapped in a “could” hedge.
But at the moment we’re planning for worst case scenarios, and the worst case scenario is that these stunts *raise the curve* and prolong the time it takes to get below an acceptable threshold.
The effect is similar to a supply shock that raises the price curve for a good.
aphrael (7962af) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:21 pmIndustry better brace itself for the inevitable tsunami of lawsuits filed against businesses that remain open.
Lawyers specializing in liability are to industry what carrion birds are to nature, except carrion birds don’t kill the prey before gorging on the carcass.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:25 pm2.Sure appears to be a lot of people who’d like the economy to remain shutdown for as long as possible.
Experts… A supply-side-club-for-growth-ex-business-TV-talking-head-fired-and-banned-from Wall-Street-for-his-$100,000-a-month-cocaine-habit-and-now-the-Director-of-the-United-States-National- Economic-Council naturally advises just the opposite.
What could go wrong?
Freely exercising deregulated, unchecked, ‘free market’ capitalism amidst a deadly global pandemic freely kills: the Reaganoptics of Reaganomics.
Cough softly and wave a big stick; be sure to stand on your Bible, wave the Constitution in the wind and shoot your musket at that itty-bitty-viral bugaboo as it lands and makes a home on the foam in your glass of beer.
=snnnnnnnnnort= “Snowman! You got your ears on?” – The Bandit [Burt Reynolds] ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ 1977
DCSCA (797bc0) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:26 pm18. So social distancing won’t make this thing go by any faster, is what you’re saying.
16. 17. GFY, Klink.
Gryph (08c844) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:27 pmSure appears to be a lot of people with medical expertise who’d like the economy to open safely, and for as long as possible.
Many differing opinions on what constitutes “safely”, as well.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:27 pmIn about a week or two, I’m going to be most interested in seeing whether any reports alert us to large numbers of newly infected Michiganders.
Dana (0feb77) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:31 pm“Liberate Michigan.”- Donald Trump
Exporting Michigan dead to Canada now a new trade deal, Captain, sir?
DCSCA (797bc0) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:33 pm16. 17. GFY, Klink.
Colonel Klink (Ret) (305827) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:35 pmOn Thursday night, Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said she was considering an extension of her extreme and inconsistent social distancing guidelines because of the thousands of Michigan residents who protested her a day earlier, most all of whom stayed inside their vehicles.
Well, THAT lede just screams “objectivity”. Yep, you can read that piece as gospel!
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:36 pm23.In about a week or two, I’m going to be most interested in seeing whether any reports alert us to large numbers of newly infected Michiganders.
Along w/who they’ve been in contact with and where they and those they’ve interacted with have travelled to over that time as well. The astonishing stupidity of these people is as alarming as the bug itself.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:38 pm25… Gryph knows that brevity is the soul of wit and apparently recognizes a guy who’s starved for affection.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:41 pmI’ve been harping on the point that the debate over whether to “open” the economy is weirdly disconnected from reality. If all of the state and federal edicts were lifted tomorrow, large numbers of Americans still wouldn’t go to restaurants, get on mass transit or get on airplanes. Matt Continetti has a very good column quantifying this.
It was not media-induced panic but common sense that modified American behavior. The public is split on whether to trust the media. It is united in its embrace of social distancing. “About nine-in-ten U.S. adults (91%) say that, given the current situation, they would feel uncomfortable attending a crowded party,” says Pew. “Roughly three-quarters (77%) would not want to eat out at a restaurant. In the midst of a presidential election year, about two-thirds (66%) say they wouldn’t feel comfortable going to a polling place to vote.” Americans who attend church have turned to televised or online services. They have been praying for an end to the pandemic. And the prayerful include Americans who do not normally pray.
The overwhelming majority of Americans will not accept unquestionably assurances from Mike Pence or Andrew Cuomo or Joe Biden that the coast is clear. They will make their own decisions. “When asked how quickly they will return to their normal activities once the government lifts restrictions and businesses and schools start to reopen, the vast majority of Americans say they would wait and see what happens with the spread of the virus (71%) and another 10% would wait indefinitely,” wrote Gallup’s Lydia Saad on April 14. “Just 20% say they would return to their normal activities immediately.”
In other words, 80 percent of Americans wouldn’t go back to normal if the government sounded the all-clear. And guess what? If 80 percent of Americans won’t play ball, there won’t be enough players for the other 20 percent to play the game.
That’s what makes the “debates” on cable and the shouting on Twitter so otherworldly. I put “debates” in quotation marks because the vast majority of cable commentary doesn’t involve debates. It’s one host interviewing a rotating group of guests who already agree with the host.
These cable Rasputins think—or want you to think—that the government or Trump is like King Canute, capable of ordering the COVID tide to recede or the economic tide to rise, and they argue about when he should give the order they want. And because reality is being so stubborn they search out voices who will tell you that reality isn’t real.—Jonah Goldberg
As I’ve been saying.
Re-posted.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:41 pmIt’s all Ronald Reagan’s fault, despite his being out of office for 32 years and dead for 16!
Meanwhile, Deezy “I take no responsibility at all” Eska has clean hands despite voting a sociopathic imbecile onto the GOP ticket and then into office, just four years ago…
Dave (1bb933) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:41 pmGryph knows that brevity is the soul of wit and apparently recognizes a guy who’s starved for affection.
No. Gryph is just a nasty piece of…work…who gets his fanny waxed regularly by a cadre of smarter, better-informed and MUCH less selfish posters.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:45 pm18. So social distancing won’t make this thing go by any faster, is what you’re saying.
That isn’t the point. The point is that it cuts down on the crush for hospitalizations and ventilators.
You seem unable to grok that even if we did things your way from day one, the economy would still need life support, and possibly worse, once every place in the country started to have overflowing ERs and morgues. And the politicians in the face of that would probably shut things down even harder than they have now.
Kishnevi (78c1a3) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:45 pm21 – I 2nd that
mg (8cbc69) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:49 pmColonel Klink (Ret)
mg (8cbc69) — 4/17/2020 @ 4:51 pmThank God
@30. You really need to get with the program– or buy one to know who the players are in the game today; who did Trump just praise in his presser 10 minutes ago?
Arthur Laffer.
Laffer… who first gained prominence during the Reagan administration as a member of Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board (1981–89). Disciple Snowman Kudlow’s kinda guy.
‘Ronald Reagan rarely catches any blame these days for the present economic mess that is destabilizing markets in the United States and around the world. In fact, Americans often praise the former president for taking the country in bold new directions during his years in the White House. Politicians contribute to this love-fest by naming schools and roads after the iconic president. These admirers rarely acknowledge how central Reagan’s ideas are to the market difficulties troubling us today. As the country’s greatest modern champion of deregulation, perhaps Ronald Reagan contributed more to today’s unstable business climate than any other American. His long-standing campaign against the role of government in American life, a crusade he often stretched to extremes, produced conditions that ultimately proved bad for business… Ronald Reagan was not the only major champion of deregulation. Economist Milton Friedman served as the idea’s principal philosopher, and Newt Gingrich was a leading advocate in Congress.’- source, https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/53527
Laffer and Kudlow, too. Deregulate then; bailout now. How may times do you have to be smacked in the head to realize it hurts? So yes, the Reagan-Wreckage casts a long, dark and evil shadow. He’s dead- and the country keeps paying for his stupidity over and over.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 4/17/2020 @ 5:00 pmSure appears a lot of people with medical expertise who have consistently been wrong about this situation want to continue to be wrong.
Its time to open back up. There is no need for a lockdown.
Patrick Henry, the 2nd (43976c) — 4/17/2020 @ 5:03 pmIts time to open back up. There is no need for a lockdown.
Be sure to write your name and SS# on your foearm so you can be identified.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 4/17/2020 @ 5:04 pmGryph has a principled position that he states persistently, openly, and fairly politely. I see no reason to attack him, even if you disagree with him. He’s stating his positions in good faith.
Leviticus (cdf0fe) — 4/17/2020 @ 5:17 pmI think there are a lot of conservatives who are torn over the present state of affairs – torn between a desire to preserve or advocate small government, and a desire to protect the public health. Two legitimate desires, which may (or may not) be directly in conflict at the moment.
It’s okay to be torn. No need to lash out.
Leviticus (cdf0fe) — 4/17/2020 @ 5:20 pmBecause back when Gryph was slamming Trump on a regular basis, y’all were cool with him.
Leviticus (cdf0fe) — 4/17/2020 @ 5:24 pmLaffer and Kudlow, too. Deregulate then; bailout now. How may times do you have to be smacked in the head to realize it hurts? So yes, the Reagan-Wreckage casts a long, dark and evil shadow. He’s dead- and the country keeps paying for his stupidity over and over.
I thought you’d have the self-preservation to at least keep you ignorant head down for a few days. But NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo, you have to show your azz again.
You don’t even comprehend why the Laffer Curve is so intuitive, do you? It’s appalling what an economics boob you are. And you just keep chanting that idiocy from your Maxist HISTORY professor NOOOOooooobody ever heard of.
So, lets go over my challenge to you. Name all the deregulation during the Reagan admin. Name all the deregulation and by which admin. since. Finally, explicate exactly what mechanism connects each deregulation move to each bailout.
Take a few months. Show your work.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/17/2020 @ 5:26 pmWhat a terribly dishonest characterization. Isn’t the rule here to assume that people are arguing in good faith and if they say they’re motivated by XYZ accept that? If you feel someone is arguing in bad faith at least provide some explanation for why someone who claims to think that it’s important to open the economy up in away that doesn’t undue everything is being deceptive.
Time123 (d1bf33) — 4/17/2020 @ 5:27 pmGryph has a principled position that he states persistently, openly, and fairly politely.
GFY is not “in good faith”. Neither is the persistent “blind panic” BS.
Spamming the same old crap is not “polite”. Everyone here can write a Gryph post in their sleep.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/17/2020 @ 5:30 pm42… I should’ve been clear that only those in a position of influence were being characterized as such.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/17/2020 @ 6:16 pm@41. Ignorance is bliss. Stay happy.
________________
Insulated one percenter who wants Americans to risk death:
Sean Hannity. Net Worth and salary: Sean Hannity is an American radio and television host, populist, author, and conservative political commentator who has a net worth of $250 million dollars.
‘I scream; you scream; we all scream for ice cream.’
Irish and stupid is no way togo though life, son.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 4/17/2020 @ 6:25 pm
nk (1d9030) — 4/17/2020 @ 6:41 pmLIBERATEFUMIGATE THE WHITE HOUSE!Klink insults Gryph. Gryph responds in kind. Ragspierre plays white knight defending Klink’s honor, but ignoring he started the insults.
I’m not surprised in the slightest.
NJRob (d6e0e0) — 4/17/2020 @ 6:49 pm@41. Ignorance is bliss. Stay happy.
At least we know why you are happy.
If you actually knew as much as you think you did, you’d know how the “Great Recession” was a result of too much regulation, not too little.
Kishnevi (78c1a3) — 4/17/2020 @ 6:50 pmI agree with Leviticus, it’s all right (and perfectly understandable) to be torn.
I posted this in an earlier thread but it bears repeating. We need much more testing and it must be accurate:
Coronavirus lockdown: Lessons from Hokkaido’s second wave of infections
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52305055
__ _
We also need to check the petty tyrants and apply common sense to a very difficult time, if you let them over-control now, it will be much harder to return to normal later:
Christopher Snowdon
@cjsnowdon
The WHO warns of the dangers of allowing people to have alcohol in their homes during lockdown. Calls for further restrictions.
http://euro.who.int/en/health-topics/disease-prevention/alcohol-use/news/news/2020/04/alcohol-does-not-protect-against-covid-19-access-should-be-restricted-during-lockdown
_ _
Working Man from Leicestershire
·
When the WHO buy my house, then they can decide what is kept inside it!
__ _
Robert Pearce
harkin (358ef6) — 4/17/2020 @ 7:04 pm@pearce_rp3231
·
Remember, unrestricted flights from China at the start of this outbreak was fine for the WHO, but selling a case of wine to someone in Europe is VERY BAD.
_
…the “Great Recession” was a result of too much regulation, not too little.
Nice try. Thanks for playing.
The more regulation, the better.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 4/17/2020 @ 7:08 pm=yawn= The Great Recession that began in 2008 led to some of the highest recorded rates of unemployment and home foreclosures in the U.S. since the Great Depression. Catalyzed by the crisis in subprime mortgage-backed securities, the crisis spread to mutual funds, pensions, and the corporations that owned these securities, with widespread national and global impacts. – irle.berkeley.edu/what-really-caused-the-great-recession
Reaganomics.
No pain; no gain; to contain and quash the modern ideological conservative movement, Donald Trump is ‘Stalin’ the show.
Glorious. Simply glorious.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 4/17/2020 @ 7:14 pm“ We also need to check the petty tyrants and apply common sense to a very difficult time, if you let them over-control now, it will be much harder to return to normal later”
– harkin
I would agree to the extent that I am concerned about the loss of constitutional perspective in all of this.
Leviticus (cdf0fe) — 4/17/2020 @ 7:15 pmOr the subversion of constitutional perspective to partisan objectives, seeking not to let a crisis go to waste (on the one hand) or arguing for a crisis to be exacerbated in service to a partisan narrative.
Leviticus (cdf0fe) — 4/17/2020 @ 7:16 pmThe more regulation, the better.
Not here. There are places where economics morons do well. Get thee hence. This nation is not for the likes of you. France will suit you better.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/17/2020 @ 7:18 pmAs U.S. coronavirus fatality rate rises to 5 percent, experts are still trying to understand how deadly this virus is
With government officials debating how and when to reopen the economy, a fundamental question about the coronavirus pandemic remains unanswered: Just how deadly is this disease?
The “case fatality rate” of covid-19 varies wildly from country to country and even within nations from week to week. In Germany, fewer than three out of every 100 people with confirmed infections have died. In Italy the rate is almost five times higher, according to official figures.
Singapore, renowned for its careful testing, contact tracing and isolation of patients, saw only 10 deaths out of 4,427 cases through April 16. That yields a strikingly low case fatality rate of 0.2 percent, about twice the rate of seasonal influenza.
In the United States, the case fatality rate has steadily ticked upward, from about 1.35 percent in late March to over 4 percent on April 15, according to figures compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rate saw another spike to nearly 5 percent Thursday because of a large wave of “probable” deaths reported in New York City.
This does not mean that the disease itself is getting deadlier, though. Covid-19 typically takes weeks to become severe enough to kill a patient, and the rising rate may reflect the disease’s gradual progression, combined with discoveries of additional deaths.
Without widespread testing to find out how many people have been infected, it remains impossible to determine precisely the lethality of the virus in any given community or demographic group. Researchers know that many infections result in no symptoms.
In Michigan, whose official case fatality rate has surged to 7.2 percent, public health experts and elected officials say they need more tests and better data.
“Honestly, we talk about this every day,” said Detroit’s EMS medical director Robert Dunne. “That’s something we’re all wondering. What’s the actual case fatality rate?”
The testing shortfalls and other weaknesses in public health surveillance have also sparked concerns that there are jurisdictions that are missing large numbers of covid-19 deaths. In some instances, officials have increased their numbers after redefining what counts as a coronavirus-related death. On Friday, China acknowledged that many people in Wuhan died at home from undiagnosed covid-19 in the early days of the outbreak, and the government raised the Wuhan death toll by 50 percent, from 2,579 to 3,869.
European countries like France and Spain have noted that “all-cause mortality,” especially in the elderly, has been unusually high during the pandemic.
A case fatality rate is the number of deaths divided by the number of confirmed cases. But in this global crisis, both the numerator and the denominator are fuzzy
“You need to do more testing,” said Teena Chopra, associate professor of medicine at Wayne State University’s division of infectious diseases. Without testing, she said, public health experts are forced “to live in an unknown world, and an unknown environment.”
RipMurdock (f966f2) — 4/17/2020 @ 7:22 pm…..
Cellphone data shows coronavirus kept churchgoers at home in every state on Easter
Cellphone data tracking Americans’ behavior shows that the vast majority of people who might normally be in church stayed away on Easter, the day churches often pull in their highest attendance of the year.
Americans’ attendance at Sunday religious services began dropping dramatically in early March, according to a Washington Post analysis of mobile location data provided by SafeGraph, a company that aggregates location data from tens of millions of devices and compares it with building footprints of all types, including grocery stores, schools and religious organizations.
By then, many states had started to restrict large gatherings, and several denominations had halted in-person worship services in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
…….
Despite some protests, the vast majority of churches nationwide have shut down, and people largely stayed home in the first weeks of April. Only 3 percent of typical churchgoers said in a PRRI poll that they would attend in-person Easter services on April 12, while 61 percent said they would participate online or on TV.
The mobile data shows how religious attendance changed in each state. For instance, in Utah, which has a high percentage of Mormons, attendance dropped on March 15 after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints halted public worship services worldwide; the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City also suspended public Mass.
The state of Georgia saw the largest drop in church attendance on Easter Sunday, an estimated 90 percent from 2019 to 2020, according to an analysis of SafeGraph data. The state, which is one of the most religious in the country, is home to several high-profile megachurches, many of which hosted services online even before the coronavirus pandemic or had resources to move virtually once restrictions were in place.
RipMurdock (f966f2) — 4/17/2020 @ 7:30 pm…….
Insulated one percenter who wants Americans to risk death:
Laura Ingraham. ‘Net Worth & Salary of Laura Ingraham: as of April 2020, Laura Ingraham has an estimated net worth of about $80 million. Her primary source of income is her career as a host. Ingraham has made much money for hosting various radio as well as television shows.’ – source, wikishelikes tolickBenandJerryscones.com
‘I scream; you scream; we all scream for ice cream!’ – Howard Johnson [yes, really] 1927
DCSCA (797bc0) — 4/17/2020 @ 7:33 pm@54.Ignorance is bliss. Stay happy – and enjoy the taste of rodent droppings on your pizza pies.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 4/17/2020 @ 7:35 pm“ A case fatality rate is the number of deaths divided by the number of confirmed cases. But in this global crisis, both the numerator and the denominator are fuzzy”
Hopefully we’ll start getting a bit of clarity soon. There’s way too much confusion out there.
And reliable data collection while remaining calm is the only path back to normalcy.
harkin (358ef6) — 4/17/2020 @ 7:37 pm_
“We also need to check the petty tyrants and apply common sense to a very difficult time, if you let them over-control now, it will be much harder to return to normal later” – harkin
Hmmm.
Whitmer’s a looker but she’s no Petty Girl. 😉
DCSCA (797bc0) — 4/17/2020 @ 7:37 pmCoronavirus infections could be much more widespread than believed, California study suggests
In the weeks since the coronavirus outbreak has squelched daily life in America, researchers have struggled to assess the true spread of the virus. But initial results from a Northern California study on coronavirus antibodies suggest it has circulated much more widely than previously thought, according to a report released Friday.
The preliminary study, conducted by researchers at Stanford University, estimates that between 2.5% and 4.2% of Santa Clara County residents had antibodies to the new coronavirus in their blood by early April. Antibodies are an indication that a person’s immune system has responded to a past infection.
Though the county had reported roughly 1,000 cases in early April, the Stanford researchers estimate the actual number was between 48,000 and 81,000.
……
One key takeaway of the Santa Clara County study is that a large number of people who are infected with the coronavirus never show any symptoms, said Karin Michels, chair of the epidemiology department at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health.
The fact that such people could unknowingly be contagious means that some level of physical distancing needs to remain in place to protect the elderly and people with underlying conditions who are much more endangered by the disease.
RipMurdock (f966f2) — 4/17/2020 @ 7:42 pm……
Studies suggest that perhaps 30% to 50% of people who contract the new coronavirus have no symptoms, said Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of the medicine department at UC San Francisco. At some point, he said, there will have to be strategic testing of asymptomatic people.
…….
Stay happy – and enjoy the taste of rodent droppings on your pizza pies.
No worries. None of the pizza places I buy from will let you anywhere near them.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/17/2020 @ 7:49 pmInsulated one percenter who wants Americans to risk death:
Tucker Carlson.
‘Tucker Carlson is a political commentator and TV personality who has a net worth of $20 million. Tucker has earned his net worth mostly through his work as a television pundit, but he is also a published author and columnist. He is lso an heir to the Swanson TV dinner fortune; In 1979, Carlson’s father married divorcée Patricia Caroline Swanson, an heiress to Swanson Enterprises. This was the third marriage for Swanson, who legally adopted Carlson and his brother.’ – source, avoidthewuhansalisburysteakgravy.com
Yummy! “The [TV dinner] food undergoes a process of cryogenic freezing with liquid nitrogen.” – source, peptowiki
DCSCA (797bc0) — 4/17/2020 @ 7:55 pmAddressed @4.
Antibody tests should be viewed with great skepticism right now because they have been rushed through approval without testing to prove they actually work. There are large variations in false positive and false negative rates between different tests, and many mistakenly identify antibodies to the common cold (which is caused by a different coronavirus).
Here’s the article one more time:
Prominent scientists have bad news for the White House about coronavirus antibody tests
Dave (1bb933) — 4/17/2020 @ 7:56 pm@62. And you can thank strict regulations for it!
DCSCA (797bc0) — 4/17/2020 @ 7:58 pmHopefully we’ll start getting a bit of clarity soon. There’s way too much confusion out there.
That is something everyone should be able to agree with.
Kishnevi (bfcc0b) — 4/17/2020 @ 7:59 pm‘Hopefully we’ll start getting a bit of clarity soon. There’s way too much confusion out there.’
Don’t hold your breath.
“We’ll be dead by then.” – Astronaut Jim Pruett [Richard Crenna] ‘Marooned’ 1969
DCSCA (797bc0) — 4/17/2020 @ 8:16 pmMedal of Honor recipient Bennie Adkins dies of coronavirus
veterans.dfns.net/…/medal-of-honor-recipient-bennie-adkins-dies-of-coronavirus
Medal of Honor recipient Bennie Adkins, who was given the nation’s highest military honor for heroically fighting off enemies and saving wounded soldiers in Vietnam, died April 17 from complications caused by the coronavirus.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 4/17/2020 @ 9:21 pm“I’m dead right on this… The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.” – Rush Limbaugh, Medal of Freedom recipient, ‘The Rush Limbaugh Show’ February 24, 2020
I wonder how far and widespread these protests will go. They get big enough and you’ll be seeing water cannon and tear gas. But not on CNN.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/17/2020 @ 11:14 pm69.I wonder how far and widespread these protests will go. They get big enough and you’ll be seeing water cannon and tear gas. But not on CNN.
Water cannon and tear gas… Not on CNN? Did you miss their weekend coverage last summer????
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WUZeHGwv2k
DCSCA (797bc0) — 4/17/2020 @ 11:37 pmA case fatality rate is the number of deaths divided by the number of confirmed cases.
I don’t think that is important right now. What is important is the number of local deaths divided by the local population. Those numbers are solid. If that number is large (in excess of about 20/100K), then an area has no business opening up since the virus is all over the fracking place. Or, maybe it doesn’t matter any more.
Here’s a chart from healthdata.org on when states might start opening up.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/17/2020 @ 11:52 pmWater cannon and tear gas… Not on CNN? Did you miss their weekend coverage last summer????
That’s a foreign government. A nice blue state government would never be seen doing that.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/17/2020 @ 11:55 pmHmmm … I should have known better.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/17/2020 @ 11:56 pm“ We also need to check the petty tyrants and apply common sense to a very difficult time, if you let them over-control now, it will be much harder to return to normal later”
What we really need is a clear demarcation. There are certain things in time of war that are unacceptable outside of wartime, and that kind of line-drawing is needed. A supermajority vote in Congress that authorizes these emergency measures for a set duration. This is one of the reasons I wanted a formal declaration of war after 9/11, with a named opponent and clear objective, so that we would know when it was over. What we got was the Patriot Act.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/18/2020 @ 12:00 amKevin would you care to make a wager, say $1000 (but I’m open to a larger sum), that if water cannons and/or tear gas are used on death cultists in a blue state in the next six months, CNN won’t air footage of it?
Dave (1bb933) — 4/18/2020 @ 12:07 am“Trump has asked White House aides for economic response plans that would allow him to take credit for successes while offering enough flexibility to assign fault for any failures to others.” https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-assails-critics-of-his-coronavirus-response-as-he-focuses-on-reopening-u-s-11587149080 …
Victor (4355e3) — 4/18/2020 @ 5:17 amThey’re [Fauci and Birx] doing more harm than good by continuing to legitimize this character, who can’t stick to a message for more than four minutes at a time and is throwing tantrums on Twitter like a child because his dumb plan to reopen everywhere on May 1 didn’t fly even with his own staff.
I don’t know where to begin. Let’s begin, I guess, with the cowardly vagueness of the term “liberate.” That’s intentional, so that Trump can say later when he’s asked about this that he meant protest. People should protest in those states until the stay-at-home orders are lifted. But if he all he meant was protest, he could have said “protest.” Ingraham knows what he means:
The Republican House would have moved to impeach Obama if he had winked at the idea of a violent response to Republican governors who weren’t complying with him on policy.
But there’s deeper cowardice. Trump threw in the towel yesterday on the question of whether he or the governors had ultimate authority to reopen the country for business. “You’re going to call your own shots,” he told them. He could have gone to court over that if he wanted. The reason he didn’t is because he realized that there’s a nonzero chance that reopening soon will trigger a second wave of the epidemic. If he gives the order to reopen, that’s on him. If governors give the order, it’s on them. Forced to choose between taking personal responsibility for a policy he believed in and covering his own ass, he knew what to do. Leadership 101:
In White House meetings with officials, advisers say, Mr. Trump has been bothered over how much blame he might get for the administration’s slow early response to the crisis, and pondered how to position himself and the administration to receive as much credit as possible in efforts to revive the economy.
He has asked White House aides for economic response plans that would allow him to take credit for successes while offering enough flexibility to assign fault for any failures to others. “People have made clear to him that’s an impossible goal, just two completely contradictory goals,” said one person in contact with the president. “But I’m not sure he’s convinced.”—Allahpundit
What a remarkable coward is the Great Goad Cheeto. There is a vacuum for someone to fill here, and leadership does not require an official status or rank.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/18/2020 @ 5:52 amSee worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
Our testing per capita remains dismal. We lag FAR behind many nations.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/18/2020 @ 6:14 am“The Liberator.” 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3B0smTRcL8
“Why don’t we just shoot them down and be through with it?!”- Radio tower operator at Rancho Conejo [Jesse White] “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” 1963
DCSCA (797bc0) — 4/18/2020 @ 6:23 amWhat amazes me is how rapidly this coronavirus spread around the globe. That suggests this particular strain, known as SARS-COV-2, had been in circulation for a long time, possibly for months, even years, before COVID-19 patients started showing symptoms and dying. There’s no other explanation for how quickly the disease went from a localized epidemic to a global pandemic.
I mean, how is it possible this virus went from a wet market in a province in China to infecting cruise ships, aircraft carriers, nursing homes, prisons, churches, businesses, schools, planes, trains, busses, subways, taxis, etc. ad infinitum, all over the planet in just a few weeks?
This strain probably originated in China, although it is uncertain where, and the most likely source of transmission to humans was bats. People in Asia eat bats–yuk, I know–but just because the first cases of COVID-19 happened to be in the Huwan province doesn’t mean it originated there. The virus was already spreading rapidly around the globe before those cases were acknowledged.
This is not the flu. I’ve had the flu, several times as a matter of fact over my life, even though I had a vaccine. It was mostly fever, coughing, sneezing, fatigue, bed rest for a couple of days, lots of fluids and chicken soup, but I never suffered permanent lung damage from the flu. I just took a couple of sick days, so that I wouldn’t infect my students, drank a lot of fluids and chicken soup, rested, rehydrated, took some cold and flu medicine, and then I was up and running, back to work.
This is not that. People who suffer from severe cases of COVID-19 often have severe lung complications. This virus turns their lungs into dried sponges. There’s no coming back from that, and while the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 may be overestimated, the death toll in total may be underestimated. It doesn’t include the number of people who died of a treatable disease, because they were not able to receive life-saving care, due to the number of coronavirus victims.
The US has so completely screwed up, it isn’t even funny. Trump has so screwed up his press briefings, which he has to hold in lieu of campaign rallies, which are/were his lifeblood, that it’s ridiculous. This man-child is so utterly inept, incompetent, and ignorant that it’s really unbelievable.
Gawain's Ghost (b25cd1) — 4/18/2020 @ 6:27 amAn ER doctor who tweets it is too soon to reopen and agrees we need more testing.
DRJ (15874d) — 4/18/2020 @ 6:32 amMore:
Dana (0feb77) — 4/18/2020 @ 7:09 amIf anyone tells you calling it the ‘Chinese’ or ‘Wuhan’ virus is racist:
https://twitter.com/dijoni/status/1251287162059804673?s=20
_
harkin (358ef6) — 4/18/2020 @ 7:11 amSame message:
Coronavirus Testing Needs to Triple Before the U.S. Can Reopen, Experts Say
Dave (1bb933) — 4/18/2020 @ 7:20 amhttps://pjmedia.com/trending/battle-lines-drawn-texas-opts-for-liberty-while-washington-state-makes-liberty-illegal/
If you feel the need to read a crock of crap, there’s one for you.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/18/2020 @ 7:37 amGretchen Whitmer should officially request an official opinion from Michigan’s Attorney General whether a sitting President can be indicted for attempted mass murder under the laws of Michigan and the policies of the AG’s office, and make the request public.
(Yes, attorneys general do issue those kinds of opinions.)
nk (1d9030) — 4/18/2020 @ 7:52 amharkin @83. It’s not racist, but it is inaccurate. It is President Trump’s Coronavirus. He said so himself on millions of postcards he sent out. PTC or Covfefe-19, for short.
nk (1d9030) — 4/18/2020 @ 7:56 am“The beatings will continue until morale improves”
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/18/2020 @ 8:05 amKevin would you care to make a wager, say $1000 (but I’m open to a larger sum), that if water cannons and/or tear gas are used on death cultists in a blue state in the next six months, CNN won’t air footage of it?
I won’t bet on what CNN will or will not show. I do know they are quite cautious about making martyrs on the right. Your “death cultists” sneer is pretty much in line with that.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/18/2020 @ 8:15 amInfuriating.
Dustin (c56600) — 4/18/2020 @ 8:27 amI think it is obvious that we need to test a lot more, both for antibodies and for active virus. These tests are coming on line now, and they will improve. It’s really a “brass ring” for biotech companies.
But RIGHT NOW, it is imperative that we track the health of people who test positive for antibodies to determine if an immunity is conferred. We can do that even with limited tests, and we should. I would expect such people would be asymptomatic if infected again, but I’d also want to know if they were still contagious. This would require volunteers to be frequently tested for active virus following testing positive for antibodies. We still don’t know enough.
We also need to track virus strains. Perhaps we are.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/18/2020 @ 8:30 amGovernment employees are getting paid, they’re in no hurry, what’s the rush?
They only react when there’s a government shutdown and aren’t receiving a paycheck. That is when the panic starts.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/18/2020 @ 8:30 amI doubt that any state is going to open up in April, so the status of testing today isn’t informative. Very soon, this will be like plane-building in 1943, which was a heck of a lot more robust than early 1942. The government is throwing money at this problem like it could be smothered with money, and the Invisible Hand is working its wonders.
But another month of this and the protests you see now will be tiny in comparison. The younger people are (and/or the more immune they feel) the less patience they have with putting their lives on hold. I think we are past “peak patience” and the slide to anger will be fast. Trump knows this (he’s really good at picking up on anger directed at other people) and will try to play both sides of the street.
The plan he put forth is aimed at putting the onus on the governors, while claiming credit for any successes. If it works out, it’s Trump’s plan, if it fails, the governor’s screwed up. And then he encourages his supporters to force the governors’ hands. It’s a sneaky way to get the youth vote.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/18/2020 @ 8:41 amIt’s looking more and more likely the Wuhan Flu came from the bio lab in China where they were researching and experimenting on coronaviruses. Why anyone would try and muddy the waters on this is beyond me. China is trying to hide their culpability and people are giving them cover.
NJRob (4d595c) — 4/18/2020 @ 8:47 amThe virus has many qualities you would expect to see in a weaponized strain, particularly it’s virulence and hardiness. While it isn’t the killer virus of end-of-the-world books, it has completely debilitated the world’s economy.
I doubt the initial release was intentional — the Chinese are not that stupid — but they MAY have decided to help it spread after their own economy was devastated by the release. Misery loves company, and an ebbing tide lowers all boats.
They certainly refrained from sharing their knowledge for a while. Maybe that was just bureaucratic problem-hiding, but it delayed the world’s response.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/18/2020 @ 8:59 am@68: The MoH citation:
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/18/2020 @ 9:07 am94. That’s what I’ve been saying for weeks. I don’t think it was necessarily supposed to be a bioweapon, but there are too many oddities surrounding the circumstances of this virus’ release for it to be a freak of nature.
Gryph (08c844) — 4/18/2020 @ 9:08 am95. And I don’t buy it for a second that “the virus” has destroyed the world economy. That was a side effect of the “medicine” we tried to use against it, completely 100% and utterly self-inflicted.
Gryph (08c844) — 4/18/2020 @ 9:10 amI somewhat agree with you. The current set up of incentives encourages decision makers to be averse to active risks. To avoid negatives that are the results of decisions / actions they take to change us from the status quo.
I’m not saying that they want the shutdown to continue. Just that the personal penalties for bureaucrats and elected officials are lower when they’re very cautious about change.
This is where the leadership vacuum has really been killing us. We could have had this conversation about testing weeks ago.
It’s too bad that there’s no one competent running the national response to lead on this. The leadership has mostly come from the medical fields by people who have spent so much time fighting diseases that their risk/benefit decisions are probably pretty biased.
But your assertion that the people who are expressing different priorities than you are doing so because they want bad things to happen is vile.
Time123 (80b471) — 4/18/2020 @ 9:21 amAnd I don’t buy it for a second that “the virus” has destroyed the world economy.
PoTAYto, PoTAHto.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/18/2020 @ 9:26 am99: Doing nothing requires no reviews, no EIR, no accountability. Only taking action to solve a problem has risks and obstacles. It’s why we can’t build anything any more.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/18/2020 @ 9:28 am“ It’s looking more and more likely the Wuhan Flu came from the bio lab in China where they were researching and experimenting on coronaviruses. Why anyone would try and muddy the waters on this is beyond me.”
– NJRob
Hard for us to evaluate your sources, when you don’t include them. We’re not trying to “muddy the waters,” we’re trying to evaluate the strength of the inferences.
Leviticus (cdf0fe) — 4/18/2020 @ 9:32 amNo, that’s exactly the opposite of how infections work. It most likely was in an isolated bat population, but as urbanization and development have pushed into “isolated” locations, you lose social isolation. This is true for HIV, Ebola, and Coronavirus, etc. Coronavirus is insidious because it’s very communicable 4X-8X the flu, AND it has a long incubation period where the symptom free are still infectious, in fact, some folks are infected with no discernable illness. With CV-19’s observed R0 of 5-8 (BTW, that’s the same as Rubella, whose mortality rate is 0.05%, so CV-19 is 60X-100X higher), in the age of global travel, you have a 100% global practical in 2.5 years. Practically, it will never get to 100%, but that’s why it hasn’t been in the population for more than 4-5 months. Exponential growth is a b!t@h.
I know this isn’t your argument, but for those who think we should jump on the grenade because a vaccine is probably not going to come soon, treatment might not be effective soon, and they recognize that the fatality rate is going to go through the roof, well above 10% as seen wherever medical care is overwhelmed, I’ll have a discussion with them. I’d still think they’re dangerously wrong, but that’s at least a fact based argument, I just don’t like those trade-offs.
But most of these people are not rationally looking at the trade-off of high fatality rates, the fact that socially distancing is working means that it was never as bad as predicted, because we’ve been socially distancing and lowering the native R0, it’s just a misinformed circular argument.
Colonel Klink (Ret) (305827) — 4/18/2020 @ 9:33 amMy employer has said that critical positions will start coming back 5/1 at the soonest. It will go in waves from there. Some departments will be working from home for the balance of 2020.
One of the things we’re struggling with is defining the appropriate precautions to protect people.
Since that hasn’t been defined at a state or federal level it looks like that’s up to us.
Time123 (80b471) — 4/18/2020 @ 9:34 amRight. This is where Leadership from elected officials comes in, or, in this case has not come in.
Time123 (80b471) — 4/18/2020 @ 9:36 am“ there are too many oddities surrounding the circumstances of this virus’ release for it to be a freak of nature.”
– Gryph
Such as? Aren’t you begging the question with a verb like “release”? Were SARS or MERS or H1N1 “released” as well, in your estimation?
Leviticus (cdf0fe) — 4/18/2020 @ 9:38 amBut your assertion that the people who are expressing different priorities than you are doing so because they want bad things to happen is vile.
I didn’t say or infer that, so your judgement rings hollow. My point is that it’s much easier to weather the strain of something like this when one has little, if any, skin in the game. But if a government shutdown looms, or worse, actually happens, well that’s when it becomes a real crisis.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/18/2020 @ 9:39 amMy employer has said that critical positions will start coming back 5/1 at the soonest. It will go in waves from there. Some departments will be working from home for the balance of 2020.
Sounds like you are working. Now imagine yourself not working.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/18/2020 @ 9:42 amhttps://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2020/04/IMG_2856.jpeg?w=900&ssl=1
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/18/2020 @ 9:47 am>“It’s looking more and more likely the Wuhan Flu came from the bio lab in China where they were researching and experimenting on coronaviruses. Why anyone would try and muddy the waters on this is beyond me.”
Let’s be very careful to distinguish between two different theories which could be contained in this sentence.
[1] From everything i’ve read — and i’m reading prepublication medical journal articles as they are released, understand, i’m unemployed, have nothing better to do once i’m done applying for work each day, and am fascinated and deal with things like this by trying to understand them — from everything i’ve read, viral epidemiologists are *absolutely certain* this was not a manufactured agent, for two reasons:
(a) its base molecular structure is from a different coronavirus than any previously human-infectious virus, but scientists trying to make an infectious agent would start by modifying an existing infectious agent to make it more harmful
(b) the way the spike protein binds to ACE2 *was not predictable* according to computer modeling and is more likely to be the result of evolution than design.
Zoonotic spillover into humans is common (there’ve been dozens of such spillovers which have been contained since the start of the century) and would explain both of these.
[2] It’s *possible* that this virus was *accelerated* by the lab. As in: someone got sick with an unknown illness, they took samples to the lab to analyze, the lab did a bad job of containing it and it spread *via the lab*.
I haven’t seen the second proposition analyzed in the academic literature. I’m not sure it’s *possible* to know the answer to that without the cooperation of the people running the lab.
aphrael (7962af) — 4/18/2020 @ 9:49 amCH, you said the two things below
How is this not the same as asserting that that the people that are placing a higher priority on safety than you would are doing so because they want the economy to suffer?
Time123 (80b471) — 4/18/2020 @ 9:50 amMy compensation (but not work load) has been cut substantially and I think (my opinion only) layoffs are likely at my company within the next 12 months.
Believe me, I want this thing in the rear view mirror.
But if we had let this run unchecked, or do a sufficiently poor job at containment, I think the economic impact will be worse.
Time123 (80b471) — 4/18/2020 @ 9:53 amHow is this not the same as asserting that that the people that are placing a higher priority on safety than you would are doing so because they want the economy to suffer?
You wrote that I was breaking PP rules by accusing commenters of bad faith. You also assume that all of these people in positions of influence are only motivated by concerns over safety. I don’t think that is even remotely true.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/18/2020 @ 10:08 amI’m piecing together your point over several comments that also reference other things. Maybe make your assertion plainly if I’m misreading you.
Time123 (457a1d) — 4/18/2020 @ 10:10 amPerhaps you can be more open-minded and drop the Clouseau act…
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/18/2020 @ 10:13 amMaybe so, particularly the insulated politicians at the highest levels who see the pandemic as a personal annoyance but probably not as a personal threat.
As for the rest of the government workers, I am reminded of my father’s feelings about the Great Depression. His father was a city Postmaster after working his way up the post office ladder. Grandfather took a government job in an era when government pay and benefits were low but he wanted security for his wife and children. He made a good decision because his job and salary were safe in the Depression. They had a roof over their heads and food to eat, although even in good times the pay was low so they only had enough food because they tended a garden and had chickens and a cow.
But they also had dozens of extended family come live with them who had lost jobs, homes, and had no incomes or food. My father ended up sleeping in the barn and the food was stretched thin. He was almost bitter when recalling how the minister always showed up for Sunday dinner to eat their meager but “best” food. (As a result, while he was a religious man, he was never fond of ministers.) And what little extra money they had was sent to other family and friends who needed it to survive.
I think government workers get better pay now. My guess is many of them also have extended family to help.
DRJ (15874d) — 4/18/2020 @ 10:24 am> There’s no other explanation for how quickly the disease went from a localized epidemic to a global pandemic.
that’s … really not true at all.
imagine a disease in which every infected person infects two other persons until the number of infected people is so high that it’s difficult to keep doing that (typically around 60% of the population).
imagine that it takes four days for those two people to get infected.
on day 1, you have one infection. on day four, you have two infections. on day eight, four infections. day twelve, eight infections. day sixteen, sixteen infections. day twenty, thirty two infections, day twenty four, sixty four infections. day twenty eight, one hundred twenty eight infections. day thirty two, two hundred fifty six infections. day thirty six, five hundred twelve infections. day forty, one thousand twenty four infections
wait right there. in forty days your number of infections has increased 1024 times.
so by day eighty, if nothing changes, you have 1024×1024 infections … or just over a million.
by day 120, assuming nothing has changed, you have more than a billion.
in practice somewhere between day 80 and day 120 you start slowing down because it’s too hard to find uninfected people to infect.
the *good news* is that the lockdowns have shifted what appeared to be a 3 day doubling rate to a 10 day doubling rate, which is buying us a *lot* of time. a 3 day doubling rate was worse than what i just described: it would spread by a factor of 1024x in a month. a 10 day doubling rate, on the other hand, spreads by a factor of 8x in a month.
the *other good news* is that the lockdowns have reduced the number of people that the each infected person transmits to, by making it much harder to encounter an uninfected person to infect.
but overall, my point is this: novel infectious agents in naive communities can spread like wildfire because that’s simply how exponential math works.
aphrael (7962af) — 4/18/2020 @ 10:31 amPlease clarify your points for us if we are missing something, Colonel Haiku. We aren’t on the same wavelength all the time.
DRJ (15874d) — 4/18/2020 @ 10:32 amI’d go so far as to say that some of these people, Time123, have less than honorable intentions and think an America in pain is a country that will vote against incumbent Donald Trump in November.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/18/2020 @ 10:33 amCoronavirus Testing Needs to Triple Before the U.S. Can Reopen, Experts Say
As some governors consider easing social distancing restrictions, new estimates by researchers at Harvard University suggest that the United States cannot safely reopen unless it conducts more than three times the number of coronavirus tests it is currently administering over the next month.
……..
An average of 146,000 people per day have been tested for the coronavirus nationally so far this month, according to the COVID Tracking Project, which on Friday reported 3.6 million total tests across the country. To reopen the United States by mid-May, the number of daily tests performed between now and then should be 500,000 to 700,000, according to the Harvard estimates.
That level of testing is necessary to identify the majority of people who are infected and isolate them from people who are healthy, according to the researchers. About 20 percent of those tested so far were positive for the virus, a rate that the researchers say is too high.
“If you have a very high positive rate, it means that there are probably a good number of people out there who have the disease who you haven’t tested,” said Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. “You want to drive the positive rate down, because the fundamental element of keeping our economy open is making sure you’re identifying as many infected people as possible and isolating them.”
The researchers said that expanded testing could reduce the rate to 10 percent, which is the maximum rate recommended by the World Health Organization. In Germany, that number is 7 percent, and in South Korea, it is closer to 3 percent.
There is variation in the rate of testing among states, but most need to administer more tests to get to the level the researchers suggest — a minimum of about 152 tests per 100,000 people.
RipMurdock (e81e20) — 4/18/2020 @ 10:37 am…….
Only taking action to solve a problem has risks and obstacles. It’s why we can’t build anything any more.
Well, THAT certainly explains why American manufacturing is (or was pre-CV19) at an all-time high.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/18/2020 @ 10:47 amI think you’re claiming that people who raise concerns about how we restart the economy in a way that doesn’t restart the spread of the virus are doing so for political gain. I think you know you can’t support that so you’re dissembling. First by being unclear about your subject, than by refusing to admit what you were saying, and now by saying ‘some’. Some could mean Fauci, Azar, Governors, or Qanon Conspiracy theorists.
The point of these concerns isn’t politics, it’s taking action to change the facts. We need more testing. Let’s make that a priority. Not turn it into a political point scoring contest.
Time123 (457a1d) — 4/18/2020 @ 11:06 amIn Trump’s ‘LIBERATE’ tweets, extremists see a call to arms
When President Donald Trump tweeted “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” on Friday morning, some of his most fervent supporters in far-right communities — including those who have agitated for violent insurrection — heard a call to arms.
The tweet was one of three sent from the president’s account, along with “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”
Trump’s tweets came after small protests by Trump supporters broke out in a handful of states, many of which were fueled by anti-vaccination and anti-government groups. Anti-government sentiment has percolated among far-right extremists in recent weeks over the stay-at-home orders governors have issued to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
Trump’s tweets, however, pushed many online extremist communities to speculate whether the president was advocating for armed conflict, an event they’ve termed “the boogaloo,” for which many far-right activists have been gearing up and advocating since last year.
There were sharp increases on Twitter in terms associated with conspiracies such as QAnon and the “boogaloo” term immediately following the president’s tweets, according to the Network Contagion Research Institute, an independent nonprofit group of scientists and engineers that tracks and reports on misinformation and hate speech across social media.
Posts about the “boogaloo” on Twitter skyrocketed in the hours after the president’s tweets, with more than 1,000 tweets featuring the term, some of which received hundreds of retweets.
“We the people should open up America with civil disobedience and lots of BOOGALOO. Who’s with me?” one QAnon conspiracy theorist on Twitter with over 50,000 followers asked.
“Boogaloo” is a term used by extremists to refer to armed insurrection, a shortened version of “Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo,” which was coined on the extremist message board 4chan.
Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington condemned Trump’s tweets in his own Twitter thread in which he warned the president about encouraging violence.
……..
Law enforcement officials have previously identified “boogaloo” domestic extremists as a legitimate threat. A report released by the Network Contagion Research Institute about the term “boogaloo” being used to ironically mask violent overthrow attempts had “gone viral” within law enforcement and intelligence communities in February, Homeland Security Advisory Council member Paul Goldenberg told NBC News in February.
……
On pro-Trump message boards like TheDonald.Win, an offshoot of a forum that was effectively banned from Reddit earlier this year, Trump’s tweets delivered a clear message: get ready for the civil war.
“Time to BOOG pedes. It’s now or never,” one highly ranked comment in response to Trump’s “Liberate Virginia” tweet reads. “Earn our freedom for us and our kids like our forefathers did in 1776 or stay silent and be the frog boiled in the pot as we sit in the gulags and wonder why we didn’t do anything.”
RipMurdock (e81e20) — 4/18/2020 @ 11:08 ami couldn’t care less what you think, Time123. You’re calling me a liar, LOLGF.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/18/2020 @ 11:09 amTesting is needed but we can’t do what we don’t have. Texas Gov Abbott said yesterday that Texas will see large increases in testing over the next 2-3 weeks as more test kits/materials become available.(**) This corresponds with his timeline for a limited expansion of our businesses and social reopening.
(**) Hopefully the test kits/materials will actually get delivered. Scams and supply chain problems make that difficult, but I predict we will see more hoarding at every level for years.
DRJ (15874d) — 4/18/2020 @ 11:10 amAfter a month of the government (CDC) and the media (all forms) lying to us about “oh don’t wear masks they don’t work” and being told to wipe down everything with such diligence it could drive you crazy to even try to bring groceries into your house only to later be told… you must wear a mask (in other words we didn’t trust you to understand the truth of the need for medical staff to have the “good stuff” and you are too stupid to understand how to make or use a homemade mask), and oh gosh, there’s no data that the virus spreads through surface contact and packaging….. WHY after this would I trust anything ANYTHING that the government or media tell me.
I’m sick of the lies. I’m sick of the politics. I’m sick of the power grab by many in politics, the expansion of government is ridiculous and dangerous. It is not all based on “safety”. There’s not enough room for all the egos out there. I’m sick of the tweets and finger pointing. I’m sick of the greedy big corporations going for the “free” money when they don’t need it while watching the local mom and pop store go under because there’s no money there for them. I’m sick of the elites (Pelosi comes to mind) and the hollywood stars talking about how hard it is to be “stuck” in a house with everything you need when 6000 people lined up for a box of food in San Antonio. I’m tired of the Republicans going along with all the money grabbing for special interests and the Democrats screaming about how horrid Trump is for obviously going to China and getting a vial of virus and bring it home slinging it about New York City (that’s how it sounds folks). I’m tired of watching my nation move toward socialism because of the panic that has increased our debt and people’s attitudes that it’s the governments duty to take care of us instead of stay out of our business.
Marci (405d43) — 4/18/2020 @ 11:19 amI’d go so far as to say that some of these people, Time123, have less than honorable intentions and think an America in pain is a country that will vote against incumbent Donald Trump in November.
If we aren’t climbing out of this by the fall, they probably will vote Trump out of office.
But the surest way to make sure we aren’t climbing out of this by the fall, is to re-ooen quickly and start seeing second, third, possibly even fourth waves of the virus.
Trump could guarantee his re-election by displaying calm honest leadership. But that’s three character traits of which he has never shown a trace.
Kishnevi (083e7a) — 4/18/2020 @ 11:27 amWell said, Marci.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/18/2020 @ 11:31 amKishnevi, that’s going to happen no matter when you reopen. Flatten the curve didn’t mean make it disappear. It only mean spreading out the time till the same people are infected. Herd immunity or a vaccine are the only way to make the virus disappear.
NJRob (4d595c) — 4/18/2020 @ 11:31 amBingo.
Instead, with great fanfare, he announces Guidelines for Opening Up America Again and the next day, for crass political advantage, goes on Twitter to spout sedition and incite his cult followers to ignore them…
Anyone who thinks this man should be president in a crisis is out of their #!@$%~$ mind.
Dave (1bb933) — 4/18/2020 @ 11:37 amLots of words just to admit I’m right.
Time123 (80b471) — 4/18/2020 @ 11:39 amHe doesn’t understand how it escalates the discussion to the point of anger to intermix this evasiveness with defensiveness. Or maybe he does understand it. Who cares?
Haiku is right, of course. Someone out there is happy that the economy collapsed on Team R’s watch again. No one here would say that’s absolutely wrong. Is it Antifa twerps and a few greedy CNN journalists? Sure. Rank and file democrats? No. They are scared, they see their loved ones having a hard time making ends meet. Politicians? Absolutely. I believe anyone who can last in politics today is a sociopath.
But Trump’s tweeting for idiots to liberate states and he’s being totally partisan about it. Team R sows pain for political gain too. It seems there’s no point trying to track which party has the jerks in it.
Kishnevi has the right outlook. Trump has a golden opportunity to lead. To disprove all the haters who say he’s an emotional, shallow, selfish person. All he’s gotta do is be resolute, calm, confident. Watch some George W videos and copy that. If Trump leads us through this without being a partisan or a nut, he will win a landslide and he’ll deserve it.
Dustin (c56600) — 4/18/2020 @ 11:39 am@129, I think it’s a matter of scale. We can handle moderate outbreaks. Look at SK for an example of what winning might look like.
Time123 (80b471) — 4/18/2020 @ 11:40 amThe Wuhancoronavirus may turn out to be like a bad flu season for the country in general, but not all that much if you don’t live in the tri-State area. The concern about overwhelming the healthcare system has not happened and will not happen.
In the end, when the statistics are analyzed, we may find little to no excess number of deaths compared to other years. When that happens, Trump will be blamed by SOME folks (CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, MSLSD, the Democrat party, Hollywood, NYT, WaPo, academia, etc.) for overreacting and ruining the economy.
Colonel Haiku (15feec) — 4/18/2020 @ 1:12 pmThat was the most bizarre thing I’ve seen from you.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/18/2020 @ 1:55 pm@83 It’s attention seeking behavior. It’s basically a lime green mohawk. Ooo, oooo, look how cool I am with my ingroup, look how transgressive I am against all the squares.
Nic (896fdf) — 4/18/2020 @ 2:04 pmLOL
Dave (1bb933) — 4/18/2020 @ 2:08 pmEven the laugh is Below Average…
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/18/2020 @ 2:25 pm@134 We shut down the economy and we’re at 30k deaths in 1 month, that’s worse then some recent Flu seasons. BTW Flu seasons are 4-6 months and have a much lower rate of growth. The worst in a decade topped out at 61K deaths.
The fact that we haven’t overwhelmed our health care system is good. It means that there was some value in what we did.
Time123 (d1bf33) — 4/18/2020 @ 2:26 pm@81. Thing is w/testing, it can’t be done in a random, helter skelter fashion. They need a structured plan and procedures in place [a la powering up Apollo 13’s CM]– there’s a lot to learn from that success. You test someone on a Monday and they could be infected by a random other by Friday doesn’t work well and they’ll be testing people over and over for months– maybe years. The ‘odyssey’ of bringing America back on line requires plan and flexible procedure to start from the basics up. You’d think some of these young computer geeks would use some ‘SimCity’ or ‘SimSociety’ template as an overlay to crank things back up. For instance, you don’t open up gyms or sport venues– even beaches- for crowds before you get the food distribution network, the power grid, medical and sanitation systems a reasonable all clear, etc., then build on that. And, of course, you keep researching for a vaccine.
The Trump team just doesn’t seem to be well organized on how to attack and manage this beyond using ‘garden hose’ tactics on hot spots. You’d think some old, dusty binder in a rusty file cabinet down in the Pentagon basement next to the crate of 1963 saltine crackers would have a plan to deal w/a post ‘germ warfare’ attack that would give them some rudimentary guidance.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 4/18/2020 @ 2:31 pmThis typifies the breed… https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Screen-Shot-2020-04-18-at-2.50.38-PM.png
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/18/2020 @ 2:36 pmWith COVID-19 having peaked (the highest date was April 4), despite the best efforts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to increase numbers by first saying any death with the virus could be considered a death from the virus and then again this week by saying a positive test isn’t even needed, you can see where this is going.
Since the AIDS epidemic, people have been pumping out such models with often incredible figures. For AIDS, the Public Health Service announced (without documenting) there would be 450,000 cases by the end of 1993, with 100,000 in that year alone. The media faithfully parroted it. There were 17,325 by the end of that year, with about 5,000 in 1993. SARS (2002-2003) was supposed to kill perhaps “millions,” based on analyses. It killed 744 before disappearing.
Later, avian flu strain A/H5N1, “even in the best-case scenarios” was to “cause 2 (million) to 7 million deaths” worldwide. A British professor named Neil Ferguson scaled that up to 200 million. It killed 440. This same Ferguson in 2002 had projected 50-50,000 deaths from so-called “Mad Cow Disease.” On its face, what possible good is a spread that large? (We shall return to this.) But the final toll was slightly over 200.
In the current crisis the most alarming model, nay probably the most influential in the implementation of the draconian quarantines worldwide, projected a maximum of 2.2 million American deaths and 550,000 United Kingdom deaths unless there were severe restrictions for 18 months or until a vaccine was developed. The primary author: Neil Ferguson. Right, Mad Cow/Avian Flu Fergie.
Then a funny thing happened. A mere nine days after announcing his model, Ferguson said a better number for the U.K. would be only 20,000. The equivalent would be fewer than 80,000 American deaths. Technically, that U.K. number was buried in a table in the report under what might be called “a fantastic case scenario.” But could that reduction possibly reflect a mere nine days of restrictions? No.
Soon all the numbers were tumbling. Yet as late as March 31, the New York Times declared: “White House Projects Grim Toll from Virus” citing White House Coronavirus Task Force head Deborah Birx and director of the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci, who in turn cited a model showing deaths up to 240,000. Still awful, but Birx explicitly backed off the Ferguson projection for which she had previously been the Grey Lady’s pompom girl.
Then suddenly Fauci announced a flat figure of “more like 60,000,” the same number the CDC says died of flu two years ago. Probably not coincidentally, until quite recently the agency said there were 80,000 flu victims that year, before lowering it to 61,000 – presumably because people were using that figure to compare to COVID-19 deaths. In any event, the 1968-1969 “Hong Kong flu” killed an estimated 100,000 Americans, or 165,000 adjusted to today’s population.
https://issuesinsights.com/2020/04/18/after-repeated-failures-its-time-to-permanently-dump-epidemic-models/
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/18/2020 @ 2:54 pmIt peaked because we shut down the economy and stopped spreading it so quickly.
Time123 (d54166) — 4/18/2020 @ 3:02 pmLying Liars And The Lies They Lie. The virus has not “peaked”. It has not even plateaued.
nk (1d9030) — 4/18/2020 @ 4:01 pm> It has not even plateaued.
the rate of doubling has fallen in most of the parts of the world which are generating reliable statistics. the rate of growth is now tending towards a constant, and there are *some places*, possibly including the bay area, where R0 is now below 1. But it’s a very tenuous thing.
aphrael (7962af) — 4/18/2020 @ 4:32 pmTrump lashes out at governors over testing shortfalls
President Donald Trump on Saturday repeatedly blamed governors for not making full use of coronavirus testing capacity in their states, even as several Democrat and Republican governors said they are facing shortages of critical supplies to conduct tests.
“They don’t want to use all of the capacity that we’ve created. We have tremendous capacity,” Trump said during a briefing at the White House. “They know that. The governors know that. The Democrat governors know that. They’re the ones that are complaining.”
Trump’s comments come after the White House released a three-part guideline this week, saying that states can enter the first phase toward reopening once they see a continued decrease over two weeks.
As of Saturday afternoon, there were more than 732,000 confirmed cases in the US and at least 38,600 people had died, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Even as Trump said his administration is working with governors to “help them find and unlock the vast unused testing capacity that exists in their states,” the President suggested it was the governors’ fault for not making use of that capacity.
“The governors should use it,” Trump said of private lab testing capacity. “They’re waiting for business from these governors.”
RipMurdock (e81e20) — 4/18/2020 @ 4:50 pmThe President lambasted governors even as his own health experts have acknowledged shortfalls in testing around the country and he himself committed on Friday to shipping 5 million additional testing swabs to states this month due to shortages.
“Stay-at-home orders halted the exponential spread of the disease, which proves that they were totally unnecessary!”
Dave (1bb933) — 4/18/2020 @ 5:15 pm– Death cult talking point
aphrael, if I ruled the world, I would have a cadre of secret police whose only job would be to go around and “work over” people who say “increasing at a decreasing rate”.
nk (1d9030) — 4/18/2020 @ 5:26 pmTo date, the WSJ has been slavishly supportive of Trump. But Friday:
Trump’s Coronavirus Focus Shifts to Reopening Economy, Defending His Response
[emphasis added]
That’s the kind of leadership America
Dave (1bb933) — 4/18/2020 @ 5:30 pmneedsdeserves.This is the thinking:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/health/coronavirus-america-future.html
Sammy Finkelman (3bf6ea) — 4/20/2020 @ 5:17 am