Tag: Virus

It’s OK to Acknowledge Good Covid-19 News

On By TonyIn HopeLeave a comment

By RICH LOWRY. 05/20/2020 08:14 PM

It’s OK to Acknowledge Good Covid-19 News

We are PROBABLY on the other side of the curve. There are encouraging signs all over the country, and no early indications of a reopening debacle.

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The coronavirus has taken a heartbreaking toll in America, which has had more than 100,000 fatalities, but the course of the virus is not the same as it was a few months ago. We are on the other side of the curve. There are encouraging signs all over the country, and no early indications of a reopening debacle.

The question now is whether the media and political system can absorb good news on the virus, which is often ignored or buried under misleading storylines.

The press has a natural affinity for catastrophes, which make compelling viewing and good copy. The pandemic is indeed a once-in-a-generation story. So the media is naturally loath to shift gears and acknowledge that the coronavirus has begun to loosen its grip.

Meanwhile, progressives and many journalists have developed a near-theological commitment to the lockdowns, such that any information that undermines them is considered unwelcome, even threatening. This accounts for the widespread sense that no one should say things have gotten better … or people are going to die.

Usually when it is thought the public can’t handle the truth, it is a truth about some threat that could spark panic. In this case, the truth is information that might make people think it’s safe to go outside again.

Almost all the discussion about reopening is framed by worries that we will reopen too soon, not that we might reopen too late—that is literally unthinkable.

None of this is to minimize the seriousness of this pandemic. New York and its surrounding suburbs have been through hell. What’s happened in the country’s nursing homes is a tragedy. We want to be cautious about reopening—as even the most forward-leaning governors have been—and vigilant about new outbreaks.

But we have entered a new phase. As Nate Silver pointed out on Tuesday, the seven-day rolling average for deaths is 1,362, down from 1,761 the week prior and a peak of 2,070 on April 21. That’s still much too high, but the trend is favorable.

Testing capacity, such a concern for so long, has really begun to expand after hitting a plateau for weeks. Testing nationally on some days has been in the high 300,000s or (on May 17) over 400,000. The issue in some states now is not capacity but actually finding enough people to test.

Scott Gottlieb of the American Enterprise Institute notes that the positivity rate, or percentage of people testing positive, has continued to fall throughout May. In New York City, the country’s epicenter, the positivity rate was below 5 percent as of the middle of the week.

The reopenings could certainly still go awry, but so far there is no clear indication of it. Cases are still falling in Austria, Denmark and Norway, despite those countries being relatively far along on reopening. Denmark has been mystified why it is almost five weeks into reopening and hasn’t yet seen increases in infections.

On Tuesday, Georgia, so widely criticized for its reopening, had its lowest number of Covid-19 patients in the hospital since April 8, when such data began being reported. The number has dropped 12 percent since the week before, and 34 percent since May 1.

The press has often, out of sloppiness or willfulness, tried to create negative news around the reopenings. CNN tweeted last weekend, “Texas is seeing the highest number of new coronavirus cases and deaths just two weeks after it officially re-opened.” As Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics pointed out, the seven-day rolling average of new cases had indeed been trending up, but the seven-day rolling average of the number of tests had gone up, too—which would naturally turn up more cases.

The key indicator is the positivity rate, and it was down in Texas.

A North Carolina TV station tweeted, “Breaking News: NC sees largest spike in coronavirus cases since pandemic began.” That referred to 800 new cases over the past 24 hours on May 16. But tests had been going sharply up and the positivity rate trending down. Hospitalizations were basically flat.

The other day, headlines noted that Florida recorded 500 new cases on one day. It generated fewer headlines, and perhaps none, when Gov. Ron DeSantis pointed out that the state had received a dump of 75,000 test results, yielding the 500 new cases, for a minuscule positivity rate of 0.64 percent.

It’s not as though we haven’t had a cataract of unassailably legitimate bad news over the past few months. We’ve been experiencing a wrenching public health crisis and a steep recession on top of it. There shouldn’t be a need to obscure favorable trends. We can handle the truth.

Trump is Playing One State Against The Other

On By TonyIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Of course politics can me divisive. No one political party has a monopoly on playing states against each other.

In times of crisis we need a leader that will bring us together not drive us apart. Trump seems to more interested in fixing the blame on someone than fixing the problem.

For years our country has become more and more decentralized.  Governors, of course, want “States Rights”. Living here in Northern New England it is often hard to understand the issues facing Southern California or the plains of the midwest.  Our decentralization is a contributing factor to the current Covid19 crisis.  The Coronavirus does not recognize state boarders.  As a country, we probably have enough Masks, Gloves and other PPEs.  We probably have enough ventilators.  They just are not where we need them.  States and cities are left negotiating with each other and the federal government for needed supplies. There is nothing efficient or cost effective about this.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo slammed back at President Donald Trump Monday, informing him that it’s Republican red states — not New York and other blue states — that are sucking up more national resources than they’re contributing.

The Democratic governor was responding to a tweet by Trump complaining that the nation shouldn’t have to bail out “poorly run states.” In “all cases,” Trump claimed, they are “Democrat run and managed.” He specifically named Illinois, headed by a fierce Trump critic, Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D).

“If you want to go to who’s getting bailed out and who paid what, nobody would be bailing out New York state,” Cuomo said at his daily press briefing, calling New York the “number one giver.” The state has been “bailing” out red states for decades, Cuomo said.

In fact, the top six of eight states that pay more to the nation than they get back from the federal government are blue states. Illinois gives as much as it gets, according to an analysis by the Rockefeller Institute of Government. Three of the four biggest “taker” states in the nation, which collect at least twice what they contribute, are Republican-led states.

Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
Why should the people and taxpayers of America be bailing out poorly run states (like Illinois, as example) and cities, in all cases Democrat run and managed, when most of the other states are not looking for bailout help? I am open to discussing anything, but just asking?

190K
10:41 AM – Apr 27, 2020

“Nobody puts more into the pot than the state of New York,” Cuomo said, noting that the state has paid out $116 billion more than it received in federal spending since 2015, he said. The governor named New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut as additional “giver states.”

“Who are the taker states?” Cuomo asked, and he named Kentucky and pointed to states in the “southeast part of the country.” Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and West Virginia, among other red states, all take more in federals funds than they contribute.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has said he’s opposed to “blue-state bailouts,” suggested last week that states should simply go bankrupt if they’re running out of money amid the COVID-19 crisis. His state already gets more bang for every buck it pays to the federal government. Kentucky collects $2.41 for every dollar it sends to the national coffers, according to data analyzed by the Rockefeller Institute.

“This is not the time to be talking about dollars and cents among members of a community who are trying to be mutually supportive and help each other,” he said. “This is not the time to be saying, ‘Well, you put in a dollar more than I did,’ or ‘I put in $5 more than you did.’”

But, he added, “If you want to call for an accounting, you lose.”

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) also complained Monday that Florida taxpayers, who “live within our means,” shouldn’t have to bail out New York, California and Illinois. His state’s taxpayers aren’t living within their means. Florida takes in $1.21 in federal funds for each dollar it pays to the U.S. government.

Facts NOT Fear

On By TonyIn Politics1 Comment

We have entered the stage of 24 hour news cycle about the Coronavirus, Covid-19.  The virus has devastated our economy and certainly my business will take some time to get back on track WHEN we are allowed to reopen.

I am a daily shopper (well, I WAS a daily shopper). It is just my wife and I now that are kids are grown. I have NO idea what I am going to make for dinner until. go to the store and see what looks good.  Early last week I was at the store, it was fairly quiet and the shelves were starting to look “normal” again. There was one man pushing a completely overloaded cart. Filled with enough food for months. The complete look of terror on his face was what struck me. I felt so bad for him.  He had been worked up into such a frenzy that he was fear shopping. Buying things before anyone else did.

I blame this on the national politicians in our country. ALL SIDES.  For decades they have just peddled fear. Be afraid of the other side. Be afraid of the other country. Be afraid of that person who doesn’t look like you. Be afraid of that person who doesn’t think like you.

What happened to humanity?

This is a time for FACTS not FEAR.  Here are the facts and this is what we can do to make it better and improve our odds.

I came across an article on Yahoo news finance. It was had some great facts about the spread of the virus and what to expect.  I have edited it just for readability.  IT IS GOING TO BE OK.  It is just going to take a while.

Inan Dogan, PhD

Executive Summary

Right now 2 million Americans are infected with the coronavirus. The total U.S. death toll by April 15th will be more than 20,000. We estimate that 80 thousand of the 2 million infected Americans will be hospitalized over the next 2 weeks.

Thesis:

./////////////,,,,,,Three parameter estimates are needed to predict the number of infections and number of deaths over the next 3 weeks: infection fatality rate, infection growth rate, and the number of days between initial infection and resolution (either death or recovery) of the infection.

1. We now estimate that the coronavirus’s fatality rate is ~0.8%. This means 1 out of every 125 infected people will die. We know that almost all countries had problems with testing and identifying all infected people. There are two exceptions to this: South Korea and Japan’s Princess Diamond cruise ship.

South Korea tested more than 320,000 people and identified 8652 infections. The total number of deaths was 94. This means South Korea’s case fatality rate is 1.09%. We believe there are still a considerable number of South Koreans who were asymptomatic and weren’t tested. So, we estimate that the actual fatality rate is anywhere from 0.5% and 1%.

In early February the Princess Diamond cruise ship was quarantined in Japan after one of the passengers tested positive. This was a bad idea for passengers as a total of 712 passengers were eventually infected and 7 of these people died. As far as I know all 3000+ passengers of this cruise ship were tested, so we have a reliable dataset with pretty accurate number of infections and number of deaths. The case fatality rate on Princess Diamond is 0.983%. We know that the fatality rate is higher among older people. Assuming that the median age of passengers on Princess Diamond is greater than America’s, which is 39, we can estimate that the new coronavirus’ fatality rate will be around 0.8% in America (maybe a little lower, but this is a nice round number).

2. This paper estimates that an infection takes around 23-24 days to resolve. The first 5-6 days the patient doesn’t show any symptoms. It takes an average of 5 days between the onset of symptoms and hospitalization. Finally it takes about 2 weeks between hospitalization and death (about 10 days in ICU).

3. There is no accurate direct way of calculating the infection growth rate because there is a huge variation in the number of people we are testing. [We were testing only a few people a couple of weeks ago, so we identified only a small number of infections. In recent days we started testing a large number of people (especially in New York) and now our case count is growing at alarming rates.] However, we can assume that the death rate is constant and we use the change in deaths to estimate the infection growth rate. There is a 23-24 day lag between an infection and the resolution of that infection. This means the growth rate in the number of deaths today is a very good estimate of the infection growth rate 23-24 days ago.

On March 19th, the U.S. reported a total of 205 deaths. That figure was 85 on March 16th and 47 on March 13th. This means the number of deaths doubles about every 3 days. This also means that the number of infections were doubling every 3 days on February 25th (the people who are dying today were infected on February 25th).

So, here is my simple mathematical model.

For the sake of argument, I am going to assume that all 205 American deaths occurred on March 19th and all of these people were infected on February 25th (this assumption simplifies calculations, we don’t need a complex model to have a thorough understanding of what is going on).

Our estimate for the fatality rate is 0.8%; this means for every death we have 125 infections. Since we have 205 total deaths, there must have been 205 times 125 total infections on February 25th. That’s 25,625 infected people. If you understand this part of the calculation, the rest of our analysis is pretty straightforward.

The number of infected people doubles every 3 days. So, on February 28th the number of infected people doubled to 51,250 (let’s round it down to 50,000). Three days later, on March 2nd, the number of infected people doubled again to 100,000.

Do you see start to see the gravity of the situation? There were 100K infected people on March 2nd in America. We know that 0.8% of these people will die by March 26th. That means our death toll will be 800 on March 26th [you can verify the accuracy of our model on March 26th by comparing the actual death toll to our estimate].

Our model tells us that the number of infections doubled again on March 5th, reaching 200,000.

Our model also tells us that the number of infected people was 400,000 on March 8th, 800,000 on March 11th, and 1.6 million on March 14th.

These calculations imply that the American death toll will be 12,800 on April 7th. To put that in perspective, yesterday, the total death toll in Italy was 3400 and 3000 in China.

I know that these are just estimates, but even if my estimates are off by 50%, we will have still twice as many coronavirus deaths as China 2.5 weeks from now.

Enter social distancing. On March 14th, various municipalities and agencies started introducing social distancing. The practice eventually began to be suggested or required in the hardest hit parts of the nation.

The good news is that we started cancelling schools and closing down restaurants around March 14th. So, the number of total US infections isn’t doubling every 3 days anymore. Unfortunately, the horse is already out of the barn. As of March 14th, one out of every 200 Americans is already infected.

Italy put the entire country under lockdown 12 days ago, yet its death toll is still increasing exponentially. That’s because there is a 24 day lag between an infection and its resolution. We haven’t put our country under a lockdown yet. (As of 3/24 the death toll in Italy, although staggering, has decreased. Showing that social distancing has worked. TR)

Except a few educated people, no one has any idea that there are already around 2 million infected people in America today and the American death toll will exceed 15,000 in just 24 days. If we don’t take strict measures, we will be reporting 1000 deaths per day in just 3 weeks.

This is a mathematical certainty. It is inevitable.

China taught us how to contain the coronavirus outbreak. We have to put the entire country under a strict lockdown.

Update 1 (March 21, 2020): The number of deaths on the Princess Diamond cruise ship increased to 8. The case fatality rate for this group is 1.12%. This doesn’t change any of our parameters or estimates. We still expect to see around 800 coronavirus deaths in the U.S. by the end of March 26th.