Past the peak, now what?

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 14:14:48 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
<langwadt@fonz.dk> wrote:

onsdag den 8. april 2020 kl. 22.29.12 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:
On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 12:28:31 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
langwadt@fonz.dk> wrote:

onsdag den 8. april 2020 kl. 20.58.36 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:
On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 11:31:17 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 1:02:49 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 08/04/2020 18:23, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 3:56:31 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

All true, but I'm more interested in what actions cause those
numbers to move in the right direction.

It's interesting that Sweden achieved control without shutting down.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/swedens-numbers-vs-americas.php


Sweden does not have control at all - not remotely. It has exponential
increases in the cases and deaths, it is losing control in the hospitals
in Stockholm, several key epidemiologists are now publicly warning of a
looming disaster, and they don't even know how many deaths they have had
(they've changed the way they count several times).

Thanks for that info. However, the point remains that, starting from
the same growth rate, Swedes have lowered their exponent to comparable
or less than the U.S.', without shutting down.

The idea behind the "herd immunity" strategy is to get about 60% of the
population infected and either recovered or dead. (The figure "60%" is
mostly a guess, but commonly quoted.) Sweden is heading for disaster
with a confirmed case rate of 0.1%. Even if we assume that the real
infection rate is several times higher due to non-symptomatic or
untested infections, they are getting overwhelmed when they are less
than 1% of the way towards their goal.

The JH site shows that new cases peaked in Sweden on April 1, at about
62 PPM per day.






In contrast, Norway has had quite a solid lockdown for a month or so,
and the spreading factor is down to 0.7 new infections per infected
person. That means the disease is dying out here - while before the
lockdowns, we had one of the highest cases per head of population in the
world. Hospitals here are not overwhelmed - there are empty beds,
routine operations are being scheduled again, and we are sending a
medical team to Italy to help.

The first U.S. cases in Washington state were immediately contained
and quarantined. And the president cut off travel almost immediately,
on Jan. 31, when we had just that handful in a Washington state nursing
home.

New York seems to be our epicenter, and fleeing New Yorkers the source
of our secondary spread.

New York is, essentially, America's Italy.

Other than that, the U.S. was doing quite well. As you can see on this
map,

https://www.sylacauganews.com/

even now, most of the countryside still isn't affected.

I highly suspect that, like Taiwan, Asian successes in controlling
the spread are greatly helped by their cultural propensity to don
masks in public.


We don't wear masks in Norway (except for medical staff, of course).

I've seen U.S. Asian folks wearing masks in public for years. I'd
always thought it a bit paranoid. But maybe it was just good
sense.


It may be useful for other diseases. It is also likely to help with
their terrible air pollution.

The chief COVID benefit I see to masking, is reducing spreading by
unwitting carriers. Another benefit is that masks prevent their
wearers from touching their faces with contaminated fingers.

Cheers,
James Arthur

I don't see how things like masks and distancing will change much but
the time scale of the infection curve. Might chop off the tail a
little sharper.

The rationale for all these measures was originally to reduce hospital
overloads, but hospitals have more empty beds now than normal.


here we have been shutdown about 4-5 weeks, at least 10000 operation have been postponed,

That's killing people too.


It could, but critical and emergency operations are still being done so
it is mostly inconvenient, but they will have to be done (and paid for) eventually

I was thinking about things like cancer screening.

One of my daughters has a problem now. She can't go in to see her
doctor, or have some tests, because of the virus thing. So she got a
remote teleconference diagnosis and some medication to treat a
possible but not confirmed problem. It's a best guess under the
circumstances.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 11:31:17 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 1:02:49 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 08/04/2020 18:23, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 3:56:31 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

All true, but I'm more interested in what actions cause those
numbers to move in the right direction.

It's interesting that Sweden achieved control without shutting down.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/swedens-numbers-vs-americas.php


Sweden does not have control at all - not remotely. It has exponential
increases in the cases and deaths, it is losing control in the hospitals
in Stockholm, several key epidemiologists are now publicly warning of a
looming disaster, and they don't even know how many deaths they have had
(they've changed the way they count several times).

Thanks for that info. However, the point remains that, starting from
the same growth rate, Swedes have lowered their exponent to comparable
or less than the U.S.', without shutting down.

Eyeballing a linear fit of new cases, the Swedish curve starts up from
zero about 2 weeks before the US curve. They are further along
whatever curve this thing has.

That's one apparent pattern. The sooner a country started, the further
they are now past their peak.

But all the data is very suspect.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 6:17:39 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 11:31:17 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 1:02:49 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 08/04/2020 18:23, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 3:56:31 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

All true, but I'm more interested in what actions cause those
numbers to move in the right direction.

It's interesting that Sweden achieved control without shutting down.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/swedens-numbers-vs-americas.php


Sweden does not have control at all - not remotely. It has exponential
increases in the cases and deaths, it is losing control in the hospitals
in Stockholm, several key epidemiologists are now publicly warning of a
looming disaster, and they don't even know how many deaths they have had
(they've changed the way they count several times).

Thanks for that info. However, the point remains that, starting from
the same growth rate, Swedes have lowered their exponent to comparable
or less than the U.S.', without shutting down.

Eyeballing a linear fit of new cases, the Swedish curve starts up from
zero about 2 weeks before the US curve. They are further along
whatever curve this thing has.

All of Europe got it sooner than we did. But just looking at the
plot in the powerlineblog link above, Sweden's laissez faire approach
knocked their rate-of-increase to about what we've gotten by total
lock-down.

That's one apparent pattern. The sooner a country started, the further
they are now past their peak.

But all the data is very suspect.

I think the new cases info is pretty good.

Our deaths will be vastly over-stated -- Dr. Birx just said that
all deaths where WuFlu is *present* shall be tabulated as WuFlu deaths.

Meanwhile, pneumonia is our 8th-leading cause of death, but patients
are not normally tested for influenza (which often kills that way).

So, WuFlu's lethality will be substantially overstated in the official
records, and influenza's, significantly understated.

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 4:13:07 PM UTC-4, Ricky C wrote:

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 2:31:25 PM UTC-4, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 1:02:49 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 08/04/2020 18:23, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 3:56:31 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

All true, but I'm more interested in what actions cause those
numbers to move in the right direction.

It's interesting that Sweden achieved control without shutting down.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/swedens-numbers-vs-americas.php


Sweden does not have control at all - not remotely. It has exponential
increases in the cases and deaths, it is losing control in the hospitals
in Stockholm, several key epidemiologists are now publicly warning of a
looming disaster, and they don't even know how many deaths they have had
(they've changed the way they count several times).

Thanks for that info. However, the point remains that, starting from
the same growth rate, Swedes have lowered their exponent to comparable
or less than the U.S.', without shutting down.

You seem to entirely miss the point that the US response is not the gold standard of fighting this disease. If the Swedes have matched the US that means they still have a LONG way to go.

Really?

As of 4/7/2020, worldometers.info

(view in Courier)
.------------------+----------------+-------+-------.
| cases | deaths | | |
|------------------+----------------+ cases | deaths|
| total | new | total | new | (ppm) | (ppm) |
|---------|--------|--------|-------|-------|-------|
Europe | 695,486 | 34,778 | 57,162 | 4,733 | 1,227 | 101 |
EU | 578,938 | 27,795 | 48,694 | 3,682 | 1,705 | 143 |
USA | 400,335 | 33,331 | 12,841 | 1,970 | 1,209 | 39 |
'---------------------------------------------------'

Seems decent to me.

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 16:07:48 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 6:17:39 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 11:31:17 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 1:02:49 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 08/04/2020 18:23, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 3:56:31 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

All true, but I'm more interested in what actions cause those
numbers to move in the right direction.

It's interesting that Sweden achieved control without shutting down.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/swedens-numbers-vs-americas.php


Sweden does not have control at all - not remotely. It has exponential
increases in the cases and deaths, it is losing control in the hospitals
in Stockholm, several key epidemiologists are now publicly warning of a
looming disaster, and they don't even know how many deaths they have had
(they've changed the way they count several times).

Thanks for that info. However, the point remains that, starting from
the same growth rate, Swedes have lowered their exponent to comparable
or less than the U.S.', without shutting down.

Eyeballing a linear fit of new cases, the Swedish curve starts up from
zero about 2 weeks before the US curve. They are further along
whatever curve this thing has.

All of Europe got it sooner than we did. But just looking at the
plot in the powerlineblog link above, Sweden's laissez faire approach
knocked their rate-of-increase to about what we've gotten by total
lock-down.

That's one apparent pattern. The sooner a country started, the further
they are now past their peak.

But all the data is very suspect.

I think the new cases info is pretty good.

Our deaths will be vastly over-stated -- Dr. Birx just said that
all deaths where WuFlu is *present* shall be tabulated as WuFlu deaths.

Meanwhile, pneumonia is our 8th-leading cause of death, but patients
are not normally tested for influenza (which often kills that way).

So, WuFlu's lethality will be substantially overstated in the official
records, and influenza's, significantly understated.

Cheers,
James Arthur

This is certainly the first cold virus that has been tracked so
intensely in real time. If we had named and tested for all the past
cold and flu viruses, we could have panicked and locked down for them
too. Some were a lot worse.

https://www.euromomo.eu/index.html

Up through week 13 (last week of March) it's an unusually good year to
be an old fart.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 2:33:43 AM UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 11:10:36 AM UTC-4, dca...@krl.org wrote:
On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 3:56:31 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 06/04/20

All true, but I'm more interested in what actions cause those
numbers to move in the right direction.

Absolutely amazing. No one responded to my post. Lots of posts about when one should start the economy going , but not one post about the details on exactly how the economy should be started. No discussion on when sports events should be allowed to have fans come to matches. No discussion on when schools should reopen. No discussion of when foreign travel should be permitted. When should restaurants be allowed to have unlimited numbers of customers in attendance? When should cruise ships be allowed to resume cruises. Should they get tested for infection before being allowed to book a cruise?

I expect there will be lots of posts after the fa Act about the mistakes made in starting .the economy. I do hope some thought is being done by the various government agency on loosing the restrictions.

Dan

The short answer is that no one knows -- there are too many unknowns.

But ISTM, with the information currently available, that
o most of the country isn't affected(1)
o those areas could open now, with social-distancing (and possibly
face masks)
o infected individuals and communities should be quarantined until safe
o Fever-spotting imagers might usefully exclude sick people from stores.
(I have surveillance-society concerns with that, but those concerns
aside, thermal imaging could spot and stop some super-spreaders.)

(1) see the map -- https://www.sylacauganews.com/

Thoughts?

Suffers from Covid-19 start spreading the virus before they show any overt sign of infection, so fever-spotting imagers don't catch all the potentially infectious people. In fact once the immune system has kicked in and started producing symptoms like fever, the inrected person is spreading rather fewer virus articles.

Fever-spotting cameras would help, but they are nowhere near as effective as contact tracing and pre-emptive isolation of potential infectors.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 2:24:00 AM UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 3:56:31 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

All true, but I'm more interested in what actions cause those
numbers to move in the right direction.

It's interesting that Sweden achieved control without shutting down.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/swedens-numbers-vs-americas.php

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

They haven't achieved control. The new case per day rate peaked - briefly - at 621 cases on the 2nd April and is now up at 726 for yesterday.

They are doing better than the US has done so far, but there's a way to go yet.

I highly suspect that, like Taiwan, Asian successes in controlling
the spread are greatly helped by their cultural propensity to don
masks in public.

Informed opinion pays more attention to vigorous contact tracing and rigorous isolation of anybody who might have got infected by anybody who has tested positive for the disease.

I've seen U.S. Asian folks wearing masks in public for years. I'd
always thought it a bit paranoid. But maybe it was just good
sense.

In this situation it is good sense. I'm not doing it because there aren't enough masks around, and any mask I used would be taken from somebody who could use it to better effect.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 2:53:25 AM UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 11:09:29 PM UTC-4, dca...@krl.org wrote:
On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 10:18:06 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 3:07:44 AM UTC+10, dca...@krl.org wrote:
On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 11:51:09 AM UTC-4, DecadentLinux...@decadence.org wrote:
"dcaster@krl.org" <dcaster@krl.org> wrote in
news:4d0e5efd-cb5e-4473-8d64-320703c9e838@googlegroups.com:

On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 3:56:31 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 06/04/20

It only takes a single infectious person to restart the epidemic.


That s true, but the US will have lots of testing capability available and with only a few cases contact tracing should be effective.

You make a good point that by waiting, we can collapse the number
of cases to a more manageable number. But there will still be
reservoirs in people scattered all over the country (who are no
longer in New York .

How do you contact-trace someone who was never sick, walking through
a public area planting viral seeds?

They had to catch the virus from somebody else. As South Korea has established, if you go after all the people you know might have been infected, and isolate them for 14 days, you can reduce the number of new infections well below the number required to sustain an epidemic.

It doesn't get everybody, but it gets close enough to limit re-infection to very low levels.

If the US had got the message from South Korea and acted on it, there would be some 10,000 fewer dead Americans than there are now and a lot fewer Americans in the process of getting killed by Covid-19.

That's not exclusively down to Trump, but he bears a great deal of the responsibility the slowness and ineptitude of the US response.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 7:35:45 AM UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 4:44:30 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 08/04/2020 20:31, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 1:02:49 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 08/04/2020 18:23, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 3:56:31 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

<snip>

There is always a delay between shutting down, and the shutdown having
an effect on the numbers. There are also many other factors involved -
some inevitable (such as the denser population in cities in the USA),
some cultural (such as the vastly different health systems), and some
dynamic (such as the very poor early testing in the USA - a certain part
of your growth of known cases is due to more testing).

You're over complicating the issues. Our excellent healthcare -- the
care people get once infected -- has little bearing on people getting
infected in the first place.

US health care can be excellent, if you have the money to pay for it.

In an epidemic the people who don't have the money to pay for that excellent health care spread the epidemic rather more rapidly than their well-off neighbours.

Health care beyond basic supportive care
might not even change outcomes, much.

Testing is another faux controversy -- Europe had far more cases
and initially a 2-4x higher infection rate than the U.S., despite
whatever testing. Europe was COVID-swarmed weeks before the U.S.,
because Europe failed to cut off their inflow of infected individuals.
Testing, testing, testing while new vectors keep flowing in is
a losing proposition.

But the fact that the US hadn't anticipated the need for lots of test kits is just one more bit of evidence that the US response was slow and poorly organised.

In Asia, testing regimens seem uncorrelated with control outcomes --
some intensively-testing countries are worst off, while certain
sparsely-testing countries have succeeded.

South Korea has had a particularly good outcome and has done more testing per head than anybody else. If you've managed to swamp that data point with a whole lot of less relevant data you are probably trying to hide the fact that the US screwed up (as you frequently do).

So, gross test-count is a poor proxy metric for overall pandemic
control. It's shallow & silly.

Not as shallow and silly as your US exceptionalism.

I'm sure you'll disagree but you don't need tests at all to stop a
pandemic. In fact that's exactly what we've done for all of human
history up until now: If you're sick, stay home. If you've been
exposed, quarantine. If someone's sick, stay clear. No testing
needed. COVID's no different, it's just the first one we've seen
spreading on Twitter in real-time.

Covid-19 victims are at their most infectious before they show any symptoms..

Isolation and quarantine have a long history, but that history shows that they are not that effective. Contract tracing is about a century old, and hasn't eliminated venereal diseases yet.

Contact tracing and pre-emptive isolation is fairly new, and it does seem to work.

It is very difficult to compare countries in general, and the USA is
significantly different here from Sweden.

American exceptionalism does depend on making that sort of claim rather frequently.

The idea behind the "herd immunity" strategy is to get about 60% of the
population infected and either recovered or dead. (The figure "60%" is
mostly a guess, but commonly quoted.) Sweden is heading for disaster
with a confirmed case rate of 0.1%. Even if we assume that the real
infection rate is several times higher due to non-symptomatic or
untested infections, they are getting overwhelmed when they are less
than 1% of the way towards their goal.

In contrast, Norway has had quite a solid lockdown for a month or so,
and the spreading factor is down to 0.7 new infections per infected
person. That means the disease is dying out here - while before the
lockdowns, we had one of the highest cases per head of population in the
world. Hospitals here are not overwhelmed - there are empty beds,
routine operations are being scheduled again, and we are sending a
medical team to Italy to help.

The first U.S. cases in Washington state were immediately contained
and quarantined. And the president cut off travel almost immediately,
on Jan. 31, when we had just that handful in a Washington state nursing
home.

No, travel (to China, then Europe) was not cut off - it was limited in a
way that was of little real effect. Chinese people couldn't travel into
the USA, but Americans could travel to and from China. It was more of a
symbolic "blame China" move.

American citizens were still permitted to repatriate, but after
two-week quarantine. Foreign nationals were banned.

"The action means that U.S. citizens who have been in China's Hubei
Province in the past 14 days will be subject to 14 days of mandatory
quarantine if they travel back to the United States."
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/01/31/801686524/trump-declares-coronavirus-a-public-health-emergency-and-restricts-travel-from-c

The numbers are pretty clear -- it made a whale of a difference. It
took several weeks for our infection rate to catch up to Europe's,
which is a big deal when something is growing 34% per day.

Quarantine is always a good idea, however.

New York seems to be our epicenter, and fleeing New Yorkers the source
of our secondary spread.

Yes.

It is very difficult to limit spread within a free country.

Indeed. But we're getting there. People are pitching in, sharing
information, helping each other, and making strides. Web pages have
sprouted. Advice is being shared. Ideas traded. Treatments tried.

Freedom works in wonderful ways that greatly outweigh its modest
limitations.

Trump doesn't.

New York is, essentially, America's Italy.

Other than that, the U.S. was doing quite well. As you can see on this
map,

https://www.sylacauganews.com/

even now, most of the countryside still isn't affected.

Yet. Your new case per day rate is still very high, and as the virus spreads out into the country it will find new areas of complacent incompetence to exploit.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 8:48:56 AM UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 4:13:07 PM UTC-4, Ricky C wrote:
On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 2:31:25 PM UTC-4, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 1:02:49 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 08/04/2020 18:23, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 3:56:31 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

All true, but I'm more interested in what actions cause those
numbers to move in the right direction.

It's interesting that Sweden achieved control without shutting down.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/swedens-numbers-vs-americas.php


Sweden does not have control at all - not remotely. It has exponential
increases in the cases and deaths, it is losing control in the hospitals
in Stockholm, several key epidemiologists are now publicly warning of a
looming disaster, and they don't even know how many deaths they have had
(they've changed the way they count several times).

Thanks for that info. However, the point remains that, starting from
the same growth rate, Swedes have lowered their exponent to comparable
or less than the U.S.', without shutting down.

You seem to entirely miss the point that the US response is not the gold standard of fighting this disease. If the Swedes have matched the US that means they still have a LONG way to go.

Really?

As of 4/7/2020, worldometers.info

(view in Courier)
.------------------+----------------+-------+-------.
| cases | deaths | | |
|------------------+----------------+ cases | deaths|
| total | new | total | new | (ppm) | (ppm) |
|---------|--------|--------|-------|-------|-------|
Europe | 695,486 | 34,778 | 57,162 | 4,733 | 1,227 | 101 |
EU | 578,938 | 27,795 | 48,694 | 3,682 | 1,705 | 143 |
USA | 400,335 | 33,331 | 12,841 | 1,970 | 1,209 | 39 |
'---------------------------------------------------'

Seems decent to me.

James Arthur's special blinkers always let him see the US in favourable light.

More objective observers are less optimistic

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 10:19:59 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 16:07:48 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 6:17:39 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 11:31:17 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 1:02:49 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 08/04/2020 18:23, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 3:56:31 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

<snip>

Meanwhile, pneumonia is our 8th-leading cause of death, but patients
are not normally tested for influenza (which often kills that way).

So, WuFlu's lethality will be substantially overstated in the official
records, and influenza's, significantly understated.

James Arthur would think that.

This is certainly the first cold virus that has been tracked so
intensely in real time.

Covid-19 is not a cold virus. There is a corona virus which causes about a quarter of "common cold" cases, but it is a very different virus.

If we had named and tested for all the past
cold and flu viruses, we could have panicked and locked down for them
too. Some were a lot worse.

Name one.

https://www.euromomo.eu/index.html

Up through week 13 (last week of March) it's an unusually good year to
be an old fart.

Unless you have enough sense to notice what is going on around you. In Spain and Italy in this context. Being a pig-ignorant twit can blind you to incipient disasters.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Martin Brown]

On 08/04/2020 18:02, David Brown wrote:

On 08/04/2020 18:23, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 3:56:31 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
All true, but I'm more interested in what actions cause those
numbers to move in the right direction.

It's interesting that Sweden achieved control without shutting down.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/swedens-numbers-vs-americas.php



Sweden does not have control at all - not remotely.  It has exponential
increases in the cases and deaths, it is losing control in the hospitals
in Stockholm, several key epidemiologists are now publicly warning of a
looming disaster, and they don't even know how many deaths they have had
(they've changed the way they count several times).

The Netherlands is doing an "intelligent" lockdown and taking a lot of
flak for so doing. Belgium is on hard lockdown. At the moment there is
little to distinguish their trajectories.

The idea behind the "herd immunity" strategy is to get about 60% of the
population infected and either recovered or dead.  (The figure "60%" is
mostly a guess, but commonly quoted.)  Sweden is heading for disaster
with a confirmed case rate of 0.1%.  Even if we assume that the real
infection rate is several times higher due to non-symptomatic or
untested infections, they are getting overwhelmed when they are less
than 1% of the way towards their goal.

UK is on hard lockdown but the number of deaths is a lagging indicator
and the testing for coronavirus is woefully inadequate. Basically you
have to be royalty or admitted to hospital to get tested at all.

In contrast, Norway has had quite a solid lockdown for a month or so,
and the spreading factor is down to 0.7 new infections per infected
person.  That means the disease is dying out here - while before the
lockdowns, we had one of the highest cases per head of population in the
world.  Hospitals here are not overwhelmed - there are empty beds,
routine operations are being scheduled again, and we are sending a
medical team to Italy to help.

I don't know what the optimum strategy here actually is. I expect it
involves making an active decision to allow more people to die now than
the general public would be comfortable with to avoid a worse outcome
later from the economic slump and depression that follows.

I highly suspect that, like Taiwan, Asian successes in controlling
the spread are greatly helped by their cultural propensity to don
masks in public.


We don't wear masks in Norway (except for medical staff, of course).

It may help prevent people with symptoms from spreading the virus but
when 4 out of 5 people show no symptoms it can't be a major factor.

I've seen U.S. Asian folks wearing masks in public for years. I'd
always thought it a bit paranoid. But maybe it was just good
sense.


It may be useful for other diseases.  It is also likely to help with
their terrible air pollution.

Japan doesn't have any noticeable air pollution and hasn't had since at
least the 1990s. China is another kettle of fish. They mostly wear such
masks when *they* have a cold so as to avoid infecting others when out.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-04-08 17:14, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:

onsdag den 8. april 2020 kl. 22.29.12 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:
On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 12:28:31 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
langwadt@fonz.dk> wrote:

onsdag den 8. april 2020 kl. 20.58.36 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:
On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 11:31:17 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 1:02:49 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 08/04/2020 18:23, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 3:56:31 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

All true, but I'm more interested in what actions cause those
numbers to move in the right direction.

It's interesting that Sweden achieved control without shutting down.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/swedens-numbers-vs-americas.php


Sweden does not have control at all - not remotely. It has exponential
increases in the cases and deaths, it is losing control in the hospitals
in Stockholm, several key epidemiologists are now publicly warning of a
looming disaster, and they don't even know how many deaths they have had
(they've changed the way they count several times).

Thanks for that info. However, the point remains that, starting from
the same growth rate, Swedes have lowered their exponent to comparable
or less than the U.S.', without shutting down.

The idea behind the "herd immunity" strategy is to get about 60% of the
population infected and either recovered or dead. (The figure "60%" is
mostly a guess, but commonly quoted.) Sweden is heading for disaster
with a confirmed case rate of 0.1%. Even if we assume that the real
infection rate is several times higher due to non-symptomatic or
untested infections, they are getting overwhelmed when they are less
than 1% of the way towards their goal.

The JH site shows that new cases peaked in Sweden on April 1, at about
62 PPM per day.






In contrast, Norway has had quite a solid lockdown for a month or so,
and the spreading factor is down to 0.7 new infections per infected
person. That means the disease is dying out here - while before the
lockdowns, we had one of the highest cases per head of population in the
world. Hospitals here are not overwhelmed - there are empty beds,
routine operations are being scheduled again, and we are sending a
medical team to Italy to help.

The first U.S. cases in Washington state were immediately contained
and quarantined. And the president cut off travel almost immediately,
on Jan. 31, when we had just that handful in a Washington state nursing
home.

New York seems to be our epicenter, and fleeing New Yorkers the source
of our secondary spread.

New York is, essentially, America's Italy.

Other than that, the U.S. was doing quite well. As you can see on this
map,

https://www.sylacauganews.com/

even now, most of the countryside still isn't affected.

I highly suspect that, like Taiwan, Asian successes in controlling
the spread are greatly helped by their cultural propensity to don
masks in public.


We don't wear masks in Norway (except for medical staff, of course).

I've seen U.S. Asian folks wearing masks in public for years. I'd
always thought it a bit paranoid. But maybe it was just good
sense.


It may be useful for other diseases. It is also likely to help with
their terrible air pollution.

The chief COVID benefit I see to masking, is reducing spreading by
unwitting carriers. Another benefit is that masks prevent their
wearers from touching their faces with contaminated fingers.

Cheers,
James Arthur

I don't see how things like masks and distancing will change much but
the time scale of the infection curve. Might chop off the tail a
little sharper.

The rationale for all these measures was originally to reduce hospital
overloads, but hospitals have more empty beds now than normal.


here we have been shutdown about 4-5 weeks, at least 10000 operation have been postponed,

That's killing people too.


It could, but critical and emergency operations are still being done so
it is mostly inconvenient, but they will have to be done (and paid for) eventually

It's worse than that. The recorded deaths from heart attacks has
dropped by way more than half. Since it's not too likely that mere
inactivity would have that big an effect, it's thought that the reason
is that they've changed the EMS protocol--people who are already dead
aren't brought to hospital, and so don't get recorded.

Folks with minor chest pains are apparently scared of going to the ER
where they might well get Wu 'flu, and the EMS response time has slowed
down a lot.

So there are quite a few people dying due to Wu 'flu who haven't
actually caught it.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Martin Brown]

On 09/04/2020 14:23, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-04-08 17:14, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:
onsdag den 8. april 2020 kl. 22.29.12 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:
On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 12:28:31 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
langwadt@fonz.dk> wrote:

onsdag den 8. april 2020 kl. 20.58.36 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:

The rationale for all these measures was originally to reduce hospital
overloads, but hospitals have more empty beds now than normal.

They have to get to that situation in the run up to the pandemic peak or
else they will saturate at admissions and lose more people that way.

here we have been shutdown about 4-5 weeks, at least 10000 operation
have been postponed,

That's killing people too.


It could, but critical and emergency operations are still being done so
it is mostly inconvenient, but they will have to be done (and paid
for) eventually


It's worse than that.  The recorded deaths from heart attacks has
dropped by way more than half.  Since it's not too likely that mere
inactivity would have that big an effect, it's thought that the reason
is that they've changed the EMS protocol--people who are already dead
aren't brought to hospital, and so don't get recorded.

Folks with minor chest pains are apparently scared of going to the ER
where they might well get Wu 'flu, and the EMS response time has slowed
down a lot.

So there are quite a few people dying due to Wu 'flu who haven't
actually caught it.

There is also the problem that coronavirus has now become a new potent
hospital acquired infection seriously affecting emergency patients
admitted for heart or stroke conditions. It claimed the famous UK
comedian Eddie Large last week - his admission was for a heart failure.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52136768

Organ transplant work looks like it might cease completely very soon due
to the impending shortage of ICU beds and specialist staff to run them.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52221649

The other problem is the immunosuppressants needed to prevent tissue
rejection leave the recipients incredibly vulnerable to infections.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 8:19:59 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 16:07:48 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 6:17:39 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 11:31:17 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 1:02:49 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 08/04/2020 18:23, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 3:56:31 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

All true, but I'm more interested in what actions cause those
numbers to move in the right direction.

It's interesting that Sweden achieved control without shutting down.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/swedens-numbers-vs-americas.php


Sweden does not have control at all - not remotely. It has exponential
increases in the cases and deaths, it is losing control in the hospitals
in Stockholm, several key epidemiologists are now publicly warning of a
looming disaster, and they don't even know how many deaths they have had
(they've changed the way they count several times).

Thanks for that info. However, the point remains that, starting from
the same growth rate, Swedes have lowered their exponent to comparable
or less than the U.S.', without shutting down.

Eyeballing a linear fit of new cases, the Swedish curve starts up from
zero about 2 weeks before the US curve. They are further along
whatever curve this thing has.

All of Europe got it sooner than we did. But just looking at the
plot in the powerlineblog link above, Sweden's laissez faire approach
knocked their rate-of-increase to about what we've gotten by total
lock-down.

That's one apparent pattern. The sooner a country started, the further
they are now past their peak.

But all the data is very suspect.

I think the new cases info is pretty good.

Our deaths will be vastly over-stated -- Dr. Birx just said that
all deaths where WuFlu is *present* shall be tabulated as WuFlu deaths.

Meanwhile, pneumonia is our 8th-leading cause of death, but patients
are not normally tested for influenza (which often kills that way).

So, WuFlu's lethality will be substantially overstated in the official
records, and influenza's, significantly understated.

Cheers,
James Arthur

This is certainly the first cold virus that has been tracked so
intensely in real time. If we had named and tested for all the past
cold and flu viruses, we could have panicked and locked down for them
too. Some were a lot worse.

I have to correct myself -- Europe didn't get it first. Our first case
was Jan. 20th. Italy's was Jan. 29th, the U.K. on Jan. 30th. We had it
first. And nine weeks later, we still haven't had their same spread.

As of 4/8/2020, worldometers.info
.---------.--------.-------.-------.---------.
| | | cases | deaths| tests |
| cases | deaths | (ppm) | (ppm) | (ppm) |
|---------|--------|-------|-------|---------|
EU | 610,989 | 52,252 | 1,799 | 154 | 10,162 |
USA | 435,167 | 14,797 | 1,315 | 45 | 6,725 |
'--------------------------------------------'

It's hard to conclude America's early response was ineffective, or
that testing provided any firewall.

https://www.euromomo.eu/index.html

Up through week 13 (last week of March) it's an unusually good year to
be an old fart.

Yep.

Cheers,
James

 

On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 10:42:42 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:

On 09/04/2020 14:23, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-04-08 17:14, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:
onsdag den 8. april 2020 kl. 22.29.12 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:
On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 12:28:31 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
langwadt@fonz.dk> wrote:

onsdag den 8. april 2020 kl. 20.58.36 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:

The rationale for all these measures was originally to reduce hospital
overloads, but hospitals have more empty beds now than normal.

They have to get to that situation in the run up to the pandemic peak or
else they will saturate at admissions and lose more people that way.

here we have been shutdown about 4-5 weeks, at least 10000 operation
have been postponed,

That's killing people too.


It could, but critical and emergency operations are still being done so
it is mostly inconvenient, but they will have to be done (and paid
for) eventually


It's worse than that.  The recorded deaths from heart attacks has
dropped by way more than half.  Since it's not too likely that mere
inactivity would have that big an effect, it's thought that the reason
is that they've changed the EMS protocol--people who are already dead
aren't brought to hospital, and so don't get recorded.

Folks with minor chest pains are apparently scared of going to the ER
where they might well get Wu 'flu, and the EMS response time has slowed
down a lot.

So there are quite a few people dying due to Wu 'flu who haven't
actually caught it.

There is also the problem that coronavirus has now become a new potent
hospital acquired infection seriously affecting emergency patients
admitted for heart or stroke conditions. It claimed the famous UK
comedian Eddie Large last week - his admission was for a heart failure.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52136768

Organ transplant work looks like it might cease completely very soon due
to the impending shortage of ICU beds and specialist staff to run them.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52221649

The other problem is the immunosuppressants needed to prevent tissue
rejection leave the recipients incredibly vulnerable to infections.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

Another impact -- I donate blood, and of course, sick people need it.
But all the collection drives, where people normally course through
a mobile bus unit, have been cancelled.

I could drive 30 miles to have mine collected in a central facility
where others congregate, by people in space-suits, but that's, um,
kinda icky.

I'm betting their donations are close to zero right now.

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 1:14:11 AM UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 8:19:59 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 16:07:48 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 6:17:39 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 11:31:17 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 1:02:49 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 08/04/2020 18:23, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 3:56:31 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

<snip>

This is certainly the first cold virus that has been tracked so
intensely in real time.

It isn't a "cold virus" any more than SARS or MERS are,

If we had named and tested for all the past
cold and flu viruses, we could have panicked and locked down for them
too. Some were a lot worse.

Except they weren't.

I have to correct myself -- Europe didn't get it first. Our first case
was Jan. 20th. Italy's was Jan. 29th, the U.K. on Jan. 30th. We had it
first. And nine weeks later, we still haven't had their same spread.

The first case isn't the problem - you knew about them and kept them isolated until they weren't infectious.

The problem is the first case that got away.

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

if you put a straight edge on the logarithmic plot of US case numbers, the straight line hits the axis on about the 15th February 2020.

Once the virus had got out into the community you had a different problem, and you did very poorly - and are still doing pretty poorly - at slowing down the spread in the community.

A straight edge on Italy's case number logarithmic plot hits the axis as few days later - on about 19th February, and start bending over within a week.

It didn't bend nearly enough. The new case per day kept on rising until the 21st March, and have only been falling slowly since then.

The US new case per day numbers kept on rising until the 4th April, and haven't gone down much - if at all - since then.

The US hasn't got the same spread as Italy and Spain, but New York has got a higher number of cases per million population than either Italy or Spain, and it seems unlikely that you are going to stop it spreading into adjacent states any time soon.

Your situation is dire, and claiming that it isn't isn't helpful or useful.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 09:33:34 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 11:10:36 AM UTC-4, dca...@krl.org wrote:
On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 3:56:31 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 06/04/20

All true, but I'm more interested in what actions cause those
numbers to move in the right direction.

Absolutely amazing. No one responded to my post. Lots of posts about when one should start the economy going , but not one post about the details on exactly how the economy should be started. No discussion on when sports events should be allowed to have fans come to matches. No discussion on when schools should reopen. No discussion of when foreign travel should be permitted. When should restaurants be allowed to have unlimited numbers of customers in attendance? When should cruise ships be allowed to resume cruises. Should they get tested for infection before being allowed to book a cruise?

I expect there will be lots of posts after the fa Act about the mistakes made in starting .the economy. I do hope some thought is being done by the various government agency on loosing the restrictions.

Dan

The short answer is that no one knows -- there are too many unknowns.

But ISTM, with the information currently available, that
o most of the country isn't affected(1)
o those areas could open now, with social-distancing (and possibly
face masks)
o infected individuals and communities should be quarantined until safe
o Fever-spotting imagers might usefully exclude sick people from stores.
(I have surveillance-society concerns with that, but those concerns
aside, thermal imaging could spot and stop some super-spreaders.)

(1) see the map -- https://www.sylacauganews.com/

Thoughts?

Cheers,
James Arthur

I wonder how useful skin temp measurements are. I see cheap IR
thermomometers being used in airports. Looks like drama to me.

Hey, everybody grab their ebay IR thermometer now and measure their
forehead. Mine shows 88F.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 09:53:18 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 11:09:29 PM UTC-4, dca...@krl.org wrote:
On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 10:18:06 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 3:07:44 AM UTC+10, dca...@krl.org wrote:
On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 11:51:09 AM UTC-4, DecadentLinux...@decadence.org wrote:
"dcaster@krl.org" <dcaster@krl.org> wrote in
news:4d0e5efd-cb5e-4473-8d64-320703c9e838@googlegroups.com:

On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 3:56:31 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 06/04/20

All true, but I'm more interested in what actions cause those
numbers to move in the right direction.

Absolutely amazing. No one responded to my post. Lots of posts
about when one should start the economy going , but not one post
about the details on exactly how the economy should be started.
No discussion on when sports events should be allowed to have fans
come to matches. No discussion on when schools should reopen. No
discussion of when foreign travel should be permitted. When
should restaurants be allowed to have unlimited numbers of
customers in attendance? When should cruise ships be allowed to
resume cruises. Should they get tested for infection before being
allowed to book a cruise?

I expect there will be lots of posts after the fa Act about the
mistakes made in starting .the economy. I do hope some thought is
being done by the various government agency on loosing the
restrictions.

Dan


Maybe folks think things wills just start back up again as
employers call employees back to assess what logistics are required
to 'tool up the factory' again. Whether the 'factory' is an actual
factory or just a small business.

I would rather talk about removing an extremely dangerous element
that poses immediate danger to use all.

Donald John Trump is STILL being allowed to damage our nation
further with his ZERO skill inability to perform efficaciously in ANY
task, much less this moment of crisis.

His IMMEDIATE removal would be a great first step.

There. I participated. Some will not like it, but THAT is the
right first step.

Thanks for participating.

Unfortunately there are a lot of things that are not practical. Removing of Trump may be one of those things.

It's perfectly practicable. Having him certified as a mentally incompetent lunatic would do it.

Since you say it is practicable , why don't you explain exactly how you would get Trump certified as mentally incompetent. Feel free to name the person who would be certifying.



It would upset the Republican Party no end and while certifying all of them as mentally incompetent lunatics is also practicable, it's probably too difficult to get all of them at once.

He might be able to be removed in the next general election. But my guess is he will be re-elected.

Not a particularly reliable prediction. The perception that he mismanaged the response to the Covid-19 output is likely to spread as time goes on.

We shall see. If the epidemic is over and the economy has recovered, he is likely to win in a landslide.
He might be able to be removed in the next general election. But my guess is he will be re-elected.
Dan



Another thing I think will happen is that the government will remove all the restrictions while there are still new cases concurring. And that is why I think how the economy is restarted is important.
quoted
If the US government has any sense - and it doesn't seem to be exhibiting all that much so far - it will remove restrictions on an area-by-area basis, only after there have been no new cases in each area for a fortnight.

It only takes a single infectious person to restart the epidemic.


That s true, but the US will have lots of testing capability available and with only a few cases contact tracing should be effective.

Dan

You make a good point that by waiting, we can collapse the number
of cases to a more manageable number. But there will still be
reservoirs in people scattered all over the country (who are no
longer in New York .

How do you contact-trace someone who was never sick, walking through
a public area planting viral seeds?

Cheers,
James Arthur

It's way too late for isolation to help much. There are too many
re-seeds in the wild. It has to burn itself out.

The Chinese might have confined it.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[Ricky C]

On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 9:23:49 AM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:

So there are quite a few people dying due to Wu 'flu who haven't
actually caught it.

What is with your punctuation of the name of this disease? You make up a silly name and then seem to go to great lengths to use a space and apostrophe to spell it.

WTF???

Why not just call it by it's name, COVID-19 or the shorter form commonly used here CV-19 or just "the disease"?

Your posts won't turn up in searches for this disease, but I suppose that's not really a concern.

--

Rick C.

+-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209