When is the Covid war over?

[Harry D]

Engineers want to know what is the end deliverable or how do I know when the task is done. I believe the most important parameter is deaths per day to determine when it is back to work time. The D/D curve is bell-shaped and we are on the leading edge with about 150 D/D. If we can get down to 10 D/D, for three contiguous days, I believe we have passed the criteria. What is your over/under number, maybe we can start a pool?
This criterion should be established by Trump to unify the country and start working. Trump wants to start work asap to limit the Dow 30 curve falling and insure a V-shaped critically damped rebound. I believe it will be a U or L shaped rebound.
Trump has set Easter for D (demarcation) day but will endure lots of heat from lots of people and may hand it off to his medical team, Bill Gates, JL or me.
What are your thoughts?

Harry D.

 

[Rick C]

On Friday, March 27, 2020 at 3:44:03 PM UTC-4, Harry D wrote:
> Engineers want to know what is the end deliverable or how do I know when the task is done. I believe the most important parameter is deaths per day to determine when it is back to work time.

No. Deaths are what we would like to ultimately prevent, but they are not the issued important in ending the restrictions. That would be transmission which is based on the number of infected.


> The D/D curve is bell-shaped and we are on the leading edge with about 150 D/D. If we can get down to 10 D/D, for three contiguous days, I believe we have passed the criteria. What is your over/under number, maybe we can start a pool?

The restrictions are local and the disease varies widely throughout the US just as indeed the world. Lifting the restrictions will be determined locally.


> This criterion should be established by Trump to unify the country and start working. Trump wants to start work asap to limit the Dow 30 curve falling and insure a V-shaped critically damped rebound. I believe it will be a U or L shaped rebound.

The stock market is not the economy. Don't confuse the two.

Trump has set Easter for D (demarcation) day but will endure lots of heat from lots of people and may hand it off to his medical team, Bill Gates, JL or me.
What are your thoughts?

Yes, I think JL should be put in charge on Easter Sunday. His inauguration should be in the ICU of any NY hospital where he will lead by example and treat patients.

BTW, has GM pumped out any ventilators yet? Who is making sure NYC has the test kits they need? Why not focus on the problems at hand rather than worrying about what we will or won't do in weeks from now?

I guess that might be a bit too practical or useful.

--

Rick C.

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

 

On Friday, March 27, 2020 at 3:44:03 PM UTC-4, Harry D wrote:

Engineers want to know what is the end deliverable or how do I know when the task is done. I believe the most important parameter is deaths per day to determine when it is back to work time. The D/D curve is bell-shaped and we are on the leading edge with about 150 D/D. If we can get down to 10 D/D, for three contiguous days, I believe we have passed the criteria. What is your over/under number, maybe we can start a pool?
This criterion should be established by Trump to unify the country and start working. Trump wants to start work asap to limit the Dow 30 curve falling and insure a V-shaped critically damped rebound. I believe it will be a U or L shaped rebound.
Trump has set Easter for D (demarcation) day but will endure lots of heat from lots of people and may hand it off to his medical team, Bill Gates, JL or me.
What are your thoughts?

Harry D.

I'd think we should open up whenever and wherever we can without
endangering our vulnerable venerables, at such time we have sufficient
knowledge to make that estimation.

That criterion can be met in a variety of ways in various places,
such as keeping venerables sheltered through the storm while others
work; everyone staying home until we all starve; opening promptly if
someone discovers an effective treatment, etc.

I don't think daily deaths is a good metric -- we could let down
our guard too soon and launch a second wave that way.

I calculate the U.S. case increases have slowed from 1.34 to 1.24
per day for the last three days. That's helpful.

BTW, President Trump said he *hoped* we'd be clear by Easter. It
wasn't a deadline.

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Rick C]

On Friday, March 27, 2020 at 5:12:58 PM UTC-4, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

I'd think we should open up whenever and wherever we can without
endangering our vulnerable venerables, at such time we have sufficient
knowledge to make that estimation.

That criterion can be met in a variety of ways in various places,
such as keeping venerables sheltered through the storm while others
work; everyone staying home until we all starve; opening promptly if
someone discovers an effective treatment, etc.

I don't think daily deaths is a good metric -- we could let down
our guard too soon and launch a second wave that way.

I calculate the U.S. case increases have slowed from 1.34 to 1.24
per day for the last three days. That's helpful.

It might be, but an average over the entire country is not a very good metric. We need to track it as a more fine grained level to see which areas are growing faster and which slower.

Someone posted a link to an interactive map that I was able to find county level info on. I can't find that link now. More useful would be history data at that level. Some days ago my county and the counties around me had 2 or 3 infections. I'd like to see how that has changed. I think that will provide a lot of insight into where this is headed.

BTW, President Trump said he *hoped* we'd be clear by Easter. It
wasn't a deadline.

Of course it's not a deadline. It's not his call. Fortunately for us, Trump isn't making this decision.

--

Rick C.

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

 

On Fri, 27 Mar 2020 12:43:53 -0700 (PDT), Harry D <td2k99@gmail.com>
wrote:

Engineers want to know what is the end deliverable or how do I know when the task is done. I believe the most important parameter is deaths per day to determine when it is back to work time. The D/D curve is bell-shaped and we are on the leading edge with about 150 D/D. If we can get down to 10 D/D, for three contiguous days, I believe we have passed the criteria. What is your over/under number, maybe we can start a pool?
This criterion should be established by Trump to unify the country and start working. Trump wants to start work asap to limit the Dow 30 curve falling and insure a V-shaped critically damped rebound. I believe it will be a U or L shaped rebound.
Trump has set Easter for D (demarcation) day but will endure lots of heat from lots of people and may hand it off to his medical team, Bill Gates, JL or me.
What are your thoughts?

Harry D.

About 2.8 million people die in the US every year. 216K of those are
considered to be upper respiratory or flu/pneumonia. C19 has
officially killed 1544 so far.

If we picked some other virus to test dying old people for, it would
be far more frightening.

Suicide kills about 56K in the USA every year. I wonder how the
lockdown and unemployment will affect that.

We will have less traffic deaths.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

[Rick C]

On Friday, March 27, 2020 at 6:39:05 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Fri, 27 Mar 2020 12:43:53 -0700 (PDT), Harry D <td2k99@gmail.com
wrote:

Engineers want to know what is the end deliverable or how do I know when the task is done. I believe the most important parameter is deaths per day to determine when it is back to work time. The D/D curve is bell-shaped and we are on the leading edge with about 150 D/D. If we can get down to 10 D/D, for three contiguous days, I believe we have passed the criteria. What is your over/under number, maybe we can start a pool?
This criterion should be established by Trump to unify the country and start working. Trump wants to start work asap to limit the Dow 30 curve falling and insure a V-shaped critically damped rebound. I believe it will be a U or L shaped rebound.
Trump has set Easter for D (demarcation) day but will endure lots of heat from lots of people and may hand it off to his medical team, Bill Gates, JL or me.
What are your thoughts?

Harry D.

About 2.8 million people die in the US every year. 216K of those are
considered to be upper respiratory or flu/pneumonia. C19 has
officially killed 1544 so far.

If we picked some other virus to test dying old people for, it would
be far more frightening.

Suicide kills about 56K in the USA every year. I wonder how the
lockdown and unemployment will affect that.

We will have less traffic deaths.

Only an idiot would make such a projection at this point. Since Jan 14 the infection in the US started as 2 patients. A month later it was around 15 cases and no deaths. It is now 100,000 infected and 1,300 deaths. The traffic deaths in that time have been around 6,000. What do you think will be the numbers in another month?

Let's see, the auto deaths have been around 3,000 a month in the US for the last few years, so that's not likely to change unless it goes down because of social distancing. If social distancing and work shut downs don't have a larger effect than they've done until now, the infections will easily top 1,000,000, possibly 10,000,000 and the deaths can reach 10,000 or 20,000 or many more. That still is not necessarily the total for this disease.

A huge difference is that the rate of traffic deaths is not growing at an exponential rate with no clear indication of when it will end. But you know that. You are just being a silly boy.

--

Rick C.

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

 

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote in
news:alvs7fls88su4db5dkmsfsi42kf406mldm@4ax.com:

On Fri, 27 Mar 2020 12:43:53 -0700 (PDT), Harry D
td2k99@gmail.com> wrote:

Engineers want to know what is the end deliverable or how do I
know when the task is done. I believe the most important
parameter is deaths per day to determine when it is back to work
time. The D/D curve is bell-shaped and we are on the leading edge
with about 150 D/D. If we can get down to 10 D/D, for three
contiguous days, I believe we have passed the criteria. What is
your over/under number, maybe we can start a pool? This criterion
should be established by Trump to unify the country and start
working. Trump wants to start work asap to limit the Dow 30 curve
falling and insure a V-shaped critically damped rebound. I
believe it will be a U or L shaped rebound. Trump has set Easter
for D (demarcation) day but will endure lots of heat from lots of
people and may hand it off to his medical team, Bill Gates, JL or
me.
What are your thoughts?

Harry D.

About 2.8 million people die in the US every year. 216K of those
are considered to be upper respiratory or flu/pneumonia. C19 has
officially killed 1544 so far.

If we picked some other virus to test dying old people for, it
would be far more frightening.

Suicide kills about 56K in the USA every year. I wonder how the
lockdown and unemployment will affect that.

We will have less traffic deaths.

Small k for kilo, killer.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 27/03/20 22:38, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

About 2.8 million people die in the US every year. 216K of those are
considered to be upper respiratory or flu/pneumonia. C19 has
officially killed 1544 so far.

The key phrase there is "so far".

Suicide kills about 56K in the USA every year. I wonder how the
lockdown and unemployment will affect that.

It will undoubtedly rise, especially among the young.

 

[whit3rd]

On Friday, March 27, 2020 at 12:44:03 PM UTC-7, Harry D wrote:
> Engineers want to know what is the end deliverable or how do I know when the task is done. I believe the most important parameter is deaths per day to determine when it is back to work time.

Well, no, that's not enough.

You have to know what happens NEXT, before you have a safe engineering solution.
Shutdown of the Chernobyl reactor was initiated before it exploded; the isotope
content of the core wasn't in the (as-planned) stable state that would be normally
responsive to the operator controls, so, it blew.

In other words, jumping off the 95th floor isn't 'OK' because of the "floor 12, so far so good"
effect. Or, eat your seed corn and you don't starve... this year (but it's not a survivable plan).

You want a public health system to make-safe the inevitable episodes of infection, even
if it requires imagining many months ahead. And, more trivially, disease effects other than
death are well worth our concern. Some scenarios like "Zombie Apocalypse" are... undesirable.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Saturday, March 28, 2020 at 8:12:58 AM UTC+11, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Friday, March 27, 2020 at 3:44:03 PM UTC-4, Harry D wrote:
Engineers want to know what is the end deliverable or how do I know when the task is done. I believe the most important parameter is deaths per day to determine when it is back to work time. The D/D curve is bell-shaped and we are on the leading edge with about 150 D/D. If we can get down to 10 D/D, for three contiguous days, I believe we have passed the criteria. What is your over/under number, maybe we can start a pool?
This criterion should be established by Trump to unify the country and start working. Trump wants to start work asap to limit the Dow 30 curve falling and insure a V-shaped critically damped rebound. I believe it will be a U or L shaped rebound.
Trump has set Easter for D (demarcation) day but will endure lots of heat from lots of people and may hand it off to his medical team, Bill Gates, JL or me.
What are your thoughts?

Harry D.

I'd think we should open up whenever and wherever we can without
endangering our vulnerable venerables, at such time we have sufficient
knowledge to make that estimation.

That criterion can be met in a variety of ways in various places,
such as keeping venerables sheltered through the storm while others
work; everyone staying home until we all starve; opening promptly if
someone discovers an effective treatment, etc.

I don't think daily deaths is a good metric -- we could let down
our guard too soon and launch a second wave that way.

As Rick C has pointed out, the appropriate metric is new infections per day which we can't measure - so we have to settle for new symptomatic cases per day, which doesn't catch all of the new infections, and catches them something like five to seven days after they've been infected.

I calculate the U.S. case increases have slowed from 1.34 to 1.24
per day for the last three days. That's helpful.

It suggests the R0 values it samples have dropped back from 4.3 to 2.9.

What's required is an R0 appreciably below one, which China and South Korea have been able to manage - by rigorous social distancing in China and fanatical contact tracing and rigorous isolation of possible infectees in South Korea.

Italy seems to have been able to get the average R0 close to one, but that probably means that worst hit areas are taking it seriously enough to have got R0 below one but the rest of the country hasn't.

Australia has the same sort of problem, with backpackers down the road at Bondi still partying every night and infecting each other with enthusiasm, while the rest of the country is starting to get the message.

BTW, President Trump said he *hoped* we'd be clear by Easter. It
wasn't a deadline.

Merely totally idiotic optimism and a clear illustration that he wasn't paying attention to what his advisors were telling him, not that there's any evidence that he ever has.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

On Sat, 28 Mar 2020 01:27:07 +0000, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 27/03/20 22:38, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
About 2.8 million people die in the US every year. 216K of those are
considered to be upper respiratory or flu/pneumonia. C19 has
officially killed 1544 so far.

The key phrase there is "so far".

US dailies are down slightly from yesterday, but the data is so noisy
that it will take a week or a month to really spot a trend. Some
european countries seem to have peaked. Different countries, even
neighbors, have very different patterns. There must be a lot of bad
data going around.

Suicide kills about 56K in the USA every year. I wonder how the
lockdown and unemployment will affect that.

It will undoubtedly rise, especially among the young.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

On Fri, 27 Mar 2020 23:08:23 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 3/27/2020 6:38 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Fri, 27 Mar 2020 12:43:53 -0700 (PDT), Harry D <td2k99@gmail.com
wrote:

Engineers want to know what is the end deliverable or how do I know when the task is done. I believe the most important parameter is deaths per day to determine when it is back to work time. The D/D curve is bell-shaped and we are on the leading edge with about 150 D/D. If we can get down to 10 D/D, for three contiguous days, I believe we have passed the criteria. What is your over/under number, maybe we can start a pool?
This criterion should be established by Trump to unify the country and start working. Trump wants to start work asap to limit the Dow 30 curve falling and insure a V-shaped critically damped rebound. I believe it will be a U or L shaped rebound.
Trump has set Easter for D (demarcation) day but will endure lots of heat from lots of people and may hand it off to his medical team, Bill Gates, JL or me.
What are your thoughts?

Harry D.

About 2.8 million people die in the US every year. 216K of those are
considered to be upper respiratory or flu/pneumonia. C19 has
officially killed 1544 so far.

If we picked some other virus to test dying old people for, it would
be far more frightening.

Suicide kills about 56K in the USA every year. I wonder how the
lockdown and unemployment will affect that.

We will have less traffic deaths.




Hopefully California takes this opportunity to secede, there wouldn't be
much the Federal government could do about it at this point anyway they
seem preoccupied.

Gavin is salivating over that 2 trillion dollar boondoggle. He's not
going to let a dime of that get away.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

On Fri, 27 Mar 2020 14:12:50 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Friday, March 27, 2020 at 3:44:03 PM UTC-4, Harry D wrote:
Engineers want to know what is the end deliverable or how do I know when the task is done. I believe the most important parameter is deaths per day to determine when it is back to work time. The D/D curve is bell-shaped and we are on the leading edge with about 150 D/D. If we can get down to 10 D/D, for three contiguous days, I believe we have passed the criteria. What is your over/under number, maybe we can start a pool?
This criterion should be established by Trump to unify the country and start working. Trump wants to start work asap to limit the Dow 30 curve falling and insure a V-shaped critically damped rebound. I believe it will be a U or L shaped rebound.
Trump has set Easter for D (demarcation) day but will endure lots of heat from lots of people and may hand it off to his medical team, Bill Gates, JL or me.
What are your thoughts?

Harry D.

I'd think we should open up whenever and wherever we can without
endangering our vulnerable venerables, at such time we have sufficient
knowledge to make that estimation.

That criterion can be met in a variety of ways in various places,
such as keeping venerables sheltered through the storm while others
work; everyone staying home until we all starve; opening promptly if
someone discovers an effective treatment, etc.

I don't think daily deaths is a good metric -- we could let down
our guard too soon and launch a second wave that way.

I calculate the U.S. case increases have slowed from 1.34 to 1.24
per day for the last three days. That's helpful.

BTW, President Trump said he *hoped* we'd be clear by Easter. It
wasn't a deadline.

Cheers,
James Arthur

The first test kits were deployed by CDC in early February, but had
problems, so it took longer to get good ones up. Test kit production
has ramped way, way up in recent weeks. There were also shortages of
the nasal probes that collect samples. Different states have different
availability issues with test kits.

The curve of reported C19 cases is the product of actual cases times
testing density. It's conceivable that actual cases could be declining
but testing is ramping up faster, so apparent cases are increasing.

Lots of bad data.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Saturday, March 28, 2020 at 9:39:05 AM UTC+11, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Fri, 27 Mar 2020 12:43:53 -0700 (PDT), Harry D <td2k99@gmail.com
wrote:

Engineers want to know what is the end deliverable or how do I know when the task is done. I believe the most important parameter is deaths per day to determine when it is back to work time. The D/D curve is bell-shaped and we are on the leading edge with about 150 D/D. If we can get down to 10 D/D, for three contiguous days, I believe we have passed the criteria. What is your over/under number, maybe we can start a pool?
This criterion should be established by Trump to unify the country and start working. Trump wants to start work asap to limit the Dow 30 curve falling and insure a V-shaped critically damped rebound. I believe it will be a U or L shaped rebound.
Trump has set Easter for D (demarcation) day but will endure lots of heat from lots of people and may hand it off to his medical team, Bill Gates, JL or me.
What are your thoughts?

About 2.8 million people die in the US every year. 216K of those are
considered to be upper respiratory or flu/pneumonia. C19 has
officially killed 1544 so far.

But the Covid-19 death numbers are growing exponentially. If James Arthur's 1.24 increase per day persists for 23 days, there will be have been as many Civd-19 deaths in those 23 days as 216k respiratory disease deaths that the US has in a year.

Enough of the Pollyanna numerical ineptitude.

If we picked some other virus to test dying old people for, it would
be far more frightening.

Probably not.

Suicide kills about 56K in the USA every year. I wonder how the
lockdown and unemployment will affect that.

It probably won't help though suicide does become less of a problem in wartime, and if Trump gets dragooned into treating the Covid-19 epidemic as a problem that US citizens can solve together, rather than an economic inconvenience which is gong to make the rich poorer, it might make suicides less likely.

> We will have less traffic deaths.

Not much of a silver lining. It's about 36,000 per year in the US. Covid-19 deaths so far are about two weeks worth of traffic deaths.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[bitrex]

On 3/27/2020 6:38 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Fri, 27 Mar 2020 12:43:53 -0700 (PDT), Harry D <td2k99@gmail.com
wrote:

Engineers want to know what is the end deliverable or how do I know when the task is done. I believe the most important parameter is deaths per day to determine when it is back to work time. The D/D curve is bell-shaped and we are on the leading edge with about 150 D/D. If we can get down to 10 D/D, for three contiguous days, I believe we have passed the criteria. What is your over/under number, maybe we can start a pool?
This criterion should be established by Trump to unify the country and start working. Trump wants to start work asap to limit the Dow 30 curve falling and insure a V-shaped critically damped rebound. I believe it will be a U or L shaped rebound.
Trump has set Easter for D (demarcation) day but will endure lots of heat from lots of people and may hand it off to his medical team, Bill Gates, JL or me.
What are your thoughts?

Harry D.

About 2.8 million people die in the US every year. 216K of those are
considered to be upper respiratory or flu/pneumonia. C19 has
officially killed 1544 so far.

If we picked some other virus to test dying old people for, it would
be far more frightening.

Suicide kills about 56K in the USA every year. I wonder how the
lockdown and unemployment will affect that.

We will have less traffic deaths.

Hopefully California takes this opportunity to secede, there wouldn't be
much the Federal government could do about it at this point anyway they
seem preoccupied.

 

[whit3rd]

On Friday, March 27, 2020 at 8:25:03 PM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

[about test coverage for COVID-19]

> Lots of bad data.

Not a valid judgment. The data has some limited accuracy, but disease
diagnosis didn't always come from nucleic-acid sequencing, the traditional
checkbox-for-symptoms DOES work. We have room for test improvement
(Korea has made that work very well), and it's worth some effort, but the
numbers now ARE good enough for guidance.

Calling the data 'bad' is arrogant and dismissive, but not useful. It's what you
expect from that alternative to the rescue squad: the Uh-Oh Squad.

<https://u1oo.tumblr.com/post/3047984809/uh-oh-squad>

 

On Friday, March 27, 2020 at 11:25:03 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Fri, 27 Mar 2020 14:12:50 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

I calculate the U.S. case increases have slowed from 1.34 to 1.24
per day for the last three days. That's helpful.

BTW, President Trump said he *hoped* we'd be clear by Easter. It
wasn't a deadline.

The first test kits were deployed by CDC in early February, but had
problems, so it took longer to get good ones up. Test kit production
has ramped way, way up in recent weeks. There were also shortages of
the nasal probes that collect samples. Different states have different
availability issues with test kits.

The curve of reported C19 cases is the product of actual cases times
testing density. It's conceivable that actual cases could be declining
but testing is ramping up faster, so apparent cases are increasing.

Lots of bad data.

We're getting more.

I saw a doctor make an excellent point -- the false positive rate
of even a very good test can badly skew a low-prevalence phenomenon's
stats.

Suppose you have a 99.5% accurate test, giving 0.5% false positives.
Suppose your tested-for condition has a 0.1% prevalence.
You test 1,000 people.

You'll get six positives. One person who's actually infected, and
five false positives.

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Saturday, March 28, 2020 at 2:25:03 PM UTC+11, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Fri, 27 Mar 2020 14:12:50 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Friday, March 27, 2020 at 3:44:03 PM UTC-4, Harry D wrote:
Engineers want to know what is the end deliverable or how do I know when the task is done. I believe the most important parameter is deaths per day to determine when it is back to work time. The D/D curve is bell-shaped and we are on the leading edge with about 150 D/D. If we can get down to 10 D/D, for three contiguous days, I believe we have passed the criteria. What is your over/under number, maybe we can start a pool?
This criterion should be established by Trump to unify the country and start working. Trump wants to start work asap to limit the Dow 30 curve falling and insure a V-shaped critically damped rebound. I believe it will be a U or L shaped rebound.

If the job is done right, there won't be any rebound. Using a half-witted arbitrary criteria to determine when you can go back to work isn't going to get that result.

Trump has set Easter for D (demarcation) day but will endure lots of heat from lots of people and may hand it off to his medical team, Bill Gates, JL or me.
What are your thoughts?

I'd think we should open up whenever and wherever we can without
endangering our vulnerable venerables, at such time we have sufficient
knowledge to make that estimation.

That criterion can be met in a variety of ways in various places,
such as keeping venerables sheltered through the storm while others
work; everyone staying home until we all starve; opening promptly if
someone discovers an effective treatment, etc.

I don't think daily deaths is a good metric -- we could let down
our guard too soon and launch a second wave that way.

I calculate the U.S. case increases have slowed from 1.34 to 1.24
per day for the last three days. That's helpful.

It's a move in the right direction, but it has to get well below one before you can ease off.

BTW, President Trump said he *hoped* we'd be clear by Easter. It
wasn't a deadline.

No, just a fatuous misapprehension.

The first test kits were deployed by CDC in early February, but had
problems, so it took longer to get good ones up. Test kit production
has ramped way, way up in recent weeks. There were also shortages of
the nasal probes that collect samples. Different states have different
availability issues with test kits.

The curve of reported C19 cases is the product of actual cases times
testing density. It's conceivable that actual cases could be declining
but testing is ramping up faster, so apparent cases are increasing.

That the kind of conceit that only a pig-ignorant half-wit like John Larkin could come up with

> Lots of bad data.

But a whole lot more really bad interpretations of what the data might mean..

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Saturday, March 28, 2020 at 3:00:38 PM UTC+11, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Friday, March 27, 2020 at 11:25:03 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Fri, 27 Mar 2020 14:12:50 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

I calculate the U.S. case increases have slowed from 1.34 to 1.24
per day for the last three days. That's helpful.

BTW, President Trump said he *hoped* we'd be clear by Easter. It
wasn't a deadline.

The first test kits were deployed by CDC in early February, but had
problems, so it took longer to get good ones up. Test kit production
has ramped way, way up in recent weeks. There were also shortages of
the nasal probes that collect samples. Different states have different
availability issues with test kits.

The curve of reported C19 cases is the product of actual cases times
testing density. It's conceivable that actual cases could be declining
but testing is ramping up faster, so apparent cases are increasing.

Lots of bad data.

We're getting more.

I saw a doctor make an excellent point -- the false positive rate
of even a very good test can badly skew a low-prevalence phenomenon's
stats.

Suppose you have a 99.5% accurate test, giving 0.5% false positives.
Suppose your tested-for condition has a 0.1% prevalence.
You test 1,000 people.

You'll get six positives. One person who's actually infected, and
five false positives.

That's not exactly a new observation - trite would be closer to the mark.

The US isn't testing enough people yet - and nowhere near enough that false positive are going to be a problem. The usual solution is retesting of any positive result with a different and hopefully more reliable (which is to say more expensive) test.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Rick C]

On Saturday, March 28, 2020 at 4:45:17 AM UTC-4, Jeff Layman wrote:

On 28/03/20 03:00, Bill Sloman wrote:

But the Covid-19 death numbers are growing exponentially. If James Arthur's 1.24 increase per day persists for 23 days, there will be have been as many Civd-19 deaths in those 23 days as 216k respiratory disease deaths that the US has in a year.

I can understand the general public having little comprehension of what
"exponential" means, but I am surprised that it seems to have been
ignored or misunderstood by those who should know better. Stating
figures about deaths from other causes misses the point entirely; they
are known causes, understood, and changes in the death rate - whether
up, down, or constant, is explicable, linear, and usually minor.

I have to say, I'm not following you. What point are you talking about being missed???

I think Bill is comparing CV19 to other respiratory diseases because, not unlike the President, our resident denialist keeps saying "so far" this disease has a low death tally compared to "the flu".

I think the rest of us understand that the number of deaths from other causes is totally irrelevant. But explain that to Larkin.

One other point is misunderstood. We talk about treatment by intensive
care and use of ventilators. The problem is those are finite sources,
maybe increasing slightly as time goes on, but the exponential growth of
coronavirus infections will drown those increases. If there are 10000
ventilators today, and 20000 next week, it won't help much if there are
10000 cases of Covid-19 today and 100000 next week.

I think that has been addressed here ad nauseam. Again, Larkin loves to belittle this concern even though it is pointed out that an exponential rise in the numbers will swamp virtually any finite resource. While this disease does show some sign of relenting a small amount, the number of infected continues to grow and at a faster rate. It is simply the rate of the acceleration that is not as high as it was. Meanwhile we have already reached the limits of the healthcare system in NY city. From here on out this disease will cause patients with other diseases to suffer from the competition for resources.

I just can't understand why anyone would be in denial about this and talking about asymptomatic "ghost" cases of the virus as if it has some bearing on the matter at this point.

All we need to do now is track the numbers of the people in the ER/ICU and how many can't be treated and of course, how many die. That will tell us how we are doing. So far we have sucked.

Amazingly, in spite of all the mistakes the Feds have made and all the lies Trump has said about it all, his approval numbers seem to be as strong as ever.

--

Rick C.

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