Our benefactor writes:
We have crossed 80,000 deaths. Tuesdays are always the lowest numbers, but these are showing a significant decline, very much driven by NY, the numbers for which are way down.
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Almost every day this blog publishes the John Hopkins Covid-19 numbers. They are undercounts of both deaths and cases, but they give the trendline. Recently the trendline has very slowly started to move down.
Meanwhile, Trump and many governors have started to move to ease isolation requirements. This map shows that only five out of 50 states (and Puerto Rico) aren’t easing.
There are three problems here.
First, the curve hasn’t been crushed. In fact, in some states, it’s still increasing.
Second, even once a curve has been crushed, to keep it under control without a vaccine, you need to test and trace. The US would need to hire hundreds of thousands of tracers to do this, and would need many more tests than are currently available. If you don’t test and trace, one person can infect many other people, and then all those people infect many other people.
Third, Covid-19 takes about two weeks from infection before people show symptoms, and two weeks more before they start dying. During that asymptomatic period, carriers are contagious.
What this means is you can have a significant outbreak going on and not know it is happening. That’s why countries that got Covid-19 under control crushed it into the dirt, then put everyone coming in from outside the country into quarantine, and they test like mad.
Humans are really bad at making decisions where the consequences are delayed. (See Change, Climate). Even a two week- to month-long delay is more than the decision makers in many countries, including the US, can handle.
So, the numbers seem to be in decline, and there will be removal of restrictions, and then the numbers will start increasing again in two to six weeks. Because infection rates will be moving off a larger base, they will create a second wave where people start dropping like flies–much larger than the first wave.
This is acceptable to the people who run the US because they have jobs where they can work from home, and if they don’t, like in the White House, they can test every day. It is the lower class who will be forced to go back to work and to die.
That’s not a problem for American elites; killing unimportant people for money is pretty much what they do for a living.
It’s possible this narrative can be cut off if those states which are handling Covid properly close their borders to non-isolating states, presumably by calling up the national guard. There is also some hope because Americans are generally not flocking back to venues like restaurants–even in States which have re-opened.
But overall, this looks like the first wave passed its peak, is slowly declining, before the second wave comes in and culls the poor for the rich. Numbers of deaths will be in the hundreds of thousands at a minimum. If this is bungled completely, it could be that 80 percent of the population will have to get Covid-19 to create herd immunity, and that a little under one percent will die. The rich will isolate and test throughout all this, of course.
This is a worst case scenario, and many mocked the possibility even two months ago. Surely, they said, American elites couldn’t fuck this up that much?
They can, and they are. But it isn’t fucking up. They’re now isolated and in little danger. They’ve bailed themselves out, given themselves even more control over the economy than before. If ordinary Americans get sick, die, or can’t pay rent and go hungry, well, why should American elites care? It doesn’t effect them.
That’s their bet.
As for you, do what you can to prepare. We may get lucky and get a vaccine earlier than expected, but if not, the US has made the choice to let Covid-19 continue to wend its way through the population.
And remember, Americans, if you decide you’d rather not die so the top one percent can own more of the US, they have names and addresses.
Never riot in your own neighbourhood.
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Our benefactor notes:
Today is the lowest number of cases and deaths recorded since the end of March. It’s Sunday data, but still positive.
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Our benefactor writes:
The slow decline in cases and deaths continue, led mostly by NY and NJ. Weekend underreporting does not look too severe.
I’m going to discuss Covid-19 in a bit more detail next week. US policy is about to turn this into a real catastrophe.
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by Tony Wikrent
The Risks – Know Them – Avoid Them
[ErinBromage, via Mike Norman Economics 5-8-20]
We know most people get infected in their own home. A household member contracts the virus in the community and brings it into the house where sustained contact between household members leads to infection.
But where are people contracting the infection in the community? I regularly hear people worrying about grocery stores, bike rides, inconsiderate runners who are not wearing masks…. are these places of concern? Well, not really. Let me explain….
Remember the formulae: Successful Infection = Exposure to Virus x Time
….Ignoring the terrible outbreaks in nursing homes, we find that the biggest outbreaks are in prisons, religious ceremonies, and workplaces, such a meat packing facilities and call centers. Any environment that is enclosed, with poor air circulation and high density of people, spells trouble.
Some of the biggest super-spreading events are:
- Meat packing: In meat processing plants, densely packed workers must communicate to one another amidst the deafening drum of industrial machinery and a cold-room virus-preserving environment. There are now outbreaks in 115 facilities across 23 states, 5000+ workers infected, with 20 dead. (ref)
- Weddings, funerals, birthdays: 10% of early spreading events
- Business networking: Face-to-face business networking like the Biogen Conference in Boston in March.
As we move back to work, or go to a restaurant, let’s look at what can happen in those environments.
Restaurants: Some really great shoe-leather epidemiology demonstrated clearly the effect of a single asymptomatic carrier in a restaurant environment (see below). The infected person (A1) sat at a table and had dinner with 9 friends. Dinner took about 1 to 1.5 hours. During this meal, the asymptomatic carrier released low-levels of virus into the air from their breathing. Airflow (from the restaurant’s various airflow vents) was from right to left. Approximately 50% of the people at the infected person’s table became sick over the next 7 days. 75% of the people on the adjacent downwind table became infected. And even 2 of the 7 people on the upwind table were infected (believed to happen by turbulent airflow). No one at tables E or F became infected, they were out of the main airflow from the air conditioner on the right to the exhaust fan on the left of the room. (Ref)
Workplaces: Another great example is the outbreak in a call center (see below). A single infected employee came to work on the 11th floor of a building. That floor had 216 employees. Over the period of a week, 94 of those people become infected (43.5%: the blue chairs). 92 of those 94 people became sick (only 2 remained asymptomatic). Notice how one side of the office is primarily infected, while there are very few people infected on the other side.
[The Big Picture, May 9, 2020]
Our benefactor writes:
The seven-day average for new cases is about to dip below 25,000 per day. The seven-day average for deaths has been below 2,000 per day for one week. Both are relatively good news and a reflection that the vast majority of people in this country are still taking this quite seriously.
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Feel free to use the comments to this post to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.
Our benefactor writes:
We inexorably climb to 80,000 deaths. The lack of broad testing just results in the mortality rate continuing to go up. The number of cases is totally under-counted.
The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
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