Deaths aren’t going to wind up as only 60K, in fact, pretty safe to assume the US is already there when uncounted deaths are added in. However, the curve seems flattened, but as yet unwilling to decisively curve down.
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S Brennan
As of yet, no useful advice on early treatment…
…which makes early detection only useful to the herd, not to the individual beast.
Zachary Smith
I notice the top graph has a “sawtooth” pattern. If the Red States open up prematurely, I expect there will be a distinct upwards trend again. BTW, here is a youtube link of an interview with a Libertarian Mayor. The woman clearly believes she is a genius, but her indifference to the potential suffering of others is stunning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOFXyRF2UAc
We’ll just have to wait a few weeks to learn which of the Las Vegas Capitalists has done a good job with all the Pandemic details and which ones haven’t. The losers in this little lottery may carry the disease back home with them and a lot of people will become expensively ill and maybe dead. In the immortal words of lieutenant governor of Texas Dan Patrick, “There are more important things than living.”
I’m a bit sensitive to this subject on account of some news I got this morning. A relative who had been working from home was recalled to work. This person has just tested positive for Covid 19, and is already experiencing the early symptoms.
Welcome to Deep Red Indiana – already one of the nation’s Libertarian hot spots. I’ll admit I don’t know of any local politicians quite as loco as that smirking Mayor at the link. Or the Texas jerk.
S Brennan
Yes Dr. Smith,
If the “deplorable scum” would only vote a straight [D] ticket this whole Convid-19 thing would go away in a day or two, certainly, we’d all be home for Christmas.
Jerry Brown
Zachary Smith- that was quite the interview that you linked to. That mayor has no sense of responsibility for public health and apparently doesn’t see that as one of her duties at all. Thanks for the link. The only positive thing about it is that even if she gets her way there are probably few people going to get on a plane right now for fun anyways. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the casinos stayed closed figuring their operating expenses would outweigh their potential income with so few customers.
Stirling S Newberry
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/22/upshot/coronavirus-models.html
Zachary Smith
https://www.ianwelsh.net/april-22nd-us-covid-data/#comment-113360
Presumably you are trying to say something in response to my post, but from here I can’t make it out.
S Brennan
Of course not, please continue to politicize everything…
anon
A month ago my prediction was that close to half a million would die from COVID-19 in the USA. I’m adjusting my guess downward to 200,000 by year’s end, but when all of this is said and done, 500,000 might be a more accurate number.
The news today is that this could get worse in the winter during flu season. A vaccine will be developed in 18 months if we’re lucky. Number of infected and deaths are being undercounted. And governors are planning to lift stay at home orders in a matter of weeks, which will only cause thousands more to die this summer. No way 60,000 deaths is even a close guess unless we’re only accounting for deaths this spring alone.
Shevek
Wes Pegden’s ( CMU ) discussion if anyone is interested:
https://www.mathtube.org/lecture/video/modeling-strict-age-targeted-mitigation-strategies-covid-19
Eric Anderson
In other news, Jessie Ventura is considering a presidential run under the green party banner. Being that I refuse to vote for a rapist candidate with brain worms, he’s looking pretty good.
Mojave Wolf
@S Brennan — you might be interested in Kim Iverson on YouTube (or even Twitter). She has a distinctly non partisan tone and is questioning everything. I dunno if my conclusions will be anything like hers, but she raises a lot of good points.
Since permanent stay-at-home is not a solution, just a method of buying time, I also don’t understand the venom at those who question its efficacy. (Yes, some of them seem kinda loopy and have a lot of ideas I think are dunderheaded, and those are the ones the media focuses on, but someone can be horribly wrong and even willfully blind about some things and brilliantly right about others (remember the Nobel winner for chemistry who thought HIV didn’t cause AIDS? Don’t listen to him on healthcare, do listen on chemistry).
Speaking of buying time, let’s say there’s NEVER a reliable vaccine or cure. And let us also say that given the contagiousness and durability of this virus, the odds are that eventually EVERYONE will be exposed and either survive or not. How would this change responses?
(That is in fact my personal best guess. Which doesn’t mean I’m with the beach party crowd. There’s good reason to wait and see if either an effective treatment or vaccine is forthcoming even if you’re doubtful, staggering the hospital cases increases the quality of care, maybe we can somehow wait it out, maybe it will mutate for better or worse, maybe it’s worse than reported, getting sick and dying in a year is better than getting sick and dying now, etc)
Mojave Wolf
@Erik Anderson — If he runs on any ticket I will probably vote for Jesse given who else is running, tho he’s a weird fit for the Green Party.
Failing that, #Dolores2020. That’s my planned write-in until events or persuasion convince me otherwise (no, hypothetical vote Blue person, you cannot convince me to vote for Biden or Cuomo. )
Tom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLSYRqcg0wo
Goes over the HCQ controversy and the attempts to stamp this out.
That said, I’m going home tomorrow. We know how to fight this now, its just politics now over using it.
I miss my kids, and my blood samples show no signs of infection, so I’m safe to go home.
nobody
The view over on epidemiology twitter is that the flattened new case rate in the US is an artifact of maxed out testing capacity and not a reflection of the actual infection rate. It\’s not useful data.
There are early indications that the via-Europe virus strain that has infected the east coast may be much more dangerous than the direct-from-China strain that infected the west coast; how badly the US does overall may depend much more on which strain infects the most Americans than anything else.
highrpm
“That mayor has no sense of responsibility for public health and apparently doesn’t see that as one of her duties at all.”
how about some sovereignty? say….personal ownership rather than public ownership. the nanny state don’t own my body, i do. and the state lets me play in the civil game as long as i agree to play by the rules of the game. when i choose to cheat a rule and get caught and the courts prove i’ve broken a civil law and it renders judgment to warehouse me to ensure safety of its citizens, then the state takes ownership of me for that period.
geez, how about giving nature some muchly deserved credit? it’s provided each of us with an immune system that, when each of us manages our pie-hole — and other holes — making choices with a bit of responsiblity — the immune response knocks the hell out of any and all threatening viruses to keep each of us safe. relieving each of the responsibility to keep our brothers and sisters safe from us. (isn’t it nice how nature takes care of the social contract? fook the sjw evangelists and scribes and pharisees.)
otoh, the niaid tells us dumb masses its version of nature’s truth. uh, no thx, i’ll do my own research. and i’m not responsible for the personal choices of other hack citizens, thank you. that perspective is religion, not science.
highrpm
big pharma is an exquisite example of capitalisms gone awry. oh, the admins and execs preach so righteously, “the immune system needs our help!” (no, it does not.) so, the great 1950’s funded the great niaid. the result? the 3 mandated vaccines of the 1960’s cost $160 M. the present 38 mandated vaccines cost $60 B, a drop in the bucket. dr judy mikovits’s research that the vaccine production processes, culturing vaccine viruses in animal tissues can open the door to xenotropics in these same vaccine endproducts in the enpoint recipients. such findings got her research silenced and her thrown in jail. still controversial: what is presently a religious argument, i.e., choose your side and pull your sword.
krake
“…it’s provided each of us with an immune system that, when each of us manages our pie-hole — and other holes — making choices with a bit of responsiblity — the immune response knocks the hell out of any and all threatening viruses to keep each of us safe. relieving each of the responsibility to keep our brothers and sisters safe from us. (isn’t it nice how nature takes care of the social contract?…”
This doesn’t seem to understand immunity, viruses or responsibility.
450.org
Great comment from nobody but I will add that it means, necessarily, there could be many more strains in the pipeline, some more deadly than others. If this virus is the new influenza, and I think it very well may be, life as we knew it is no longer and a radical shift in the way we live and conduct business is the only way through it. So far, I see no signs that the global economy is capable of functioning with contraction to steady state as its goal. It’s still predicated on growth and as I have said many times before, this virus is the Growth Buster. We either accept that and adjust accordingly, or the virus will adjust us and our system for us — with extreme prejudice. I’m betting the virus is going to have to do it for us and it will be horrible and tragic but completely expected. It was always going to be this way. Scorpions will do what scorpions do.
nihil obstet
Nature provided us with an immune system. Left to its own devices, this system will keep fewer than half of the individuals born in a species (including homo sapiens) alive long enough to produce offspring ourselves. Scientific intervention helped somewhat until about 100 – 150 years ago, and then started helping a lot, so that when provided to areas without previous scientific intervention, you got quite extraordinary population explosions. If we return to nature’s immune system alone, I suspect we’ll get a quite extraordinary population crater.
Joan
@nobody: “The view over on epidemiology twitter is that the flattened new case rate in the US is an artifact of maxed out testing capacity and not a reflection of the actual infection rate.”
That’s a good point. As such, I’ve been casually and unscientifically doubling any number I see coming out of the US.
@nihil on population decrease: I think being in an age of decline will do that slowly. More and more people won’t have access even to basic medical services and will be left to fend for themselves. It’s a bleak view of the future, but when times are tough some women try to have fewer children, so a smaller population may not have to be completely bought through suffering.
On the elections, I’m so disillusioned with my two options that I’m tempted to either not vote or write in FDR.
S Brennan
Shevek, interesting way to think about it, thanks, I don’t know that level of herd immunity will work here because communicability of this virus;
==============================================
Mojave, I’ll check her out..thanks. Yeah Jesse but, the DNCers here will bash him to no end for being a “Putin Puppet”. Jesse will fall under the same whipping lash from the same DNC “liberals” that Tulsi did…got to keep little people on DNC’s pro-war, gilded age* plantation.
==============================================
Again, we don’t NEED a cure, we don’t NEED a vaccine, we need an early treatment plan that disrupts virus replication long enough [time is a factor here] to allow the body to build immunity and prevents the downward spiral that leads to hospitalization and a 5.4% death rate. All that requires is some cocktail of commonly available, prior use anti-virals** that drives down the hospitalization/death rate to below 2 per 100,000 population. Zinc for the common cold reduces the time of sickness some 40%, zinc effs up a viruses reproductive system…is it the answer, probably not but again, we need an effective early infection protocol to follow.
Of course we can’t discuss minimal solutions because this viral disease must be blamed on TRUMP !!! Why? So…the [D]’s can win on their pro-war, gilded age* policy in place since it’s nascent rise under Jimmy-Carter, Zbigniew-Kazimierz-Brzezinski & Paul-Volker [circa 1978]? Sorry, count me out.
*sans mercantilism
**lacking any guidance from medically trained government official, my stash includes zinc lozenges, zinc tablets and quinine water. And yes, I read up on how and at what dosage Zinc is toxic at.
metamars
@Tom
I was only half paying attention, but still gathered that this was an excellent video. The speaker, Dr. Martenson, was even less kind to the VA retrospective study, that showed higher mortality by including hydroxychloroquine, than not, than I was. I wrote, ” I wouldn’t dismiss this study, right off the bat, as totally misleading garbage”, but Dr. Martenson referred to the study as “pure garbage”.
I wish there was some way to sue all the media outlets that are pushing the garbage VA study (surprisingly, including foxnews.com), without at least explaining that it is, indeed, garbage. Even Trump has gotten mousey on the subject, which I attribute partly to the fact that he seems incapable of carrying even moderately complex arguments and modestly sized, connected factoids, in his head (from which modest store, he could repeat them).
Of course (and I haven’t seen this discussed by anybody), if hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin + zinc (+ adequate Vit D, I think Dr. Martenson would say) are as effective as they appear to be, this would FLATTEN, THEN SQUASH, THE HOSPITALIZATION CURVE, no matter how aggressive an economic re-opening strategy is pursued. That means it would make sense (well, to me; I’d prefer to defer to rational experts who aren’t vaccine crusaders and economic idiots) to encourage spread of the virus amongst the general population, especially children, while still protecting the vulnerable. (I’m assuming that most all people won’t spread the infection, after recovering, but actually, there is some question about that.)
S Brennan
Most of my comments are being quaritined so I’ll keep brief:
Good News:
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/antiviral-remdesivir-prevents-disease-progression-monkeys-covid-19
“The investigators note that the data supports initiating remdesivir treatment in COVID-19 patients as early as possible to achieve maximum treatment effect.”
Not a cure; just a treatment that if applied early stops the downward spiral
S Brennan
Thanks Metamars for calling attention to Tom’s vid link…I know the story line but, the information was well presented…people will die because of the media’s attempts to “get Trump”.
nobody
@Joan:
In fairness to the US, very few countries have enough testing capacity for the confirmed case count to be meaningful. The US also isn’t the only country that has internal political pressures to undertest in order to understate the case count.
Everyone’s data is meaningless at this point.
metamars
@S Brennan
Yes indeed. Considering the short duration of the optimal dosing window, it’s doubtless many have died, already. (I’ve no idea how many “many”are.)
I was glad to see Laura Ingraham, on he 22nd show, fight back and ask “my question to Michael Greenbaum of the New York Times and all these other people ready. Are they killing people too? then maybe we can ask Brian Stelter. well since Trumps election the media and their Democrat overlords have tried everything in their power to defeat him. but they failed spectacularly every time. in this most recent hydroxychloroquine episode once again confirms not only their rank bias but in some cases their venality and sloppiness as well”.
Trump’ gone mousey on hydroxychlooquine, when he should have gotten more aggressive. He could pick up some pointers from Ingraham. However, I’m afraid that his bona fide virus blunders have made him to pliant to the likes of Fauci. Who, I note, still has his job, and is not in jail. Even when Trump is right, his political ineptness and lack of mastery make him wrong.