Our benefactor writes:
It’s too early to tell if long-term averages for the nation are starting to go up again, but trends will be clearer after a week. The NY Times is showing trends significantly rising in the US, if you pull out NYC, New Orleans, and Detroit data.
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.
GrimJim
Is there any way for the benefactor to provide charts that exclude the recovering areas, or better yet, to send charts that reflect only the “open” states?
anon
I just saw photos of bars packed in Wisconsin with no one wearing a mask or social distancing. I posted this a few days ago but look up the video of people packed inside a café on Mother’s Day. This type of ignorance and disregard is happening across the USA. Americans have shown to value their freedom over safety time and again whether it be gun violence or with this pandemic. This was never going to end well for the USA, especially under the leadership of Trump who continues to refuse to wear a mask. Trump sets the example and the people who voted for him trust him over an actual scientist like Anthony Fauci. There is no doubt in my mind that we will see cases go up and more deaths over the summer and fall. Maybe winter will actually bring down numbers because people will be more inclined to stay indoors in cold climates.
Mark Pontin
I’m reposting this here —
To step away from the politics for a moment —
Two serious questions about COVID19 aren’t being addressed. I ran my questions by a top virologist with more than twenty years at USAMRIID, Lawrence Livermore, and NIAD. My concerns —
[1] No human population has ever developed herd immunity to a coronavirus to date, and to some extent such viruses’ very nature mitigates against ii.
[2] More interestingly, there’s evidence that COVID19 — like other coronaviruses, most notably SARS — exploits antibody-derived enhancement. See forex —
‘Impact of immune enhancement on Covid-19 polyclonal hyperimmune globulin therapy and vaccine development’
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7161485/
‘Is COVID-19 receiving ADE from other coronaviruses?’
His answer –
The key to understanding ADE is that it is not universally observed, even in cases of Dengue. It can happen but not always. DEN vaccines are looking promising but have taken 40 years. When we think about vaccine safety this is a key consideration and an easy to measure aspect of the immune response.
Different vaccines will elicit different immune responses so it is really a matter of trying different antigens and methods to deliver in phase 1.
It is possible that we see ADE from the other corona viruses. SARS1 and 2 are about 70% similar. So it is a reasonable hypothesis. If we do have a significant problem with ADE then it will be possible to prescreen people for the antibodies that are causing the ADE and exclude them from trials or treatment. Not great but herd immunity is much more powerful then we give credit to.
Me: So while we haven’t seen human herd immunity emerge with any previous coronavirus, this virologist thinks I’d be wrong to assume that it cannot eventually with COVID19.
He also believes, however, that the virus’s R0 might actually be as high 9.2 and in the end the human global population will show a fatality rate of about 1 percent from the virus.
krake
Anon: “Americans have shown to value their freedom over safety time and again whether it be gun violence or with this pandemic.”
Is it possible that “freedom” is just the wrong word? Without trying to tap into the puritannical spring overmuch, would it maybe not be better to speak of Anerican behavior as “license”?
Willy
I’d call it tribal brainwashing taken to cult extremes, but I’d be repeating myself again. The mullet was after all, once quite fashionable, as were mutton chops. Sometimes I wish these fools would just proudly sport mullets and mutton chops so we could more quickly identify them.
Arthur
One of the bar morons in Wisconsin is a nurse at an Aurora, Illinois. She said she’s aware of the risks but has it under control. Needless to say the hospital where she works is pissed.
Arthur
She was dumb enough to get interviewed on TV.
DMC
It seems like an overall GOOD thing that the idiots and meat puppets are breaking the quarantine. The Wisconson bar got its liscence revoked. The patrons have a VERY high chance of infection. \hopefully modt of them will die or at least suffer debilatating effects.
bruce wilder
It is a long time since I have seen the kind of mathematical modeling where a parameter such as R0 can be defined. I do not think I can even fathom what Mark Pontin’s friend means when he says R0 might “actually” be 9.2. “Actually” might be like the theoretician’s estimates for the speed of sound through a vacuum!
What I wonder is whether lockdowns have been effective. (Maybe, which lockdown have been effective?)
In the panoply of factors that affect how severe the experience of a locality has been, what elements of social control have been genuinely effective in reducing the reproduction rate? And, what are the major factors exogenous or complementary to social control shape the severity of outbreaks? (connectivity or network centrality, density, climate and weather, age of population, the nature of workplaces, cultural habits, ???)
Without a lot of testing, the social control measures prescribed by authority take on a ritualistic or superstitious quality as society fights off an imagined unseen enemy.
But without informed analysis of what explains New York vs Los Angeles vs Belgium vs Greece, it is hard to assess how to attribute policy success or failure. It is a lot of variables and cognitive overload says, simplify. Pick one of two and disregard the rest.
I have seen references to “waves” and wave patterns as this thing spreads out. That implies changes in the population and its behavior and maybe other factors (weather?). I have never seen a guess as to how many people are susceptible to infection (nor how many cats!). That seems like it could be an important number. 100% seems a bit unlikely.
Christopher Dobbie
What’s with the oscillation?
Stormcrow
@Christopher Dobbie
I noticed it too.
The periodicity is about 1 week, which suggests some sort of day-of-week bias in the reporting method, somewhere along the line.
Stirling S Newberry
The weekend get less testing.
metamars
In ‘The Ingraham Angle 5-14-20 – Dr. Lozano segment -Hydroxychloroquine”, just now censored (technically made private) on youtube as I type this, a Dr. Lozano from Dallas relates how patients from Austin, San Antonio, and Houston have come to Dallas to get hydroxychloroquine from her. Which she is now having problems doing, as CVS pharmacy is demanding information on diagnoses, which is protected by HIPAA laws.
Where the @#%&#%$ is Trump, in all this? Did the people who blamed him for some moron who supposedly died from consuming fish tank cleaner scare poor, little Donald? Did they hurt his feelings, when they said he was pretending to be a doctor?
For a guy who is so full of bluster, and himself, why is he so mousy when he is going to be blamed for avoidable deaths, courtesy of the Medical Mafia? Did they make him an offer he wouldn’t refuse?
I managed to grab the transcript, before this latest insult to free speech, and will post it on both of my vanity sub-reddits. Another search shows two other youtube channels with the Lozano interview in the caption, still available.
S Brennan
In my [D] controlled state testing is being slowed down by requirement for a Doctor’s visit AFTER the triage nurse gives you the nod. My Doctor is hundreds of miles away so I called a local Doctor, they said they could set me up with an appointment June 11th. Of course, that’s pointless.
When posters blame the lack testing solely on Trump and ignore [D] state governments and a CDC full of feckless bureaucrats they may think they are virtue signalling, which may work with this audience but it’s delusional to think the rest of the country buys the con job.