COVID-19 Pandemic: Transmissions, Deaths, Treatments, Vaccines, Interventions and More...

[RU848789]

This graph is just the overall death rates by age group in NYC and not IFR. However, you can make inferences from it. The death rate in 18-44 is roughly one tenth of the overall which would suggest around 0.1%. That assumes the infection rate is similar between overall and 18-44. I would guess that some of those in the 18-44 are not healthy and have some comorbs so I would guess the IFR for healthy people 18-44 would be some fraction of 0.1%.

Correct. And if one wants to dive into the numbers, the graph is deaths per 100,000 total population in each group - as a check on that, the overall 208/100K number x 8.5MM population in NYC = 17,680 NYC deaths through 6/18, which is correct (for deaths confirmed via PCR test; the presumed death total for NYC is 22,244). So, for 18-44 it's simply 0.02% (20/100K) and given NYC's ~20% infection rate, via seroprevalence antibody testing, the IFR for 18-44 would be about 5X that or 0.1% and yes, the IFR for healthy 18-44 year olds would be less than that.

If anyone is curious, while this sounds low, it's still far greater than the IFR for influenza in an average season, which is 0.02% for symptomatic flu cases (in the 18-49 age group the CDC has data for), but likely about 0.01% on a total infection fatality rate, including asymptomatics (estimates for this are all over the place though, like 20-80%, so I took 50%), which is 1/10th of that for coronavirus, roughly, which makes sense. Right now we're seeing 1.0-1.2% IFR in places like NY/Spain that actually have seroprevalence data for their entire population (which would be about 1.5% vs. symptomatic cases assuming 65% of CV infections are symptomatic) and in a typical year influenza has a symptomatic IFR of 0.1% overall.

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page

 

[RU-05]

.

Covid deaths down 45 % in last two weeks even though cases are up. Something good happening here. https://www.wsj.com/articles/dept-of-coronavirus-good-news-11592606957

There is a lag between cases and deaths. We've known this since March. I do think we are treating this better, I do think we are concentrating more keeping this out of LTC's and I think we are catching this a lot earlier, but, unfortuneately, I doubt the downward trend continues much longer.

 

[rutgersguy1]

Here's an article on a 40 year old guy who had severe symptoms for months and that steroid dexamethasone in combo with some other drugs finally helped him improve some. Touched on people who still have symptoms all the way back from March. This is kind of what I was asking before....I wonder how many people end up with these long ongoing conditions.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/tested-positive-coronavirus-prepared-2-123009299.html

 

[BIGRUBIGDBIGredmachine]

Despite China's lies and lack of transparency in the early days of the outbreak, in particular, it was known by late January that this virus was transmitted human to human (and earlier, according to US intelligence reports) and it was known how horribly deadly and transmissible it was by then, too, given the draconian shutdown of Hubei/Wuhan. Some countries took this seriously, like SK, Taiwan, and many others and had aggressive testing, tracing and isolating in place by the time it hit there hard (before it hit here hard). We did not.

Our Federal government, which is charged with responsibility for National Security (and our pandemic playbook and 2018 pandemic simulations all agree on that) did essentially nothing until about mid-March, when it was too late. The CDC and the Administration completely bungled testing and even then we still could have obtained test kits from other countries using the German-developed, WHO approved test, but we didn't. They also did nothing to proactively expand our inventory of medical supplies and PPE and we had a POTUS who downplayed the seriousness of the virus from late Jan through mid-March and continues to do so. The only thing they did right was the travel ban from China, but missed doing the same from Europe, where the vast majority of cases came to the US from (especially in the NE US). @RU4Real wrote a great post on the incompetence of the Administration in planning for and responding to the pandemic.

https://rutgers.forums.rivals.com/threads/ot-good-news-on-cv-19-treatment.198410/#post-4610960

We watched SK respond to a major outbreak in mid/late Feb with massive testing, tracing and isolating, controlling the outbreak by early March. And the Seoul area is as densely populated with as much total population as NYC Metro, so clearly they showed how it could be done in areas like that. But we ran zero tests in NY/NJ through early March (and close to zero everywhere else) and we now know we had tens of thousands of undetected cases by then in our area and were in the midst of the most explosive exponential growth seen, to date, for the entire planet.

Yes they had experience with SARS, but we all knew what the response to a pandemic should be and they executed on it, while we didn't. End of story. If we had followed our own playbook and started massive testing in late Feb instead of mid-March, we very likely would be looking at a few thousand deaths in the US instead of 120K and counting. And they did all this without any major lockdowns and continue to be able to control any flare-ups. And if you're looking for larger countries that have done far, far better than the US, look no further than Japan (who mostly did it with 100% mask wearing and a very good tracing/isolating program) and China, both of whom have similar, very low deaths per capita (1/100th of ours, roughly). So don't say it's due to geography or demographics.

And despite the mountains of evidence of how shitty a job we've done with this pandemic, we're doubling down in many states by reopening prematurely and not requiring masks in public, which is astonishingly irresponsible.

Well thanks for the summary of all the reporting by CNN, the NYT and WaPo.

For starters however it's simply not true that this Admn did "virtually nothing" until mid-March. There was a linked report that included transcripts on the now invisible CE Board about how the CDC was in daily contact with states and large metro areas providing updates and contingency planning---on a local basis-- starting in mid Jan...at some point I'll try a Google search to find it. Peter Navarro was on CNBC a number of times detailing the work behind the scenes and even Andrew Sorkin couldn't discredit him. I suggest you google these appearances.

We also know the CDC was working on the test kits in Jan too, but unfortunately the Atlanta lab botched it causing the delays. Now if want to somehow blame Trump himself for a mishap in a lab run by career government scientists and health officials then that's your prerogative, but I don't see it. The Trump Admin has gone on record stating the "Obama Pandemic Playbook" was not sufficient given the scope and intensity of covid-19. If you can prove otherwise then have at it.

And the warnings you reference from "intelligence reports" have never been corroborated, and were reported by the WaPo and NYT using the usual "anonymous sources". Hey, I'll be right with all of you libs and neverTrumpers in blaming Trump if such damning "intelligence" reports are ever verified. Then I'd call for him to step aside and not seek reelection.
(edit: linked below one of the many IC denials of such reports below as reference--there are more...)

So Japan "did better" too you say. Again that country had direct experience with the 2002-04 sars outbreak, were part of the WHO regional pandemic declaration area, and the US is 26x larger than Japan.

But China? LOL you can't be serious in trusting any data from the chicoms.

US intelligence agencies started tracking coronavirus outbreak in China as early as November
By: CNN

A defense official denied any such report existed, telling CNN, "NCMI and the Defense Intelligence Agency spent considerable time over the last 24 hours examining every possible product that could have been identified as related to this topic and have found no such product."

The Pentagon also issued a statement denying the ABC News report late Wednesday.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/politics/intel-agencies-covid-november/index.html

 

[RU848789]

Well thanks for the summary of all the reporting by CNN, the NYT and WaPo.

For starters however it's simply not true that this Admn did "virtually nothing" until mid-March. There was a linked report that included transcripts on the now invisible CE Board about how the CDC was in daily contact with states and large metro areas providing updates and contingency planning---on a local basis-- starting in mid Jan...at some point I'll try a Google search to find it. Peter Navarro was on CNBC a number of times detailing the work behind the scenes and even Andrew Sorkin couldn't discredit him. I suggest you google these appearances.

We also know the CDC was working on the test kits in Jan too, but unfortunately the Atlanta lab botched it causing the delays. Now if want to somehow blame Trump himself for a mishap in a lab run by career government scientists and health officials then that's your prerogative, but I don't see it. The Trump Admin has gone on record stating the "Obama Pandemic Playbook" was not sufficient given the scope and intensity of covid-19. If you can prove otherwise then have at it.

And the warnings you reference from "intelligence reports" have never been corroborated, and were reported by the WaPo and NYT using the usual "anonymous sources". Hey, I'll be right with all of you libs and neverTrumpers in blaming Trump if such damning "intelligence" reports are ever verified. Then I'd call for him to step aside and not seek reelection.
(edit: linked below one of the many IC denials of such reports below as reference--there are more...)

So Japan "did better" too you say. Again that country had direct experience with the 2002-04 sars outbreak, were part of the WHO regional pandemic declaration area, and the US is 26x larger than Japan.

But China? LOL you can't be serious in trusting any data from the chicoms.

US intelligence agencies started tracking coronavirus outbreak in China as early as November
By: CNN

A defense official denied any such report existed, telling CNN, "NCMI and the Defense Intelligence Agency spent considerable time over the last 24 hours examining every possible product that could have been identified as related to this topic and have found no such product."

The Pentagon also issued a statement denying the ABC News report late Wednesday.

I've covered all of this so much, I'm not inclined to go back and find every source/link, since none of it would change your mind anyway. There's zero doubt our government knew the scope of what was going on in China by mid/late January, as well documented in numerous publications (I was never talking about Nov/Dec) and that was more than early enough to act and we barely did. That is inarguable.

And wow the CDC did its barely baseline job in communicating with the states. But they utterly failed catastrophically on their most important mission for a highly transmissible and deadly virus - ensuring we had aggressive, early testing. That was known by about 2/7 and yet the Administration did nothing, because Azar was afraid of Trump and Trump didn't believe the virus was much of a risk (or are you going to be stupid enough to argue that too?) - any decent "CEO" would've evaluated the one "supply" element that could engender huge risk to the "enterprise" (the Nation) and insisted on dual sourcing the tests, especially since test kits were available. Colossal failure of management.

Finally, don't make me laugh about the pandemic playbook. While it's true that our country has never adequately prepared for a pandemic for the past 20+ years, the Obama playbook contained all the elements we needed to follow and moreover, the Us HHS just completed its own pandemic simulation exercise ("Crimson Contagion), plus the CSIS (highly respected bipartisan DC think tank with the team's co-chairs being Julie Gerberding, former CDC head and now at Merck, and former US senator Kelly Ayotte, a republican from NH) came out with a very detailed analysis of what was needed to protect human health/national security from biological threats last year, also. By the way, that report’s number-one recommendation was to undo the Trump administration’s cuts to pandemic planning: “Restore health security leadership at the White House National Security Council.” https://rutgers.forums.rivals.com/threads/ot-good-news-on-cv-19-treatment.198410/page-2#post-4611813

And we didn't have to execute it all perfectly - if we had just had the testing in place with tracing and isolating we'd have done hugely better. Even now, the Administration refuses to show any leadership on the coronavirus, ignoring all the data on the preventative effects of wearing masks, as embodied by this POTUS, and encouraging states to reopen without the necessary infrastructure in place to keep infections/deaths down.

By the way, I've generally been ahead of CNN, WaPo, the Times, etc., so my posts are almost all based on my reading of the primary sources/scientific literature. I was on the testing fiasco in mid-Feb, predicted large gatherings would be banned (including the NCAAs) well ahead of time, predicted a week in advance to a day of when we'd have 1000 and 5000 cases in the US, came out with a strong mask recommendation on 3/14 well before CDC/WHO, have always said surface transmission was way overestimated, was the first one around here questioning HCQ ,and predicted an eventual infection fatality rate of 0.5-1.0% in early March. I was also dead wrong in late January that this wouldn't be bigger than the flu. And I think the antibody cocktails will be close to a cure, if not a cure, by September, plus I think we'll have our first vaccine by the end of the year, in case you're curious - could end up wrong on those, but I try to predict such things to give people an educated guess as to what could happen.

 

[RU848789]

Additional compelling analysis of why masks work from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the noted hedge fund manager, mathematical statistician, essayist, and most famously, author of the great book, "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" which anticipated such a Black Swan event, in the 2008 financial crisis (from which he and his investors profited handsomely). His article, in Medium, does a fantastic job of outlining the key flawed assumptions that many have made along the way in not calling for masks to be worn by everyone from the beginning.

These are: "1) missing the compounding effects of masks, 2) missing the nonlinearity of the probability of infection to viral exposures, 3) missing absence of evidence (of benefits of mask wearing) for evidence of absence (of benefits of mask wearing), 4) missing the point that people do not need governments to produce facial covering: they can make their own, 5) missing the compounding effects of statistical signals, 6) ignoring the Non-Aggression Principle by pseudolibertarians (masks are also to protect others from you."

I've talked about #1 many times with regard to how much better it is with everyone wearing masks: if one looks at most interactions as being pair-wise, reducing the risk of transmission by half for one person wearing a mask means that for a pair of people, the risk is reduced by 3/4 (1-(1/2 x 1/2)). And worn properly, as per research shared before, the risk reduction for one person wearing a mask can be 75% or more (95% for an N95 mask), meaning for a 75% reduction for 2 people, that's a 94% overall reduction.

Point #2 on non-linearity is explained really well by Taleb with a nice graphic of the dose response curve, below, where it's well known that reducing the viral load exposure by 1/2, for example, produces a much lower risk of infection than 1/2, as dose response curves are usually non-linear near the floor of the dose. Very few have articulated this well, but it's fundamentally why I've been harping on the masks inside or outside if one can't keep to >6 feet distance, which is a second example where non-linearity comes into play. The dose one gets at 3 feet, for example, isn't 2X the dose one would get at 6 feet - it's about 4 times more (the dose should be proportional to the square of the distance difference, i.e., 36 vs. 9, which is non-linear, instead of 6 vs. 3, which would be linear).

The rest of the article is pretty good, too. I especially like his way of phrasing #3, i.e, "mistaking absence of evidence for evidence of absence." And we've talked before about how the "libertarian" argument falls apart vs. the "do no harm" principle. Anyway, the one thing I think he missed was sharing how effective mask wearing has been in many countries, especially Japan, which has not implemented all the interventions some other countries have (a lot less testing than SK, for example) and no lockdowns, but they're close to 100% compliant with mask-wearing and have fantastic results so far in achieving low trasnmissions/deaths. Worth reading and please, wear your mask if you're not sure you can keep to more than 6 feet from others.

Taleb Article in Medium

On top of the news yesterday about the importance of face masks in preventing COVID spread in that salon in Missouri, comes a really well done research article (peer-reviewed and in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) saying essentially the same thing. Rather than summarizing it, here's the abstract, so people can read for themselves. The bottom line is if one can't maintain social distancing in public (indoors or outdoors), which is very difficult in some work, travel and entertainment situations, wear a mask. Period.

Abstract
Various mitigation measures have been implemented to fight the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, including widely adopted social distancing and mandated face covering. However, assessing the effectiveness of those intervention practices hinges on the understanding of virus transmission, which remains uncertain. Here we show that airborne transmission is highly virulent and represents the dominant route to spread the disease. By analyzing the trend and mitigation measures in Wuhan, China, Italy, and New York City, from January 23 to May 9, 2020, we illustrate that the impacts of mitigation measures are discernable from the trends of the pandemic. Our analysis reveals that the difference with and without mandated face covering represents the determinant in shaping the pandemic trends in the three epicenters. This protective measure alone significantly reduced the number of infections, that is, by over 78,000 in Italy from April 6 to May 9 and over 66,000 in New York City from April 17 to May 9. Other mitigation measures, such as social distancing implemented in the United States, are insufficient by themselves in protecting the public. We conclude that wearing of face masks in public corresponds to the most effective means to prevent interhuman transmission, and this inexpensive practice, in conjunction with simultaneous social distancing, quarantine, and contact tracing, represents the most likely fighting opportunity to stop the COVID-19 pandemic. Our work also highlights the fact that sound science is essential in decision-making for the current and future public health pandemics.

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/06/10/2009637117

Even more proof that masks work to reduce transmissions. As per the graphic, below, Italy, Spain, Germany and France all report >80% wearing masks in public "always or frequently" and they now are seeing a cumulative ~1500 new cases per day (in a population about 75% of the US) vs. 20-30K new cases per day in the US and climbing and we know mask wearing in most of the US is probably 50% at best, overall, and probably much lower in states having case rises (heterogeneity of our states is why "US rates" might not mean much).

The UK is a laggard here, just like the US, and the UK has as many new cases as those other 4 countries combined. Interestingly, Denmark, Norway and Finland also have very low new case rates (<100/day), but they've yet to be hit with any major waves, probably because they had very good testing from early on and supposedly do practice social distancing well and are much less densely populated. And Sweden we know about and they're still doing badly. In a perfect world we'd have data on all the interventions in all countries, but we don't - however, the directional trends from mask wearing continue to be clear. Links to the story on Europe and the Worldometers data are below.

There's no doubt in my mind that people should "wear masks all the time in public anywhere you aren't sure you can maintain physical distancing." I don't wear a mask walking around the neighborhood or a lightly populated park, since it's easy to keep distance, but I always wear one in any store, since I just can't be sure. Just look at Seoul and Tokyo with packed subway trains and extremely low transmission rates (which have actually come from social situations/bars/nightclubs not subways) - they're all wearing masks.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1114375/wearing-a-face-mask-outside-in-european-countries/

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

 

[BIGRUBIGDBIGredmachine]

I've covered all of this so much, I'm not inclined to go back and find every source/link, since none of it would change your mind anyway. There's zero doubt our government knew the scope of what was going on in China by mid/late January, as well documented in numerous publications (I was never talking about Nov/Dec) and that was more than early enough to act and we barely did. That is inarguable.

And wow the CDC did its barely baseline job in communicating with the states. But they utterly failed catastrophically on their most important mission for a highly transmissible and deadly virus - ensuring we had aggressive, early testing. That was known by about 2/7 and yet the Administration did nothing, because Azar was afraid of Trump and Trump didn't believe the virus was much of a risk (or are you going to be stupid enough to argue that too?) - any decent "CEO" would've evaluated the one "supply" element that could engender huge risk to the "enterprise" (the Nation) and insisted on dual sourcing the tests, especially since test kits were available. Colossal failure of management.

Finally, don't make me laugh about the pandemic playbook. While it's true that our country has never adequately prepared for a pandemic for the past 20+ years, the Obama playbook contained all the elements we needed to follow and moreover, the Us HHS just completed its own pandemic simulation exercise ("Crimson Contagion), plus the CSIS (highly respected bipartisan DC think tank with the team's co-chairs being Julie Gerberding, former CDC head and now at Merck, and former US senator Kelly Ayotte, a republican from NH) came out with a very detailed analysis of what was needed to protect human health/national security from biological threats last year, also. By the way, that report’s number-one recommendation was to undo the Trump administration’s cuts to pandemic planning: “Restore health security leadership at the White House National Security Council.” https://rutgers.forums.rivals.com/threads/ot-good-news-on-cv-19-treatment.198410/page-2#post-4611813

And we didn't have to execute it all perfectly - if we had just had the testing in place with tracing and isolating we'd have done hugely better. Even now, the Administration refuses to show any leadership on the coronavirus, ignoring all the data on the preventative effects of wearing masks, as embodied by this POTUS, and encouraging states to reopen without the necessary infrastructure in place to keep infections/deaths down.

Do you have even one source/link about the intelligence reports that confirmed the "anonymous" sources? I already wrote that would change my mind. You missed that. Pick a month--Nov 2019 thru Feb 2020--I know there were similar WaPo reports about early 2020 but they too were denied by the IC. I'll take the time to link them if it would change your mind.

Why are you glossing over the test kit malfunctions that occurred in the Atlanta lab that was run by career government scientists and health officials, to then run off and filibuster repeating media reports about Azar? You seem to want to avoid blaming the lab failure specifically and paint that broad brush like so many of your media sources.

Keep to the facts you can verify ###'s and you might be respected by both sides of the aisle in this pinned thread. If you care, that is.

 

[Caliknight]

Way too late for that lol

 

[BIGRUBIGDBIGredmachine]

Way too late for that lol

Poor sap started the insults again. He's like the old guy yelling "get off my lawn" when he gets challenged in "his" thread. Sad.

 

[RU#1fan]

Even more proof that masks work to reduce transmissions. As per the graphic, below, Italy, Spain, Germany and France all report >80% wearing masks in public "always or frequently" and they now are seeing a cumulative ~1500 new cases per day (in a population about 75% of the US) vs. 20-30K new cases per day in the US and climbing and we know mask wearing in most of the US is probably 50% at best, overall, and probably much lower in states having case rises (heterogeneity of our states is why "US rates" might not mean much).

The UK is a laggard here, just like the US, and the UK has as many new cases as those other 4 countries combined. Interestingly, Denmark, Norway and Finland also have very low new case rates (<100/day), but they've yet to be hit with any major waves, probably because they had very good testing from early on and supposedly do practice social distancing well and are much less densely populated. And Sweden we know about and they're still doing badly. In a perfect world we'd have data on all the interventions in all countries, but we don't - however, the directional trends from mask wearing continue to be clear. Links to the story on Europe and the Worldometers data are below.

There's no doubt in my mind that people should "wear masks all the time in public anywhere you aren't sure you can maintain physical distancing." I don't wear a mask walking around the neighborhood or a lightly populated park, since it's easy to keep distance, but I always wear one in any store, since I just can't be sure. Just look at Seoul and Tokyo with packed subway trains and extremely low transmission rates (which have actually come from social situations/bars/nightclubs not subways) - they're all wearing masks.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1114375/wearing-a-face-mask-outside-in-european-countries/

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

This. Masks and social distancing reduce the risk of COVID-19 from spreading.
Anybody who posts otherwise is a fool.

 

[RU848789]

Do you have even one source/link about the intelligence reports that confirmed the "anonymous" sources? I already wrote that would change my mind. You missed that. Pick a month--Nov 2019 thru Feb 2020--I know there were similar WaPo reports about early 2020 but they too were denied by the IC. I'll take the time to link them if it would change your mind.

Why are you glossing over the test kit malfunctions that occurred in the Atlanta lab that was run by career government scientists and health officials, to then run off and filibuster repeating media reports about Azar? You seem to want to avoid blaming the lab failure specifically and paint that broad brush like so many of your media sources.

Keep to the facts you can verify ###'s and you might be respected by both sides of the aisle in this pinned thread. If you care, that is.

By late January, after China locked down Hubei/Wuhan, very little "intelligence" was needed to see what was coming. And yes, I believe the WaPo/Times investigations detailing that numerous anonymous sources corroborated that Trump received warnings of the coming pandemic in his daily intelligence briefings. It's your prerogative not to believe the reports, but to think that the National Center for Medical Intelligence didn't see what was coming and that Trump had no idea by late January, at least, strains all credulity. And besides, if Trump didn't see any risk or was not informed of significant risks, why would he had stopped air travel from China on 2/1 (after there were already cases in numerous countries)? Also, Dr. Bright testified before Congress, under oath, that the Administration and the POTUS were fully informed of the pandemic risks and was disappointed they didn't follow through on our existing pandemic response plans, leading to "lives being lost."

I've painstakingly detailed the test kit fiasco. Yes, CDC failed miserably, but the Administration knew about these failures by 2/7, yet did nothing to mitigate the risks of that failure continuing, which is what happened. That's where any competent management team (Azar is head of HHS and reports to Trump) would have stepped in to ensure the most important diagnostic element in any arsenal against a pandemic - testing - was addressed. And it could have been so, so easily addressed by simply dual sourcing. I've been doing that where specific supplies are critical to success/failure, for decades - it should have been obvious. And the fact that this not only went on through February but into mid/late March was simply unacceptable ("anyone can get a test," lol).

 

[RU-05]

Because the positivity rate in NYC was at 1% during the protests and not at 20% like it was 6 weeks ago. If the protests happened 6 weeks ago, you would most likely seen a huge spike. NY tested 79,000 yesterday, which is absolutely amazing and only 796 positives or 1%. Better yet , the rate has been about the same for the last 10-14 days so protesters , because they were outdoors, and most but not all wore masks, have very few spreaders among them. On the other hand, the other 140 cities around the country that had protests, likely had higher positivity rates, but being outside and wearing masks reduces the transmission in those cities as well.

I agree that NY was in a better position then other states in regards to positivity rate. And that would certainly leave them in the better a better place on the other side of the protests.

But 2 weeks ago the positivity rate in New York State (I don't have the curve for the city) was at 1.9%, it's now 1.1%

NJ was 2.5% and is now 1.7%.

PA was 5.7%, got down to 3.3% and then jumped a bit to 3.9%, so maybe they are just now seeing the spike.

Minnesota's looks a bit like PA's in that it was coming down(significantly faster rate) had multiple days of no tests(likely due to the protests) but has seen a bit of a jump in the last week or so from 1.6 to 2.3. Now did the protests cause a spike, or did the lack of tests lead to a backlog of positive people being tested?

Illinois diving rather sharply since April. Positivity around 5% around June 7th, currently at 2.7%

On the other side, FL was way down at 2.3% around March 23rd, rose to 4.6% about 2 weeks ago, dipped to 4.0% a couple days later, and have spiked since.


AZ has been steadily rising since early March

TX steadily rising since late March.

So aside from PA, and perhaps MN I'm not seeing anything that really points to the protests being a driver, states that were trending downward continue to trend downward, states that were trending upward continue to trend upward.

 

[RU-05]

California is very interesting in that their positivity rate has remained very steady at around 4.7% since late March.

Their increase looks in part(at least, could be the driving factor) to be tied to more testing.

 

[WhiteBus]

Despite China's lies and lack of transparency in the early days of the outbreak, in particular, it was known by late January that this virus was transmitted human to human (and earlier, according to US intelligence reports) and it was known how horribly deadly and transmissible it was by then, too, given the draconian shutdown of Hubei/Wuhan. Some countries took this seriously, like SK, Taiwan, and many others and had aggressive testing, tracing and isolating in place by the time it hit there hard (before it hit here hard). We did not.

Our Federal government, which is charged with responsibility for National Security (and our pandemic playbook and 2018 pandemic simulations all agree on that) did essentially nothing until about mid-March, when it was too late. The CDC and the Administration completely bungled testing and even then we still could have obtained test kits from other countries using the German-developed, WHO approved test, but we didn't. They also did nothing to proactively expand our inventory of medical supplies and PPE and we had a POTUS who downplayed the seriousness of the virus from late Jan through mid-March and continues to do so. The only thing they did right was the travel ban from China, but missed doing the same from Europe, where the vast majority of cases came to the US from (especially in the NE US). @RU4Real wrote a great post on the incompetence of the Administration in planning for and responding to the pandemic.

https://rutgers.forums.rivals.com/threads/ot-good-news-on-cv-19-treatment.198410/#post-4610960

We watched SK respond to a major outbreak in mid/late Feb with massive testing, tracing and isolating, controlling the outbreak by early March. And the Seoul area is as densely populated with as much total population as NYC Metro, so clearly they showed how it could be done in areas like that. But we ran zero tests in NY/NJ through early March (and close to zero everywhere else) and we now know we had tens of thousands of undetected cases by then in our area and were in the midst of the most explosive exponential growth seen, to date, for the entire planet.

Yes they had experience with SARS, but we all knew what the response to a pandemic should be and they executed on it, while we didn't. End of story. If we had followed our own playbook and started massive testing in late Feb instead of mid-March, we very likely would be looking at a few thousand deaths in the US instead of 120K and counting. And they did all this without any major lockdowns and continue to be able to control any flare-ups. And if you're looking for larger countries that have done far, far better than the US, look no further than Japan (who mostly did it with 100% mask wearing and a very good tracing/isolating program) and China, both of whom have similar, very low deaths per capita (1/100th of ours, roughly). So don't say it's due to geography or demographics.

And despite the mountains of evidence of how shitty a job we've done with this pandemic, we're doubling down in many states by reopening prematurely and not requiring masks in public, which is astonishingly irresponsible.

Only if you believe that masks do so much. Social distancing has always been the key. Masks not so much.

 

[knight_ru]

For a decent look back - the most recent episode of Frontline tackles what went right and wrong in the early months

 

[jerzey devil]

This. Masks and social distancing reduce the risk of COVID-19 from spreading.
Anybody who posts otherwise is a fool.

I will admit... It took me awhile to come around to it... I hate wearing a mask...( i have to do it at work for 10 hrs+ a day... 45-50 hrs+ a week... I also work in essential retail... so im in contact with thousands of people each week... sometimes closer than i want) We've been going full bore the last 3 months without anyone getting Covid19 ( damn i hope i didnt just jinx us) Pretty much everyone that comes in has a mask..( isnt hard for me to deal with the ones that dont want too... Now granted.. 90% of our customers are in and out in less than 10 minutes... which helps... Bottom line... wear the mask.. Distance as best u can... Wash ur hands, Dont touch ur face untill u do.. and most likely,,, U can keep safe...

 

[RU-05]

Only if you believe that masks do so much. Social distancing has always been the key. Masks not so much.

If we want to have the economy open to some extent then masks are very much a key.

 

[WhiteBus]

If we want to have the economy open to some extent then masks are very much a key.

But not from a science standpoint. More from government trying to do something. It's a visual issue.

 

[RU-05]

But not from a science standpoint. More from government trying to do something. It's a visual issue.

Science is very much in line on this.

 

[mikershoein]

Too drunk to read page 189 but lots of graphs and words

 

[WhiteBus]

Science is very much in line on this.

Is it? Please explain why so many hospital personel who wear masks, eye shields as a rule and were why ahead of the curve of requiring everyone in them still got sick in staggering numbers. The only people I know who got sick from the virus worked in hospitals or had a family member work in one.
If they are so effective why is social distancing stil required??

 

[Knight177lb]

Younger healthier people are getting it now.

Sure they are. That's to be expected with opening more activities. The question is what is their IFR?

 

[rutgersdave]

I see Texas and Florida has reached 4,000 new cases a day and Arizona is now up to 3,000 new cases. I think 4,000 new case a day was the highest for NJ.

 

[Knight177lb]

This graph is just the overall death rates by age group in NYC and not IFR. However, you can make inferences from it. The death rate in 18-44 is roughly one tenth of the overall which would suggest around 0.1%. That assumes the infection rate is similar between overall and 18-44. I would guess that some of those in the 18-44 are not healthy and have some comorbs so I would guess the IFR for healthy people 18-44 would be some fraction of 0.1%.

This is really good news. Take out those with underlying conditions and the IFR goes way down. Then we can push it down even further with convalescent plasma and steroids. That will probably put the IFR right around the chances of getting hit by lightning.

 

[Caliknight]

I see Texas and Florida has reached 4,000 new cases a day and Arizona is now up to 3,000 new cases. I think 4,000 new case a day was the highest for NJ.

NJ will be rising again. Give it two weeks.

 

[jerzey devil]

NJ will be rising again. Give it two weeks.

NO... It wont.... We wear masks inside stores..... Those who are infected arent spreading it....

 

[WhiteBus]

NJ will be rising again. Give it two weeks.

What do you know?? We all thought you were leaving the board.

 

[Greg2020]

Is it? Please explain why so many hospital personel who wear masks, eye shields as a rule and were why ahead of the curve of requiring everyone in them still got sick in staggering numbers. The only people I know who got sick from the virus worked in hospitals or had a family member work in one.
If they are so effective why is social distancing stil required??

actually that's not true. According to antibody results in NYC fewer doctors, nurses, police, and EMT's had antibodies than average citizens did. Many of those people got sick though right away before there was enough proper equipment and before proper procedures were in place.

 

[WhiteBus]

actually that's not true. According to antibody results in NYC fewer doctors, nurses, police, and EMT's had antibodies than average citizens did. Many of those people got sick though right away before there was enough proper equipment and before proper procedures were in place.

It's 100% true. Yes there weren't enough N95 masks in the beginning but they were all wearing the same masks we all are wearing now and those masks didn't protect anyone on the front line. I don't understand from a factual standpoint that you are arguing with that.

 

[WhiteBus]

It's 100% true. Yes there weren't enough N95 masks in the beginning but they were all wearing the same masks we all are wearing now and those masks didn't protect anyone on the front line. I don't understand from a factual standpoint that you are arguing with that. Are you trying to say that front line workers weren't getting sick in staggering numbers based on those that don't have antibodies???.

 

[knight_ru]

What do you know?? We all thought you were leaving the board.

He is waiting for the credit on his Amex card to clear from pulling a Karen and demanding a refund on premium first. :)

 

[RU-05]

Is it? Please explain why so many hospital personel who wear masks, eye shields as a rule and were why ahead of the curve of requiring everyone in them still got sick in staggering numbers. The only people I know who got sick from the virus worked in hospitals or had a family member work in one.
If they are so effective why is social distancing stil required??

They got sick(and last I heard from NY was hospital workers rates were lower then general population) because they are totally immersed in environments which are inundated with the virus.

Did some get sick? Yes. Does that mean they are not effective? No. Just because they are not perfect does not mean they are not very useful.

 

[RU-05]

I see Texas and Florida has reached 4,000 new cases a day and Arizona is now up to 3,000 new cases. I think 4,000 new case a day was the highest for NJ.

But we were testing nowhere near the #'s they are testing now.

 

[RU-05]

This is really good news. Take out those with underlying conditions and the IFR goes way down. Then we can push it down even further with convalescent plasma and steroids. That will probably put the IFR right around the chances of getting hit by lightning.

About 51 people die a year in the US from lightning strikes.

573 covid deaths were reported today.

So we have a ways to go.

 

[LETSGORU91]

I will admit... It took me awhile to come around to it... I hate wearing a mask...( i have to do it at work for 10 hrs+ a day... 45-50 hrs+ a week... I also work in essential retail... so im in contact with thousands of people each week... sometimes closer than i want) We've been going full bore the last 3 months without anyone getting Covid19 ( damn i hope i didnt just jinx us) Pretty much everyone that comes in has a mask..( isnt hard for me to deal with the ones that dont want too... Now granted.. 90% of our customers are in and out in less than 10 minutes... which helps... Bottom line... wear the mask.. Distance as best u can... Wash ur hands, Dont touch ur face untill u do.. and most likely,,, U can keep safe...

If people can't realize at this point that masks help...they are beyond worth to be laboring this point.

I see Texas and Florida has reached 4,000 new cases a day and Arizona is now up to 3,000 new cases. I think 4,000 new case a day was the highest for NJ.

If those numbers are true..that is unsettling. Based on those numbers, anyone else advocate a willy, nilly attitude towards CV-19?

NJ will be rising again. Give it two weeks.

I think we see a bump based in people wanting some freedom and enjoying social interaction. But we have seen more in the NE corner of the USA and the will help keep it in check some.

Even more proof that masks work to reduce transmissions. As per the graphic, below, Italy, Spain, Germany and France all report >80% wearing masks in public "always or frequently" and they now are seeing a cumulative ~1500 new cases per day (in a population about 75% of the US) vs. 20-30K new cases per day in the US and climbing and we know mask wearing in most of the US is probably 50% at best, overall, and probably much lower in states having case rises (heterogeneity of our states is why "US rates" might not mean much).

The UK is a laggard here, just like the US, and the UK has as many new cases as those other 4 countries combined. Interestingly, Denmark, Norway and Finland also have very low new case rates (<100/day), but they've yet to be hit with any major waves, probably because they had very good testing from early on and supposedly do practice social distancing well and are much less densely populated. And Sweden we know about and they're still doing badly. In a perfect world we'd have data on all the interventions in all countries, but we don't - however, the directional trends from mask wearing continue to be clear. Links to the story on Europe and the Worldometers data are below.

There's no doubt in my mind that people should "wear masks all the time in public anywhere you aren't sure you can maintain physical distancing." I don't wear a mask walking around the neighborhood or a lightly populated park, since it's easy to keep distance, but I always wear one in any store, since I just can't be sure. Just look at Seoul and Tokyo with packed subway trains and extremely low transmission rates (which have actually come from social situations/bars/nightclubs not subways) - they're all wearing masks.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1114375/wearing-a-face-mask-outside-in-european-countries/

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

Again. .wear a mask around people. .if you don't, you really are an idiot. How long do you want to deal with this?

 

[RU848789]

It's 100% true. Yes there weren't enough N95 masks in the beginning but they were all wearing the same masks we all are wearing now and those masks didn't protect anyone on the front line. I don't understand from a factual standpoint that you are arguing with that.

Greg is right - far fewer health care workers contracted COVID than members of the general public, 12% vs. 20%, based on antibody testing in NYC. Below is my answer to you on this from 5/21. The effectiveness of masks, when distancing is not possible, is not up for debate.

Actually, in NY, health care workers were less likely to be infected than the general population, as per antibody test results, meaning taking mask and handwashing precautions (and social distancing where practical) were actually pretty effective. Specifically, in New York City, 20% of the general public had antibodies, compared to about 12% of healthcare workers. So while you may be skeptical of masks, handwashing and social distancing, they work, so please keep up with all of them, as I still want to be able to meet up with you some day and talk about punk rock, beer, and Rutgers football. And thanks for taking the risks for so many of us in the service industry.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisett...9-compared-to-public-cuomo-says/#4f0ce01b6619

 

[Greg2020]

About 51 people die a year in the US from lightning strikes.

573 covid deaths were reported today.

So we have a ways to go.

and that is the average over the last 20 years, it's down way more over the last ten.

 

[RU848789]

speaking of panic, where is formerly?

Probably the same place T2K is...

 

[RU848789]

President Trump, tonight, actually said that we should slow down testing because we're finding too many cases. I'm not sure which is worse - that he actually believes that or that if he doesn't and was kidding, as the WH said, that he would even kid about such a thing with over 120K dead US citizens. I hesitated to even post this, as I feel like I got a bit too political today, but when the POTUS says something relevant about the virus, it's news, IMO.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53121488

On the coronavirus response, Mr Trump said he had encouraged officials to slow down testing because it led to more cases being discovered. He described testing as a "double-edged sword".

"Here is the bad part: When you do testing to that extent, you are going to find more people, you will find more cases," he told the cheering crowd. "So I said 'slow the testing down'. They test and they test."

A White House official later said the president was "obviously kidding".

 

[RU848789]

I agree that NY was in a better position then other states in regards to positivity rate. And that would certainly leave them in the better a better place on the other side of the protests.

But 2 weeks ago the positivity rate in New York State (I don't have the curve for the city) was at 1.9%, it's now 1.1%

NJ was 2.5% and is now 1.7%.

PA was 5.7%, got down to 3.3% and then jumped a bit to 3.9%, so maybe they are just now seeing the spike.

Minnesota's looks a bit like PA's in that it was coming down(significantly faster rate) had multiple days of no tests(likely due to the protests) but has seen a bit of a jump in the last week or so from 1.6 to 2.3. Now did the protests cause a spike, or did the lack of tests lead to a backlog of positive people being tested?

Illinois diving rather sharply since April. Positivity around 5% around June 7th, currently at 2.7%

On the other side, FL was way down at 2.3% around March 23rd, rose to 4.6% about 2 weeks ago, dipped to 4.0% a couple days later, and have spiked since.


AZ has been steadily rising since early March

TX steadily rising since late March.

So aside from PA, and perhaps MN I'm not seeing anything that really points to the protests being a driver, states that were trending downward continue to trend downward, states that were trending upward continue to trend upward.

Sadly this is not a surprise to anyone who has been reading posts like this in this thread, but the US had over 30K new cases today, the most in over 6 weeks and the states of Florida, California, Arizona, Nevada, and South Carolina all hit record highs for the pandemic and Texas was just barely below its record high from yesterday.

Deaths are not up yet, but deaths lag cases by 1-2 weeks at least, although there is also some indication that treatments are improving and death rates per cases may be decreasing, but hospitalization rates will likely be unaffected.

Also, by having much more testing in place than we did when the NE US was hit so hard in mid-March, it's unlikely we'll see the kind of explosive exponential growth we saw back then, but these numbers are very concerning and these states need to start thinking about mandatory mask-wearing and possibly restricting activities again if rates continue to rise.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/20/us-reports-his-number-of-daily-coronavirus-cases-since-may-1.html