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

[RU848789]

As someone in this Twitter thread said, this tweet from the CEA (White House Council of Economic Advisors) is not going to age well. Notice the "Paint" style graphic of actual deaths that looks a bit like a Sharpie from you-know-who and the decision to put a cubic polynomial function into the mix with actual models as part of someone's idea of how to extrapolate data into the future. This was sent to me from my son who is finishing up his MS at RU in Data Science and he couldn't stop laughing.



Whoever Sean Taylor is in that Twitter thread nailed it - you simply don't ever use polynomials or any other math function to extrapolate (ok to interpolate) from existing data to future data without a deeper understanding of the process or system being evaluated. Ever. They're trying to use just a small piece of a cubic function to forecast future deaths going to zero - if you look at the standard graphic for a general cubic function, it looks like the graphic below, which would go into "negative deaths" and then go to infinity eventually.

On one level, this is hilarious, but when you realize that these are the people in charge of our country and analyzing when to reopen it, it's sad. This is 9th grade math folks. More embarrassment. First graphic is the CEA tweet, second is a generic cubic polynomial and the third just made me chuckle.

 

[T2Kplus10]

On it's face I agree.

But when the states death toll for April is more then double it's average for the month? You realize that understating of the totals is more likely.

https://www.nj.gov/health/chs/documents/2015-2020 Deaths by Month and County of Residence.pdf

Not sure about that, need to analyze other variables. I've read articles that people are hold off addressing serious health problems and symptoms because they are afraid of going to the hospital/ER. There was an NJ.com article a few weeks ago saying a women was having a heart attack, called her doc, he begged her to come in, but she refused. She died at home a few days later.

Lots of extra stress going on which can definitely increase the amount of cardio events.

 

[RU-05]

Not sure about that, need to analyze other variables. I've read articles that people are hold off addressing serious health problems and symptoms because they are afraid of going to the hospital/ER. There was an NJ.com article a few weeks ago saying a women was having a heart attack, called her doc, he begged her to come in, but she refused. She died at home a few days later.

Lots of extra stress going on which can definitely increase the amount of cardio events.

There is also the converse that there are less auto accident deaths, and other such deaths that have been limited due to the stay at home deaths.

End of the day, we have 8 K listed covid deaths, and we are about 8K above average. So I tend to think they are pretty accurate. Maybe a little bit of noise, but overall right about where they should be.

 

[Akron Buck]

https://www.foxnews.com/health/tocilizumab-drug-shows-coronavirus-treatment-promise-doctor-says

tocilizumab shows promise

 

[RU4Real]

https://www.foxnews.com/health/tocilizumab-drug-shows-coronavirus-treatment-promise-doctor-says

tocilizumab shows promise

Does Fox News do this a lot? I mean, they publish an article with the headline "Tocilizumab drug shows coronavirus treatment promise", then the article goes on to talk about one patient outcome.

"Misleading" barely begins to describe...

 

[bac2therac]

Yeah because its such a bad thing to put articles up with potential good news as opposed to cnn 24/7 negativity

 

[Zak57]

MLB tested 10,000 employees all over the country and only 1% tested positive for antibodies.

 

[jreinsdorf]

There is also the converse that there are less auto accident deaths, and other such deaths that have been limited due to the stay at home deaths.

End of the day, we have 8 K listed covid deaths, and we are about 8K above average. So I tend to think they are pretty accurate. Maybe a little bit of noise, but overall right about where they should be.

I agree. I think the average mortality curves compared with the current death total does a good job of weeding out some of the reporting and criteria errors regarding the role of comorbidities etc.

 

[RutHut]

Has a thread ever hit 100 pages before? Mostly good stuff and I've at least skimmed through most of it. Seems like some never sleep here. Thanks for all the info.

 

[RU2055]

https://www.foxnews.com/health/tocilizumab-drug-shows-coronavirus-treatment-promise-doctor-says

tocilizumab shows promise

Genentech's IL-6 Antagonist

https://rutgers.forums.rivals.com/t...social-distancing.191275/page-46#post-4481949

 

[ArminRU]

MLB tested 10,000 employees all over the country and only 1% tested positive for antibodies.

That’s depressing. I guess one good thing about living in the NNJ/NYC area is that, despite all the pain we’ve been through, we’re a lot closer to herd immunity than the country/burbs.

 

[rutgersguy1]

Strange that most people being hospitalized In NY are people largely staying at home. Are they not taking any precautions the few times they do venture out? Is someone from the household bringing it back? Doesn't really give much reasoning for it. I think @RU848789 mentioned that was what happened in China but I think that was usually a household member bringing it back into the home IIRC....maybe that's what's happening here?

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/ny-...hospitalizations-are-people-staying-home.html

 

[Upstream]

Strange that most people being hospitalized In NY are people largely staying at home. Are they not taking any precautions the few times they do venture out? Is someone from the household bringing it back? Doesn't really give much reasoning for it. I think @RU848789 mentioned that was what happened in China but I think that was usually a household member bringing it back into the home IIRC....maybe that's what's happening here?

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/ny-...hospitalizations-are-people-staying-home.html

I think we need to dig deeper into this.

I don't think the finding is that these are people who have been sheltering in home under quarantine. My reading of the news reports is that they categorized the hospital admissions, with the expectation that most of the new admissions were people who were essential workers, taking mass transit, or institutionalized. But the largest category of new hospitalizations was those who were at home, i.e., not working or institutionalized. But on reflection, that should not be surprising. We know that older populations are at risk of more serious infections and more likely to be hospitalized. And older populations are more likely to be retired, so they would not be working or needing to take mass transit. And while many senior citizens live in assisted living or nursing homes, most don't. So we would expect that if most hospitalizations are seniors, they would mostly be people at home, not working and not institutionalized.

 

[RU4Real]

I think we need to dig deeper into this.

I don't think the finding is that these are people who have been sheltering in home under quarantine. My reading of the news reports is that they categorized the hospital admissions, with the expectation that most of the new admissions were people who were essential workers, taking mass transit, or institutionalized. But the largest category of new hospitalizations was those who were at home, i.e., not working or institutionalized. But on reflection, that should not be surprising. We know that older populations are at risk of more serious infections and more likely to be hospitalized. And older populations are more likely to be retired, so they would not be working or needing to take mass transit. And while many senior citizens live in assisted living or nursing homes, most don't. So we would expect that if most hospitalizations are seniors, they would mostly be people at home, not working and not institutionalized.

But it still begs the question of how they're getting exposed, does it not?

 

[Upstream]

But it still begs the question of how they're getting exposed, does it not?

I don't know. That's why I said we need to dig deeper into the data. But just because someone is at home, not working, doesn't mean they stay inside their house and practice social distancing.

 

[DJ Spanky]

Has a thread ever hit 100 pages before? Mostly good stuff and I've at least skimmed through most of it. Seems like some never sleep here. Thanks for all the info.

It is easy to get information overload though. I try to check this thread twice a day, because trying to catch up after a couple of days is difficult.

But it still begs the question of how they're getting exposed, does it not?

Could be they were exposed quite a while ago?

 

[RU-05]

I don't know. That's why I said we need to dig deeper into the data. But just because someone is at home, not working, doesn't mean they stay inside their house and practice social distancing.

Ya, at some point, most people need to go outside to get food, toilet paper, etc.

But you wonder about mail, or packages, maybe takeout being brought to the house.

Cuomo did say something today, but I think it was about nursing homes, was that it is impossible to have perfect quarantine measures.

 

[T2Kplus10]

Time for everyone to go outside!

Evidence mounts that outside is safer when it comes to COVID-19
https://thehill.com/policy/healthca...at-outside-is-safer-when-it-comes-to-covid-19

 

[RU4Real]

Time for everyone to go outside!

Evidence mounts that outside is safer when it comes to COVID-19
https://thehill.com/policy/healthca...at-outside-is-safer-when-it-comes-to-covid-19

Being a 2 year-old again?

 

[RobertG]

Ya, at some point, most people need to go outside to get food, toilet paper, etc.

But you wonder about mail, or packages, maybe takeout being brought to the house.

Cuomo did say something today, but I think it was about nursing homes, was that it is impossible to have perfect quarantine measures.

Do they live in apartment buildings? Riding the elevators and touching the buttons? Shopping at small bodegas?

 

[e5fdny]

Time for everyone to go outside!

Evidence mounts that outside is safer when it comes to COVID-19
https://thehill.com/policy/healthca...at-outside-is-safer-when-it-comes-to-covid-19

Real Vitamin D and fresh air can’t hurt.

 

[T2Kplus10]

Do they live in apartment buildings? Riding the elevators and touching the buttons? Shopping at small bodegas?

Nursing homes were a huge driver of indoor spreading of the virus.

 

[T2Kplus10]

Real Vitamin D and fresh air can’t hurt.

+1
It was asinine to close parks, open space, and beaches.

 

[RU-05]

+1
It was asinine to close parks, open space, and beaches.

Some serious MDS going on? Or just another post not meant to be taking seriously?

So hard to tell.

 

[RU-05]

Nursing homes were a huge driver of indoor spreading of the virus.

This was in regards to people sheltering at home. Not nursing homes.

 

[RU848789]

Time for everyone to go outside!

Evidence mounts that outside is safer when it comes to COVID-19
https://thehill.com/policy/healthca...at-outside-is-safer-when-it-comes-to-covid-19

Misleading article and post. The article opens with, "Health experts say people are significantly less likely to get the coronavirus while outside, a fact that could add momentum to calls to reopen beaches and parks closed during the COVID-19 pandemic." But nowhere in the article does any expert say people are significantly less likely to get CV while outside - so it's certainly not a "fact."

The strongest statement in the article is, "Studies suggest activities held outdoors as temperatures warm pose lower COVID risk than those done in confined indoor spaces,” tweeted Scott Gottlieb. "Studies suggest" is a far cry from "significantly less likely." The other thing is the non-peer reviewed paper Gottlieb refers to evaluated how many outbreaks were in which type of locations - anyone else wondering how many outdoor, close-together gatherings there were in China in January?

Look no further than Mardi Gras and FL spring break to know that outdoor gatherings where people are much closer than 6' apart are just as bad as similar indoor gatherings. Which is why the article does have many quotes saying people can be pretty safe outdoors, if maintaining social distancing, which is not new news.

Here's what the article should have said: By far, the greatest route of transmission is person to person by sneezing/coughs (and even breathing if close by) and/or direct touching and unless it's really windy, virus-laden droplets from 3 feet away will still be a great risk of infecting the receiver regardless of whether that pair of people are in their bedroom, in a subway, in a restaurant or anywhere outside (and direct touching risk is unaffected by indoor/outdoor).

That's why social distancing to 6' or more, wherever possible, backed up by wearing masks whenever one can't guarantee being more than 6' away from someone else (as the biggest role of the mask is to keep the infected person's virus-laden droplets inside the mask, especially when that person is asymptomatic/mildly symptomatic; a cloth/surgical mask also affords the wearer a small amount of protection) is so critical indoors or outdoors.

Outdoors in the sunlight with UV radiation certainly will reduce the levels of viable virus particles on surfaces vs. indoor surfaces without UV exposure, but this is a pretty minor advantage, since very few transmissions are occurring from surfaces to people.

 

[RU848789]

Strange that most people being hospitalized In NY are people largely staying at home. Are they not taking any precautions the few times they do venture out? Is someone from the household bringing it back? Doesn't really give much reasoning for it. I think @RU848789 mentioned that was what happened in China but I think that was usually a household member bringing it back into the home IIRC....maybe that's what's happening here?

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/ny-...hospitalizations-are-people-staying-home.html

I don't know. That's why I said we need to dig deeper into the data. But just because someone is at home, not working, doesn't mean they stay inside their house and practice social distancing.

You're probably recalling my multiple comments that ~80% of transmissions in China occurred indoors, usually within families in the home, which I got from the paper below, which is the same one Gottleib was citing in the article posted by T2K.

"Home outbreaks were the dominant category (254 of 318 outbreaks; 79.9%), followed by transport (108; 34.0%; note that many outbreaks involved more than one venue category)."

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.04.20053058v1

The NY data are only mildly surprising to me, since the biggest vector for transmission is always other people and we know that the high level of asymptomatic/infected/contagious people walking around means some of them are likely other family members and the data shared don't say whether the 66% of new cases in people generally isolating in their homes meant they were fully isolated - that would be very surprising.

I know many people in my age group and a little older who say they're "isolating" but they still have visits from their potentially infected kids or others and still go out shopping and such. Very few people have done what we have done, as none of the 4 of us in our house has been within 10 feet of another human since mid-March (and in early March it was only me going on late night food runs with very low risk). Until we have more granular data on their habits, we won't know what was going on.

 

[T2Kplus10]

Very few people have done what we have done, as none of the 4 of us in our house has been within 10 feet of another human since mid-March (and in early March it was only me going on late night food runs with very low risk).

May I recommend for your retirement home.
:)

 

[DJ Spanky]

Being a 2 year-old again?

Again? He stopped?

 

[RU848789]

Has a thread ever hit 100 pages before? Mostly good stuff and I've at least skimmed through most of it. Seems like some never sleep here. Thanks for all the info.

Not that I can recall - not even the famous "delete thread" from 15+ years ago went to 100. I wish this one went to about 7 and was over, but sadly, most of the things the medical/epidemiological experts (and I) were saying - at least by mid/late February - have largely come true, with some unexpected twists and surprises.

 

[cohwx]

But it still begs the question of how they're getting exposed, does it not?

I've been asking that question of the local health department and county exec here in Rochester for a couple of weeks and they just don't answer. The infection rate has been very steady for a long while (not really going down) and people are dying every day. So where are people getting exposed? Grocery stores? Are they going to doctors and getting it there? Out non social distancing and not wearing masks in parks? Gatherings with friends/neighbors? From the mail?

I would think the health officials would be talking to people who test positive to find out what they've been doing so they probably have some idea (or they should) but not sure why they're not saying. I'd like to know.

 

[RutHut]

Not that I can recall - not even the famous "delete thread" from 15+ years ago went to 100. I wish this one went to about 7 and was over, but sadly, most of the things the medical/epidemiological experts (and I) were saying - at least by mid/late February - have largely come true, with some unexpected twists and surprises.

The "delete" thread was before my posting history, but I'm sure epic. Put me in the category of one who underestimated this bug. Thought that there might be a chance for the kids to get back to school and didn't expect the steady infection rate as mentioned in the post above. Let's just hope for under 200 pages.

 

[RU848789]

The "delete" thread was before my posting history, but I'm sure epic. Put me in the category of one who underestimated this bug. Thought that there might be a chance for the kids to get back to school and didn't expect the steady infection rate as mentioned in the thread above. Let's just hope for under 200 pages.

Sadly, if the thread doesn't break, I'd expect at least 300 pages. We're only at the end of the beginning to quote Churchill.

 

[RU848789]

Another questionable preprint (not peer reviewed yet) paper on HCQ/Azithromycin from Dr. Rauolt in Marseille - being published in a journal edited by a lab subordinate of his, which is what you have to do when your previous "breakhrough" paper was discredited in another journal. It's retrospective, uncontrolled (only looking at patients on the combo) and not randomized in any way and it claims a "very low death rate" without showing that in any way.

The death rate looks to be 8 in 1061 or about 0.75%, but there are still 5 patients in the hospital in bad condition, so it's not complete yet. And the median age of the patients is 43 with 2/3 of patients between 28 and 59, which would be expected to have fairly low mortality rates, plus there's no comparison with other similar patients/ages/conditions and their death rates for people not receiving the combo to see if 0.75% is truly high.

The case fatality rate for those 40-49 in Italy/Spain is around 0.5-0.9% so it's hard to know if this study should be compared to all cases, but probably so, since the study did include mildly symptomatic cases. Also, patients with cardiac risks were excluded as were another 350+ they don't explain. Honestly, it's hard to tell what this study shows. The on-line response so far has been pretty harsh.

Will say it again: IMO, it's unlikely, but still possible that HCQ is effective in some situations, but we're not going to know for sure until the standard of care-controlled, randomized, double-blind studies come out (soon).

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477893920302179

 

[T2Kplus10]

Sadly, if the thread doesn't break, I'd expect at least 300 pages. We're only at the end of the beginning to quote Churchill.

Someone said a while ago that a thread will lock/break not based on the # of posts or pages, but the amount of text and characters. There is a limit of shear content a thread can handle.

 

[RUBigFrank]

Is there an out right bias on HCQ studies since Trump suggestion of try it?

 

[T2Kplus10]

Is there an out right bias on HCQ studies since Trump suggestion of try it?

Sadly, yes. For some (which includes most of the MSM), anything Trump does/says is bad. Nothing else matters.

 

[T2Kplus10]

Nice article on FL's success:

Florida emerges as bright spot in COVID-19 fight
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/496485-florida-emerges-as-bright-spot-in-covid-19-fight

 

[RU2055]

Nice article on FL's success:

Florida emerges as bright spot in COVID-19 fight
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/496485-florida-emerges-as-bright-spot-in-covid-19-fight

IMHO, warm weather is a factor in the spread of this disease.

 

[RU2055]

Is there an out right bias on HCQ studies since Trump suggestion of try it?

Bias or not, it is already being administered in hospitals. When it comes to patient lives, politics play no part. I suggest to everyone to please remove your political biases and opinions from this thread.