Fear and Loathing, a Rat Flu Odyssey

[hutash]

I challenge you to even find a station and use it.

WTF are you talking about? While LA has an extensive subway/light rai system which they are expanding (and about 60 years to late on) I will admit is is somewhat hard to use. It almost, but not quite gets you to/from where you want to go. It certainly has a system, but u fortunately LA is too spread out for ot to work well. It is still easier to drive most places.

[jono]

Serious selection bias on the chicago results make that data completely useless for modeling, unless, like in
the Oxford model, you don't use any data to make your bullshit model. If they just raise their susceptibility index to 1.5 (which is just as likely as the numbers they picked out of a hat), then everybody has had it already and it's over! Let's use that one, okay?

I've felt for a while that it's likely both more transmissible and less deadly than advertised but these two studies (I use the term "studies" loosely) do nothing to bolster that case.

Advertising the Boston test a day or two before may have created a selection bias as well. They didn't just ask passersby, they also put it in the paper that they were going to and where. Given the current environment it wouldn't be surprising if that skewed the results.

[jono]

It certainly has a system, but u fortunately LA is too spread out for ot to work well. It is still easier to drive most places.

"U fortunately" has a nice ring to it.

[Rideski]

[XXX-er]

A GF (yes another friend of which I have many, this one is not a Trump supporter) was at the grocery store in Tri-Cities dutifully wearing a mask and trying to avoid people who were getting too up close and personal.

One man in particular is closer than she was comfortable with so she asks him to step away. He huffs and walks off sidling up to a woman buying apples and the following conversation ensues:

Guy: Are you doing the six foot thing?
Woman: No. It's all so stupid.

What she doesnt believe there are 38K dead Americans from covid, sounds like an unprecedented level of arrogance, are there many like this ?
.
I think you folks down thar are on the uphill side of the curve, lets see how she thinks in a month ?


locally I see people are doing the 6 foot thing, i gotta wait to get in the liqour store and the post office, businesses are setting up stores to go one way, plexi sheilds in front of cashiers ... this shit is real

[PowderHorse]

My wife, 9 month old and I have come down with respiratory coughs and high fevers, body aches, headaches. Took the baby in yesterday to get her checked out. The nurse was pretty adamant we not test the baby or myself. This is the test center in my town, a resort area that got hammered early and hard - 503 cases in ~50k population.

The nurse said 1) the tests suck, only about 70% accurate so many false positives and negatives; 2) we're low risk, young and healthy; 3) it doesn't matter anyways - go home, self-quarantine until 3 days of no symptoms, get good sleep, eat well. That's great advice, except the baby, that's also teething, decided she would rather cry all night long and now we feel even more like dog shit.

We've been isolating for a month now and taking precautions when we have had to venture out. So maybe we have it? Maybe not? The local testing clinic didn't seem to care.

Brutal, sorry, sick baby and parents is rough. I hope you all recover soon. Seems like they should have tested anyway.

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

[iceman]

Advertising the Boston test a day or two before may have created a selection bias as well. They didn't just ask passersby, they also put it in the paper that they were going to and where. Given the current environment it wouldn't be surprising if that skewed the results.

Makes complete sense, didn't know they did that. I thought it was random people.

Tip Up that's rough. I agree it seems like they should have tested you. Hang in there and don't wait too long if it starts getting rough for anyone.

[huckbucket]

I do find it entertaining that a bunch of internet sleuths can read and interpret this articles and reach pretty definitive conclusions, while all the trained MDs, epidemiologists and public health experts have no clue.

I have a pretty good understanding of public health, virology, and epidemiology (I only did it for 40 years, but what do I know) and I can't even come close to being definitive.

I will continue to listen to the people who know more then I do, not less. Trump has no clue what he is talking about, soshould just STFU, as should coreshot.

Like you, I'm smarter than the average bear when it comes to health/medical issues and the misinformation rampant on here (and in the oval office) has caused me to pretty much shut down. There are select voiced I listen to and that's about it. Even among trusted sources, I just don't have the energy to keep up on all of the most recent data.

[huckbucket]

[LeeLau]

Huckbucket. Thanks for posting those graphs. The US rate of increase seems to be declining

[KQ]

My wife, 9 month old and I have come down with respiratory coughs and high fevers, body aches, headaches. Took the baby in yesterday to get her checked out. The nurse was pretty adamant we not test the baby or myself. This is the test center in my town, a resort area that got hammered early and hard - 503 cases in ~50k population.

The nurse said 1) the tests suck, only about 70% accurate so many false positives and negatives; 2) we're low risk, young and healthy; 3) it doesn't matter anyways - go home, self-quarantine until 3 days of no symptoms, get good sleep, eat well. That's great advice, except the baby, that's also teething, decided she would rather cry all night long and now we feel even more like dog shit.

We've been isolating for a month now and taking precautions when we have had to venture out. So maybe we have it? Maybe not? The local testing clinic didn't seem to care.

A friend is a pilot for Delta and at the end of a 2wk stint found out the co-pilot he'd been flying with tested positive. He was already feeling ill when he got the news then is 5yo got sick too. They decided to test him and if he was positive they would assume his daughter had it too. Turned out to be strep. Whew!

Hoping you have a similar non-CV19 outcome.

[KQ]

What she doesnt believe there are 38K dead Americans from covid, sounds like an unprecedented level of arrogance, are there many like this ?
.
I think you folks down thar are on the uphill side of the curve, lets see how she thinks in a month ?


locally I see people are doing the 6 foot thing, i gotta wait to get in the liqour store and the post office, businesses are setting up stores to go one way, plexi sheilds in front of cashiers ... this shit is real

I've had people tell me that they think the numbers coming out of NY are inflated and there are a LOT who believe that doctors are calling any death that occurs right now CV-19.

[huckbucket]

Huckbucket. Thanks for posting those graphs. The US rate of increase seems to be declining

The curve is bending for sure, but let's take a simple, conservative case trajectory assuming a doubling every 7 days (note, we're somewhere between 3 and 4 at the moment).

April 18 --- 690,714 cases --- 35,443 deaths
April 25 --- 1,381,438 cases --- 70,886 deaths
May 2 --- 2,762,856 cases --- 141,772 deaths
May 9 --- 5,525,712 cases --- 283,544 deaths

[Rideski]

[huckbucket]

What are your chances of running into a positive person given the number of infected persons in the whole of the US population and the size of the group you're gathered with?

[hutash]

I love how people just make shit up to fit their own preconceived notions.

[jono]

The curve is bending for sure, but let's take a simple, conservative case trajectory assuming a doubling every 7 days (note, we're somewhere between 3 and 4 at the moment).

April 18 --- 690,714 cases --- 35,443 deaths
April 25 --- 1,381,438 cases --- 70,886 deaths
May 2 --- 2,762,856 cases --- 141,772 deaths
May 9 --- 5,525,712 cases --- 283,544 deaths

Not to get all optimistic or anything, but the slope in the last few days really looks lower than that weekly doubling angle. Nice improvement from 2 days.

[hutash]

People need to realize that assuming this is a bell shaped curve, which is what most of the model project, that once we actually reach the peak (and we are not there yet,) then we basically double the number of deaths. Even being generous and speaking at 40,000, and allowing a steeper back side, we are still talking about 70,000+ deaths, and that is being optimistic. Wait until the second d and third waves. We are probably about to start the second wave thanks to Florida and a few other states.

[Bunion 2020]

I've had people tell me that they think the numbers coming out of NY are inflated and there are a LOT who believe that doctors are calling any death that occurs right now CV-19.

Crazy lady Trump supporter on Facepalm was claiming that is because the hospitals can bill more if the death is due to C-19.

[goldenboy]

For anyone else, this whole thing started with Ron's idea that we should just let business fail because they failed to plan for a pandemic. The problem with that idea is people are valuable and not interchangeable so you needlessly destroy a lot of human capital, and wiping out equity capital ignores how important the capitalization of large enterprises really is.

Wipe out Boeing, for example, and there's a good chance America stops making large commercial aircraft. Wipe out banks and then you have to figure out how to recapitalize the economy. The century old plan of "let all the equity be destroyed" slows down the rate at which you recapitalize—which gets back to the risk of decades long recovery.

People might not like the Fed, or Banks, or even Boeing but that's just an attitude not dispassionate analysis. There's a world of difference between improving those institutions and letting them be destroyed.

mic drop on your whole post, well done.

[goldenboy]

We are probably about to start the second wave thanks to Florida and a few other states.

And Trump's inflammatory tweets about liberation or whatever. In a lot of places, it's about to get a lot worse, not better.

[huckbucket]

Not to get all optimistic or anything, but the slope in the last few days really looks lower than that weekly doubling angle. Nice improvement from 2 days.

Just remember, these two graphs are the same data.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

[hutash]

Just remember, these two graphs are the same data.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Yep, goes back to my earlier post about understanding the data, and that most people don't.

[MultiVerse]

What are your chances of running into a positive person given the number of infected persons in the whole of the US population and the size of the group you're gathered with?

Pasting the equation, the one below in between the quotes, into https://www.wolframalpha.com/ is another way of finding the answer:

" p=33000, c=100, g=30, 100*(1-1(1-c/p)^g) //N "

p = population
c = carriers
g = group size

So in town with 33000 people, 100 carriers, and 30 people in a group you get a 9% chance at least one person is infected.

If you increase the number of attendees, even if there's the same number of overall carriers in town, the risk skyrockets. With g=100 the risk rises to 26%, with g=500 the risk rises to 78%.



The equation explains why large events were cancelled. If the entire USA only had 20,000 infected people (randomly distributed) then for a large event like a playoff game or the March Madness finals the odds become more than 99%:

" p=330000000, c=20000, g=100000, 100*(1-1(1-c/p)^g) //N "

[summit]

All they covered was that the rapid test was from Premier, They made no mention that this test has been recalled.

But they did address their data may be bunk:

These results represent the first large-scale community-based prevalence study in a major US countycompleted during a rapidly changing pandemic, and with newly available test kits. We consider our
estimate to represent the best available current evidence, but recognize that new information, especially
about the test kit performance, could result in updated estimates. For example, if new estimates indicate
test specificity to be less than 97.9%, our SARS-CoV-2 prevalence estimate would change from 2.8% to
less than 1%, and the lower uncertainty bound of our estimate would include zero. On the other hand,
lower sensitivity, which has been raised as a concern with point-of-care test kits, would imply that the
population prevalence would be even higher. New information on test kit performance and population
should be incorporated as more testing is done and we plan to revise our estimates accordingly.
...


The data provided in the insert has not been verified, and they are basing a lot of the specificity calculations on the manufacturer's stated specificity. My point was the test was not FDA-EUA approved and has been called from the market.

This and they're control n was 30

From premiers own letter of intent "• Positive results may be due to past or present infection with non-SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus strains, such as coronavirus HKU1, NL63, OC43, or 229E."