All things CoronaVirus

[Brooklyn]

brought to you by the Chosen

[MDlaxfan76]

The number of cases doesn't really seem to be growing that fast.
What I worry about is that either the coronavirus doesn't spread as well as expected or the efforts to flatten the curve work too well. Then we have to live in this lockdown status for months.

Yikes, Cooter.
You've seen the Italy graph?

How about the US?

"that fast" ???

But yeah, assuming that we do flatten the curve enough to prevent the health care system being entirely overwhelmed, you can expect significant disruption to normal behaviors for many months. It's going to be a rolling serious of smaller waves for the next 18 months.

But it's going to even worse if we don't flatten that curve.

No. Let's see, here is Italy's graph:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... try/italy/
31,506 is actually a relatively small number compared to a population of 60,000,000. It would not be any significant dent in the number who were not immune to the disease.

You do see the slope, right?

The number of new cases appears to have been relatively constant the last 4 days at ~3500.
Hopefully, Italy has a lot of mild cases that have not been reported.

They're getting what they're testing, they're out of testing capacity.

[MDlaxfan76]

For those concerned that Orange Duce might try to stay in office, by invoking a National Emergency.

A few thoughts on this.

As the article noted, only Congress can change (or cancel) the date of the election. So Pelosi, assuming she controls her caucus, has an absolute veto over any attempt to change or cancel the date of the election.

I haven’t looked into the nature and extent of the president’s martial law powers, but I highly doubt they could be used to cancel the election. I don’t think even this Supreme Court would agree to that.

If, speaking hypothetically, the election could be canceled, then I’m not so sure Pelosi would become President under the succession rules. Yes, Trump and Pence would be out of office, and become private citizens, at noon on January 20, 2021. But Pelosi, along with all other members of the House of Representatives, would be out of office as well by early January 2021 (not sure of the exact date) since they would not have been reelected either. Same would be true for 1/3 of the Senate, including Moscow Mitch who is up for reelection this year.

So where would that leave the Senate? There are actually 35 Senate seats up for election this year, including two special elections. 23 of the 35 are Republicans. We are way out over our skis here (and I’ve probably lost everyone but the lawyers by this point), but if the election is not held, then the Senate would be comprised of 35 Dems and 30 Republicans come January. The next in line to succeed the president, after the vice president and speaker of the house, is the president pro tem of the Senate. No, that is not Moscow Mitch. Currently it is Chuck Grassley. Grassley is not up for reelection this year so he will remain in office in 2021. He serves at the pleasure of the Senate so he could be removed from the president pro tem position by the remaining 65 senators. They would need to do that, however, before January 20. Otherwise, I think Grassley would automatically become president. Obviously, the Democratic controlled Senate would do that and replace him with a Dem. If the above scenario is accurate, then there is no way Trump will try to cancel the election.

OK, back to reality. To me the much more realistic issues concern voting locations and mail in ballots. State legislatures would have to amend state laws to allow mail in voting in a number of states. Not sure which ones, but it is a majority of them. I think there would be real motivation to do so because a lot of their little political butts will be up for election in November. Also, I think states could close or move polling locations based on public health concerns. Hopefully they wouldn’t play games with that, but there is a possible opportunity for mischief.

To be clear, I'm not concerned about a postponement of the election for valid reasons. There are certainly ways to to do a valid election.

My only concern is Trump (or some other authoritarian populist with a cult-like following in a future such situation) taking the truly extra-legal steps to secure power in the face of an actual emergency.

Under the scenario described above, if power actually changed hands, Pelosi would simply call the election beginning immediately with whatever voting processes were safe.

[Cooter]

The number of cases doesn't really seem to be growing that fast.
What I worry about is that either the coronavirus doesn't spread as well as expected or the efforts to flatten the curve work too well. Then we have to live in this lockdown status for months.

Yikes, Cooter.
You've seen the Italy graph?

How about the US?

"that fast" ???

But yeah, assuming that we do flatten the curve enough to prevent the health care system being entirely overwhelmed, you can expect significant disruption to normal behaviors for many months. It's going to be a rolling serious of smaller waves for the next 18 months.

But it's going to even worse if we don't flatten that curve.

No. Let's see, here is Italy's graph:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... try/italy/
31,506 is actually a relatively small number compared to a population of 60,000,000. It would not be any significant dent in the number who were not immune to the disease.

You do see the slope, right?

The number of new cases appears to have been relatively constant the last 4 days at ~3500.
Hopefully, Italy has a lot of mild cases that have not been reported.

Absolutely, ~3500 new cases per day and not increasing exponentially is a great thing. The devil is that they have been in total lock down for a few days? The origins and the "red Zone" have been on lock down considerably longer. IMO, it is case #1 for social distancing.

How long do they have to keep it up? A great loss in quality of life.

[CU77]

"That's the reason why we made the very difficult, but appropriate, decision to have a travel ban on the European countries," said Fauci

Let's stipulate that the European travel ban is appropriate. It was still done with a ridiculous level of tragicomic stupidity, including:

1) Originally excluding the UK (why? Because of Trump's golf courses there???), which meant anyone in Europe could hop on a plane to London and then to the US. Had to be fixed a day later.

2) No prior notification of European countries, needlessly exacerbating international tension and potentially lessening future cooperation (what if, six months from now, they have supplies we need????)

3) A couple days of delay before implementation, leading to panic travel from Europe to the US by thousands who might otherwise have stayed put.

4) Initial total confusion (because Trump cannot read a teleprompter) of whether or not American citizens were included in the ban.

5) No planning for what would happen when these thousands of people landed in the the US, leading to chaos at American airports, including, according to eyewitnesses, adjacent lines of known Covid19 positive people with other people and many hours of unscreened people crammed together, all using the same touchscreen devices at immigration stations which were never cleaned (in over an hour of continuous eyewitness observation). You could not possibly design a more effective virus transmission mode.

Is Trump personally to blame for #5? No. But he clearly did not ask any questions about how this would go, how much planning was needed to handle it, etc etc etc. And now that he has surrounded himself with nothing but ass-kisssing yes-men and dodgy relatives at a level not seen outside of college sports coaching, none of them asked either.

[MDlaxfan76]

The number of cases doesn't really seem to be growing that fast.
What I worry about is that either the coronavirus doesn't spread as well as expected or the efforts to flatten the curve work too well. Then we have to live in this lockdown status for months.

Yikes, Cooter.
You've seen the Italy graph?

How about the US?

"that fast" ???

But yeah, assuming that we do flatten the curve enough to prevent the health care system being entirely overwhelmed, you can expect significant disruption to normal behaviors for many months. It's going to be a rolling serious of smaller waves for the next 18 months.

But it's going to even worse if we don't flatten that curve.

No. Let's see, here is Italy's graph:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... try/italy/
31,506 is actually a relatively small number compared to a population of 60,000,000. It would not be any significant dent in the number who were not immune to the disease.

You do see the slope, right?

The number of new cases appears to have been relatively constant the last 4 days at ~3500.
Hopefully, Italy has a lot of mild cases that have not been reported.

Absolutely, ~3500 new cases per day and not increasing exponentially is a great thing. The devil is that they have been in total lock down for a few days? The origins and the "red Zone" have been on lock down considerably longer. IMO, it is case #1 for social distancing.

How long do they have to keep it up? A great loss in quality of life.

Chinese were effective (outside of Wuhan) with an 8 week total lockdown; strictly enforced. Slowly reopening, though there's an expectation of possible rolling waves needing future slow downs/lock downs. Until vaccine kicks in or some unpredictable positive event in the interim.

SK has been quite effective with a high surveillance testing process with selective quarantine.

We can only hope that we are able to do a hard lock down and then move into a high surveillance regimen.

Unfortunately, it's not at all clear that those in charge actually have that game plan.
The scientific/logistics types appear very, very busy looking two feet in front of their noses, in near panic, while the political types are still mixing in happy talk amongst the warnings.

Not fully bought-in yet.

Country remains of two minds based on what news feeds one's been listening to over the past two months.

[jhu72]

NBC reporting that todate only 59,000 test have been run in the US. --> .02% of the population

7324 cases reported --> 12.4% of tested are found to be positive
115 deaths --> 1.6% of reported, die

Given the testing guideline, those being tested are not randomly sampled, but rather thought to have a high probability of being found positive. Asymptomatic individuals are not being tested.

-------
Stock market has now given up all gains during Trump first term. Trading halted again.

[Kismet]

NBC reporting that todate only 59,000 test have been run in the US. --> .02% of the population

7324 cases reported --> 12.4% of tested are found to be positive
115 deaths --> 1.6% of reported, die

Given the testing guideline, those being tested are not randomly sampled, but rather thought to have a high probability of being found positive. Asymptomatic individuals are not being tested.

-------
Stock market has now given up all gains during Trump first term. Trading halted again.

Actually that percentage seems to be a good sign to me that testing symptomatic people is only yielding 12% infection. cannot compare that to China and SK as they were testing everybody

some notable info from the HS forum from a health professional

Post by pcowlax » Wed Mar 18, 2020 1:58 pm
Continuing my tour of gloom across all of the boards on here that I read. As a medical professional with a pretty good look behind the curtain here, schools will not reopen this year. Not ISL, not MIAA, not CT, not West-1, not colleges, nothing. The big question for me is the fall. These extreme measures we are taking now will work. Cases are going to fall much faster and the peak will be much more manageable than it would otherwise be. The warmer weather will also help with the spread. Come fall, people will be coming out of their caves and kids will be back in school. But..... The virus will not have been eradicated. Once people socialize again and it cools, it will storm back. Then what? Close schools again? Lock everything down again? I don’t think socially or economically that will be feasible. The public will only go along with one bite at this apple. There will not be a vaccine yet. The one hope, which I think is very feasible, is that there will be several treatments (already existing drugs used off label, several already showing promise) that will allow people to interact in a way where transmission is possible because the fear will be reduced with the knowledge that it is treatable. Hope for that.

[youthathletics]

NBC reporting that todate only 59,000 test have been run in the US. --> .02% of the population

7324 cases reported --> 12.4% of tested are found to be positive
115 deaths --> 1.6% of reported, die

The actual reported death is 1.57% based on those numbers....and has been trending down the past couple days, with a blip spike yesterday.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

[Bart]

The number of cases doesn't really seem to be growing that fast.
What I worry about is that either the coronavirus doesn't spread as well as expected or the efforts to flatten the curve work too well. Then we have to live in this lockdown status for months.

Yikes, Cooter.
You've seen the Italy graph?

How about the US?

"that fast" ???

But yeah, assuming that we do flatten the curve enough to prevent the health care system being entirely overwhelmed, you can expect significant disruption to normal behaviors for many months. It's going to be a rolling serious of smaller waves for the next 18 months.

But it's going to even worse if we don't flatten that curve.

No. Let's see, here is Italy's graph:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... try/italy/
31,506 is actually a relatively small number compared to a population of 60,000,000. It would not be any significant dent in the number who were not immune to the disease.

You do see the slope, right?

The number of new cases appears to have been relatively constant the last 4 days at ~3500.
Hopefully, Italy has a lot of mild cases that have not been reported.

Absolutely, ~3500 new cases per day and not increasing exponentially is a great thing. The devil is that they have been in total lock down for a few days? The origins and the "red Zone" have been on lock down considerably longer. IMO, it is case #1 for social distancing.

How long do they have to keep it up? A great loss in quality of life.

That's the million dollar question. I have no clue and am glad I am not in the position to have to make that call. I think we will have a better answer/estimate in a month or so after we see what happens in China.

[CU77]

NBC reporting that todate only 59,000 test have been run in the US. --> .02% of the population

7324 cases reported --> 12.4% of tested are found to be positive
115 deaths --> 1.6% of reported, die

The actual reported death is 1.57% based on those numbers....and has been trending down the past couple days, with a blip spike yesterday.

The lowest possible error in that number (based on simple statistics) is +/- (1/√115)*1.57% = +/- 0.15%, so don't focus on the 3rd significant digit. Actual statistical error (from imperfect sampling etc) is undoubtedly much higher.

[jhu72]

Corona Virus Timeline

Late November, Early December: Virus mutates to it's epidemic form as best scientists can determine the date
December: Through the month numerous cases of what was thought to be cold or flu are noted in Wuhan, later identified as epidemic form
January 7: China reported first case definitively tied to the epidemic form
January 13 - 16: Japan and Thailand reported first cases
January 17 - 19: US, Nepal, France, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan reported first cases
Prior to January 23, no Wuhan lockdown, people traveled from Wuhan to other Chinese cities as follows. The vast majority just going to their homes inside China.
JANUARY 23: China locks down Wuhan and surrounding area - this spread across China as authorities deemed necessary. Included travel interdiction, air, land, water.
JANUARY 31: Trump bans travel from China

Basically locking the barn door.

[youthathletics]

NBC reporting that todate only 59,000 test have been run in the US. --> .02% of the population

7324 cases reported --> 12.4% of tested are found to be positive
115 deaths --> 1.6% of reported, die

The actual reported death is 1.57% based on those numbers....and has been trending down the past couple days, with a blip spike yesterday.

The lowest possible error in that number (based on simple statistics) is +/- (1/√115)*1.57% = +/- 0.15%, so don't focus on the 3rd significant digit. Actual statistical error (from imperfect sampling etc) is undoubtedly much higher.

Its all we have to go on, which is why I have been logging it directly from the JHU site. Especially since many here simply do not trust CDC.

[jhu72]

NBC reporting that todate only 59,000 test have been run in the US. --> .02% of the population

7324 cases reported --> 12.4% of tested are found to be positive
115 deaths --> 1.6% of reported, die

The actual reported death is 1.57% based on those numbers....and has been trending down the past couple days, with a blip spike yesterday.

The lowest possible error in that number (based on simple statistics) is +/- (1/√115)*1.57% = +/- 0.15%, so don't focus on the 3rd significant digit. Actual statistical error (from imperfect sampling etc) is undoubtedly much higher.

I used canonical rounding rules - rounding up. I was aware of the 1.57xxxx calculated number.

[CU77]

On January 13, 2017, national security officials assembled in the White House to chart a response to a global pandemic. A new virus was spreading with alarming speed, causing global transportation stoppages, supply-chain disruptions, and plunging stock prices. With a vaccine many months away, U.S. health-care infrastructure was severely strained.

No, I didn’t get that date wrong. This happened: it was part of a transition exercise that outgoing officials from the administration of President Barack Obama convened for the benefit of the incoming team of President Donald Trump.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles ... l-security

Luciana Borio, then the director for medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council, told a symposium [in 2018] that “the threat of pandemic flu is our number-one health security concern.” Serving under a president who’d come to office on the pledge to wall off the United States, she noted that such a threat could not “be stopped at the border.” The very next day, news broke that National Security Adviser John Bolton had shuttered the NSC’s unit for preparing and responding to pandemics, of which Borio was a part. The White House official in charge of spearheading such a response to infectious threats departed as well and was not replaced.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... dc/608215/

[jhu72]

NBC reporting that todate only 59,000 test have been run in the US. --> .02% of the population

7324 cases reported --> 12.4% of tested are found to be positive
115 deaths --> 1.6% of reported, die

The actual reported death is 1.57% based on those numbers....and has been trending down the past couple days, with a blip spike yesterday.

The lowest possible error in that number (based on simple statistics) is +/- (1/√115)*1.57% = +/- 0.15%, so don't focus on the 3rd significant digit. Actual statistical error (from imperfect sampling etc) is undoubtedly much higher.

Its all we have to go on, which is why I have been logging it directly from the JHU site. Especially since many here simply do not trust CDC.

Per recent presser(s), Debbie is claiming they are making an effort to make the CDC website an authoritative source for all testing. Have no idea when that will be. I am sure Debbie will let us know.

[njbill]

My only concern is Trump (or some other authoritarian populist with a cult-like following in a future such situation) taking the truly extra-legal steps to secure power in the face of an actual emergency.

I frankly don’t see that. As of January 20, 2021, Trump is no longer president (unless he were to be reelected, of course). He would no longer be commander in chief. He would no longer have the nuclear football. Are you saying the military would disregard the constitution and would follow Trump? I don’t think so. I think they would turn their allegiance immediately to the new president, whomever that may be above under the scenario I sketched out above.

Similarly, I don’t think the other government institutions would follow Trump. Perhaps a few isolated individuals would, but the vast majority, including the rank and file who actually operate the mechanisms of government, would not. They would follow, and obey, the new president.

But, fundamentally, we won’t get there. There WILL be an election this year because elections are controlled by the states, not the federal government. All Dem controlled states certainly will have elections. So too will those controlled by Republicans because, as I noted above, state politicians in those dates will be on the ballot as well and will want to be reelected.

[Kismet]

How hard would it be to go to an all vote by mail in all states? - Many states do it this way now. Mail ballots, return them by mail, scan them automatically into a system to count

[CU77]

Its all we have to go on, which is why I have been logging it directly from the JHU site. Especially since many here simply do not trust CDC.

Sure, but too few people understand that all statistical numbers come with significant errors. Those 115 deaths could have been 125 or 105 or 135 or 95 in different weeks, with exactly the same underlying death rate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_distribution

[CU77]

How hard would it be to go to an all vote by mail in all states? - Many states do it this way now. Mail ballots, return them by mail, scan them automatically into a system to count

Not hard, but Republicans in state legislatures will fight it tooth and claw, because they know that if every citizen can vote easily, they are much more likely to lose power.