All things CoronaVirus

[Peter Brown]

In case anyone here is genuinely interested in original analysis, which btw would require you not bring any partisan angle to this issue (foreverlax convinced me yesterday that absolutely zero Democrats care much anymore about fact-gathering), I'd suggest taking the time to read the following, incredibly well-laid out, data-driven, debunking of the hysteria in this country over Covid-19. If you find anything wrong in this man's report, feel free to post. As far as I am concerned, he has the answer and we will be back to business within 2 months tops.

https://medium.com/six-four-six-nine/ev ... 767def5894

Data is data. Our focus here isn’t treatments but numbers. You don’t need a special degree to understand what the data says and doesn’t say. Numbers are universal. I hope you walk away with a more informed perspective on how you can help and fight back against the hysteria that is driving our country into a dark place. You can help us focus our scarce resources on those who are most vulnerable, who need our help.

My laymen’s interpretation of this article is that its obvious flaw in concluding that we shouldn’t be as concerned as we are is the data he’s using is affected by the caution and techniques put in place by countries in order to stem the flow. In order to come to the conclusion he wants us to come to wouldn’t we have to have a test group of countries that have just let things occur under normal conditions to compare to?

Further, he makes no attempt to dispute that a bell curve shortening and lengthening will occur with actions currently being put in place, and that’s what’s needed for the public health system to not implode. Sure, it would be nice if we could throw billions in the air and have masks, other protective equipment, and ventilators instantly appear, but that ramp up will take time. He advocates that we do nothing until then.

After reading this I’m reminded of something I saw posted on social media -

“If everything gets cancelled and you have to stay home and NOTHING HAPPENS, please try to remember: THAT’S THE POINT!”

I believe his conclusion is he is OK with that. What I also think he is trying to say is, we will be fine within a month's time and that the media should pump its brakes on misleading statistics and headlines.

[cradleandshoot]

He is a total and absolute POS. His answer to a legit question from a reporter of what he would tell those Amercans who are scared and worried tells us all we need to know about the lack of leadership coming from the top.

He's no FDR but actually thinking about how FDR ran things at a time of similar crisis is somewhat hopeful. Think about that - FDR remains inspiring even though he's DEAD but he remains that more so than the current DOPUS.

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself" and the depression went on for 6 more years.

Unemployment averaged 18 percent during Roosevelt’s first eight years in office. Best President ever!

The absolute POS said he was hopeful. And that the total federal effort combined with American peoples cooperation was improving the situation. Thats all. Such a lack of leadership.

Sure thing, Hoover.

Typical.

Both men say "stay hopeful" but the republican is a POS.

was also honest about how dire the challenge was.

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself?" The most celebrated quote of the 20th century.

Sure, but clearly you know very little actual history of how he managed that massive challenge. Certainly not if you think that speech wasn't telling it straight.

I grew up with grandparents who absolutely hated FDR. Said they didn't have any problem finding work...

so, I actually studied it.
But yeah, his leadership was really, really good.
Not a perfect President by any means though, certainly made a number of mistakes.

Complicated as many of the measures didn't have enough impact to actually get us out of the Depression...really the war preparations were what did it. But we also didn't dissolve into fascism nor communism.
Without his leadership, I think we'd have most likely been fascist.
I'm very thankful for that leadership.

Wow, a life long Republican that loves FDR. You really are a strange creature. How many of your life long republican buddies have you shared this love affair with? Have you forgiven FDR for his imprisonment of Japanese/Americans. FDR was a deeply flawed POTUS. He was super secretive leader who never even told Truman about the Manhattan project. I suppose those warm and fuzzy fireside chats just melted your little ole republican heart.

come on cradle, you need to read what I wrote...

What you said was you grew up in an era where your relatives did not like FDR. Since I assume they were also life long Republicans, that makes sense. My family especially my grand parents who were due hard Democrats understood why FDR was successful. His wife Eleanor was the brains of the operation. FDR was a great politician but a seriously flawed individual. I can see you being in love with his good side while ignoring the bad.

[ChairmanOfTheBoard]

Can't prove this, but my gut tells me that New York is currently being over tested with respect to the rest of the country. At minimum you should assume any number for infections (cases) should be doubled. This based on the data from Iceland (50% of all cases are asymptomatic). The best data we have. The problem is this data applies to a low density population. My suspicion is (can't prove it - yet) that this is not a constant value, but is a function of population density. The higher the density, the higher this multiplier should be. This would argue for over testing higher density areas of the country, with respect to lower density areas of the country.

At the moment their are only two numbers that can be taken at face value -- the number of tests performed and the number of dead. The dead are easy to count and retroactively test. Number infected, is useful, but very imprecise due to limited numbers of tests performed and the inherent selection bias of the testing guidelines.

At present deaths are the only reliable number. Dead people are easy to count, you don't have to go looking for them. They are easy to test after the fact. The only reliable measure at this time is deaths/capita!

my instinct tells me that's probably right- concentrations of healthcare, power, money, doctors, and... people!

agreed on the density of population.

[Bart]

In case anyone here is genuinely interested in original analysis, which btw would require you not bring any partisan angle to this issue (foreverlax convinced me yesterday that absolutely zero Democrats care much anymore about fact-gathering), I'd suggest taking the time to read the following, incredibly well-laid out, data-driven, debunking of the hysteria in this country over Covid-19. If you find anything wrong in this man's report, feel free to post. As far as I am concerned, he has the answer and we will be back to business within 2 months tops.

https://medium.com/six-four-six-nine/ev ... 767def5894

Data is data. Our focus here isn’t treatments but numbers. You don’t need a special degree to understand what the data says and doesn’t say. Numbers are universal. I hope you walk away with a more informed perspective on how you can help and fight back against the hysteria that is driving our country into a dark place. You can help us focus our scarce resources on those who are most vulnerable, who need our help.

First, he (author) is a Silicon Valley technologist - no real expertise on pandemics. So everything he says has to be viewed within that light. Also the founder of the Lincoln Project, and pretty deeply involved in R politics (including Koch funding). Understanding the author and where he comes from is always useful.

Lots of misuse of data from my perspective. He has this whole section about a bell curve as if he can actually predict for the US when the peak will occur. He cannot - the information is not in the data yet. The whole thing about per capita has some limited value, and the US does have the advantage compared with other countries in that we have a lower average population density. But the US is also quite mobile, and with our lack of testing we have essentially spread the virus all over the country without knowing where it might be.

But the essential problem is he is making predictions on his "knowledge" of data, not on actual science of epidemics/pandemics. And any predictions on actual effects are meaningless in the face of rapidly changing situations on the ground with respect to social distancing, lockdowns, shutdowns, etc.

He is essentially misusing statistics to argue a political point (which is exactly what you would expect given that the Lincoln Project is actually his political project).

Also, just because the virus is sensitive to UV light does NOT mean that it will die down in the summer. It might slow the spread or it might not, but that is a speculation not yet evident in the data. BTW, look at the progression in Australia, coming of a hot summer. Still taking off like gangbusters.

This is a bit like Trump's hope that we can just fix this with some old drugs in new combinations. It _might_ be possible, but we do not actually know the answer. We can hope, but in the meantime we need to run the trials.

So I don't see a lot of value in his piece other than to make people who want to believe there is some magic way out of this. Which is a public disservice at this point.

Marie Curie, chemist and physicist, (full disclosure: a true life hero of mine) once famously said: Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas

This author's background doesn't intrigue me at all, though as a Lincoln Project founder' (?), I assume he hates Trump., So you and he have a bond!

That being said, he acknowledges at the outset that he is not an epidemiologist, but rather a numbers viralogist.

To your contention that he does not understand UV light and that this does not mean the virus will die down in the summer months, his source is this:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=3551767

And this study directly contradicts it: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 20022467v1

There are always two sides to the coin. That how nerds work. Which one will win out will only tell after all the data is in.

I do find it interesting that much of the data and ideas are coming from the Chinese data set where the efforts to social distance are so much different here.

[Peter Brown]

In case anyone here is genuinely interested in original analysis, which btw would require you not bring any partisan angle to this issue (foreverlax convinced me yesterday that absolutely zero Democrats care much anymore about fact-gathering), I'd suggest taking the time to read the following, incredibly well-laid out, data-driven, debunking of the hysteria in this country over Covid-19. If you find anything wrong in this man's report, feel free to post. As far as I am concerned, he has the answer and we will be back to business within 2 months tops.

https://medium.com/six-four-six-nine/ev ... 767def5894

Data is data. Our focus here isn’t treatments but numbers. You don’t need a special degree to understand what the data says and doesn’t say. Numbers are universal. I hope you walk away with a more informed perspective on how you can help and fight back against the hysteria that is driving our country into a dark place. You can help us focus our scarce resources on those who are most vulnerable, who need our help.

First, he (author) is a Silicon Valley technologist - no real expertise on pandemics. So everything he says has to be viewed within that light. Also the founder of the Lincoln Project, and pretty deeply involved in R politics (including Koch funding). Understanding the author and where he comes from is always useful.

Lots of misuse of data from my perspective. He has this whole section about a bell curve as if he can actually predict for the US when the peak will occur. He cannot - the information is not in the data yet. The whole thing about per capita has some limited value, and the US does have the advantage compared with other countries in that we have a lower average population density. But the US is also quite mobile, and with our lack of testing we have essentially spread the virus all over the country without knowing where it might be.

But the essential problem is he is making predictions on his "knowledge" of data, not on actual science of epidemics/pandemics. And any predictions on actual effects are meaningless in the face of rapidly changing situations on the ground with respect to social distancing, lockdowns, shutdowns, etc.

He is essentially misusing statistics to argue a political point (which is exactly what you would expect given that the Lincoln Project is actually his political project).

Also, just because the virus is sensitive to UV light does NOT mean that it will die down in the summer. It might slow the spread or it might not, but that is a speculation not yet evident in the data. BTW, look at the progression in Australia, coming of a hot summer. Still taking off like gangbusters.

This is a bit like Trump's hope that we can just fix this with some old drugs in new combinations. It _might_ be possible, but we do not actually know the answer. We can hope, but in the meantime we need to run the trials.

So I don't see a lot of value in his piece other than to make people who want to believe there is some magic way out of this. Which is a public disservice at this point.

Marie Curie, chemist and physicist, (full disclosure: a true life hero of mine) once famously said: Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas

This author's background doesn't intrigue me at all, though as a Lincoln Project founder' (?), I assume he hates Trump., So you and he have a bond!

That being said, he acknowledges at the outset that he is not an epidemiologist, but rather a numbers viralogist.

To your contention that he does not understand UV light and that this does not mean the virus will die down in the summer months, his source is this:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=3551767

And this study directly contradicts it: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 20022467v1

There are always two sides to the coin. That how nerds work. Which one will win out will only tell after all the data is in.

I do find it interesting that much of the data and ideas are coming from the Chinese data set where the efforts to social distance are so much different here.

I'm not certain that one study which explicitly states that "weather alone may not lead to a drop in COVID-19" is a direct contradiction of the other study which states that weather can "facilitate" a drop in the spread. They in fact might be saying the same thing. Certainly not a contradiction.

Also, the University of Maryland has published a map tool, based on weather, predicting the spread:

https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/new ... hrive.html

[Bart]

In case anyone here is genuinely interested in original analysis, which btw would require you not bring any partisan angle to this issue (foreverlax convinced me yesterday that absolutely zero Democrats care much anymore about fact-gathering), I'd suggest taking the time to read the following, incredibly well-laid out, data-driven, debunking of the hysteria in this country over Covid-19. If you find anything wrong in this man's report, feel free to post. As far as I am concerned, he has the answer and we will be back to business within 2 months tops.

https://medium.com/six-four-six-nine/ev ... 767def5894

Data is data. Our focus here isn’t treatments but numbers. You don’t need a special degree to understand what the data says and doesn’t say. Numbers are universal. I hope you walk away with a more informed perspective on how you can help and fight back against the hysteria that is driving our country into a dark place. You can help us focus our scarce resources on those who are most vulnerable, who need our help.

First, he (author) is a Silicon Valley technologist - no real expertise on pandemics. So everything he says has to be viewed within that light. Also the founder of the Lincoln Project, and pretty deeply involved in R politics (including Koch funding). Understanding the author and where he comes from is always useful.

Lots of misuse of data from my perspective. He has this whole section about a bell curve as if he can actually predict for the US when the peak will occur. He cannot - the information is not in the data yet. The whole thing about per capita has some limited value, and the US does have the advantage compared with other countries in that we have a lower average population density. But the US is also quite mobile, and with our lack of testing we have essentially spread the virus all over the country without knowing where it might be.

But the essential problem is he is making predictions on his "knowledge" of data, not on actual science of epidemics/pandemics. And any predictions on actual effects are meaningless in the face of rapidly changing situations on the ground with respect to social distancing, lockdowns, shutdowns, etc.

He is essentially misusing statistics to argue a political point (which is exactly what you would expect given that the Lincoln Project is actually his political project).

Also, just because the virus is sensitive to UV light does NOT mean that it will die down in the summer. It might slow the spread or it might not, but that is a speculation not yet evident in the data. BTW, look at the progression in Australia, coming of a hot summer. Still taking off like gangbusters.

This is a bit like Trump's hope that we can just fix this with some old drugs in new combinations. It _might_ be possible, but we do not actually know the answer. We can hope, but in the meantime we need to run the trials.

So I don't see a lot of value in his piece other than to make people who want to believe there is some magic way out of this. Which is a public disservice at this point.

Marie Curie, chemist and physicist, (full disclosure: a true life hero of mine) once famously said: Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas

This author's background doesn't intrigue me at all, though as a Lincoln Project founder' (?), I assume he hates Trump., So you and he have a bond!

That being said, he acknowledges at the outset that he is not an epidemiologist, but rather a numbers viralogist.

To your contention that he does not understand UV light and that this does not mean the virus will die down in the summer months, his source is this:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=3551767

And this study directly contradicts it: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 20022467v1

There are always two sides to the coin. That how nerds work. Which one will win out will only tell after all the data is in.

I do find it interesting that much of the data and ideas are coming from the Chinese data set where the efforts to social distance are so much different here.

I'm not certain that one study which explicitly states that "weather alone may not lead to a drop in COVID-19" is a direct contradiction of the other study which states that weather can "facilitate" a drop in the spread. They in fact might be saying the same thing. Certainly not a contradiction.

Also, the University of Maryland has published a map tool, based on weather, predicting the spread:

https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/new ... hrive.html

Yup. Read that study as well. Time will tell. If they are correct then we will see very little spread in places like Australia or South America. Oh yeah that sparsely populated country of India. I hope they are right, it is now a waiting game to see where the data actually goes.

[jhu72]

In case anyone here is genuinely interested in original analysis, which btw would require you not bring any partisan angle to this issue (foreverlax convinced me yesterday that absolutely zero Democrats care much anymore about fact-gathering), I'd suggest taking the time to read the following, incredibly well-laid out, data-driven, debunking of the hysteria in this country over Covid-19. If you find anything wrong in this man's report, feel free to post. As far as I am concerned, he has the answer and we will be back to business within 2 months tops.

https://medium.com/six-four-six-nine/ev ... 767def5894

Data is data. Our focus here isn’t treatments but numbers. You don’t need a special degree to understand what the data says and doesn’t say. Numbers are universal. I hope you walk away with a more informed perspective on how you can help and fight back against the hysteria that is driving our country into a dark place. You can help us focus our scarce resources on those who are most vulnerable, who need our help.

My laymen’s interpretation of this article is that its obvious flaw in concluding that we shouldn’t be as concerned as we are is the data he’s using is affected by the caution and techniques put in place by countries in order to stem the flow. In order to come to the conclusion he wants us to come to wouldn’t we have to have a test group of countries that have just let things occur under normal conditions to compare to?

Further, he makes no attempt to dispute that a bell curve shortening and lengthening will occur with actions currently being put in place, and that’s what’s needed for the public health system to not implode. Sure, it would be nice if we could throw billions in the air and have masks, other protective equipment, and ventilators instantly appear, but that ramp up will take time. He advocates that we do nothing until then.

After reading this I’m reminded of something I saw posted on social media -

“If everything gets cancelled and you have to stay home and NOTHING HAPPENS, please try to remember: THAT’S THE POINT!”

I believe his conclusion is he is OK with that. What I also think he is trying to say is, we will be fine within a month's time and that the media should pump its brakes on misleading statistics and headlines.

So what he brings to the party is the known fact that CV is susceptible to a degree to UV light. Great. The amount of UV is a function of the time of the year, opening angle of the local environs to the sun. The current out break is not limited to the northern hemisphere. Currently the northern hemisphere daily receives more UV light, and daily the CV numbers grow. CV is not effected by UV light when inside the body. You have to catch it in during transmission. The transmissivity of this CV is much much higher than the common cold, MERS. SARS etc. It also is transmitted in a cocoon of human bio-material (droplets) which will afford it some protection to UV. I am skeptical, but we are going to see, the experiment will naturally be performed.

Its an interesting idea, but not one I would bet my life on.

[RedFromMI]

In case anyone here is genuinely interested in original analysis, which btw would require you not bring any partisan angle to this issue (foreverlax convinced me yesterday that absolutely zero Democrats care much anymore about fact-gathering), I'd suggest taking the time to read the following, incredibly well-laid out, data-driven, debunking of the hysteria in this country over Covid-19. If you find anything wrong in this man's report, feel free to post. As far as I am concerned, he has the answer and we will be back to business within 2 months tops.

https://medium.com/six-four-six-nine/ev ... 767def5894

Data is data. Our focus here isn’t treatments but numbers. You don’t need a special degree to understand what the data says and doesn’t say. Numbers are universal. I hope you walk away with a more informed perspective on how you can help and fight back against the hysteria that is driving our country into a dark place. You can help us focus our scarce resources on those who are most vulnerable, who need our help.

First, he (author) is a Silicon Valley technologist - no real expertise on pandemics. So everything he says has to be viewed within that light. Also the founder of the Lincoln Project, and pretty deeply involved in R politics (including Koch funding). Understanding the author and where he comes from is always useful.

Lots of misuse of data from my perspective. He has this whole section about a bell curve as if he can actually predict for the US when the peak will occur. He cannot - the information is not in the data yet. The whole thing about per capita has some limited value, and the US does have the advantage compared with other countries in that we have a lower average population density. But the US is also quite mobile, and with our lack of testing we have essentially spread the virus all over the country without knowing where it might be.

But the essential problem is he is making predictions on his "knowledge" of data, not on actual science of epidemics/pandemics. And any predictions on actual effects are meaningless in the face of rapidly changing situations on the ground with respect to social distancing, lockdowns, shutdowns, etc.

He is essentially misusing statistics to argue a political point (which is exactly what you would expect given that the Lincoln Project is actually his political project).

Also, just because the virus is sensitive to UV light does NOT mean that it will die down in the summer. It might slow the spread or it might not, but that is a speculation not yet evident in the data. BTW, look at the progression in Australia, coming of a hot summer. Still taking off like gangbusters.

This is a bit like Trump's hope that we can just fix this with some old drugs in new combinations. It _might_ be possible, but we do not actually know the answer. We can hope, but in the meantime we need to run the trials.

So I don't see a lot of value in his piece other than to make people who want to believe there is some magic way out of this. Which is a public disservice at this point.

Marie Curie, chemist and physicist, (full disclosure: a true life hero of mine) once famously said: Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas

This author's background doesn't intrigue me at all, though as a Lincoln Project founder' (?), I assume he hates Trump., So you and he have a bond!

That being said, he acknowledges at the outset that he is not an epidemiologist, but rather a numbers viralogist.

To your contention that he does not understand UV light and that this does not mean the virus will die down in the summer months, his source is this:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=3551767

And if you read the paper, the rate of transmission did reduce but only by a third. Given no human resistance other than recovered formerly sick people it does not guarantee it will die down, only slow the rate of spreading. Whether that is enough is not evident.

[jhu72]

In case anyone here is genuinely interested in original analysis, which btw would require you not bring any partisan angle to this issue (foreverlax convinced me yesterday that absolutely zero Democrats care much anymore about fact-gathering), I'd suggest taking the time to read the following, incredibly well-laid out, data-driven, debunking of the hysteria in this country over Covid-19. If you find anything wrong in this man's report, feel free to post. As far as I am concerned, he has the answer and we will be back to business within 2 months tops.

https://medium.com/six-four-six-nine/ev ... 767def5894

Data is data. Our focus here isn’t treatments but numbers. You don’t need a special degree to understand what the data says and doesn’t say. Numbers are universal. I hope you walk away with a more informed perspective on how you can help and fight back against the hysteria that is driving our country into a dark place. You can help us focus our scarce resources on those who are most vulnerable, who need our help.

First, he (author) is a Silicon Valley technologist - no real expertise on pandemics. So everything he says has to be viewed within that light. Also the founder of the Lincoln Project, and pretty deeply involved in R politics (including Koch funding). Understanding the author and where he comes from is always useful.

Lots of misuse of data from my perspective. He has this whole section about a bell curve as if he can actually predict for the US when the peak will occur. He cannot - the information is not in the data yet. The whole thing about per capita has some limited value, and the US does have the advantage compared with other countries in that we have a lower average population density. But the US is also quite mobile, and with our lack of testing we have essentially spread the virus all over the country without knowing where it might be.

But the essential problem is he is making predictions on his "knowledge" of data, not on actual science of epidemics/pandemics. And any predictions on actual effects are meaningless in the face of rapidly changing situations on the ground with respect to social distancing, lockdowns, shutdowns, etc.

He is essentially misusing statistics to argue a political point (which is exactly what you would expect given that the Lincoln Project is actually his political project).

Also, just because the virus is sensitive to UV light does NOT mean that it will die down in the summer. It might slow the spread or it might not, but that is a speculation not yet evident in the data. BTW, look at the progression in Australia, coming of a hot summer. Still taking off like gangbusters.

This is a bit like Trump's hope that we can just fix this with some old drugs in new combinations. It _might_ be possible, but we do not actually know the answer. We can hope, but in the meantime we need to run the trials.

So I don't see a lot of value in his piece other than to make people who want to believe there is some magic way out of this. Which is a public disservice at this point.

Marie Curie, chemist and physicist, (full disclosure: a true life hero of mine) once famously said: Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas

This author's background doesn't intrigue me at all, though as a Lincoln Project founder' (?), I assume he hates Trump., So you and he have a bond!

That being said, he acknowledges at the outset that he is not an epidemiologist, but rather a numbers viralogist.

To your contention that he does not understand UV light and that this does not mean the virus will die down in the summer months, his source is this:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=3551767

And if you read the paper, the rate of transmission did reduce but only by a third. Given no human resistance other than recovered formerly sick people it does not guarantee it will die down, only slow the rate of spreading. Whether that is enough is not evident.

I did not read the paper, how well did they reproduce the actual transmission mechanism or was this a petri dish experiment? Lets assume the 33% number is dead on, that reduces the best guess transmissivity from 3.8 infections per carrier to 2.5 infections per carrier. You can still have a whale of an epidemic at that rate.

[RedFromMI]

Marie Curie, chemist and physicist, (full disclosure: a true life hero of mine) once famously said: Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas

This author's background doesn't intrigue me at all, though as a Lincoln Project founder' (?), I assume he hates Trump., So you and he have a bond!

That being said, he acknowledges at the outset that he is not an epidemiologist, but rather a numbers viralogist.

To your contention that he does not understand UV light and that this does not mean the virus will die down in the summer months, his source is this:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=3551767

And if you read the paper, the rate of transmission did reduce but only by a third. Given no human resistance other than recovered formerly sick people it does not guarantee it will die down, only slow the rate of spreading. Whether that is enough is not evident.

I did not read the paper, how well did they reproduce the actual transmission mechanism or was this a petri dish experiment? Lets assume the 33% number is dead on, that reduces the best guess transmissivity from 3.8 infections per carrier to 2.5 infections per carrier. You can still have a whale of an epidemic at that rate.

I just read the abstract - but it looks like a data study using Chinese statistics, accounting for place/time/weather of locations.

[jhu72]

Marie Curie, chemist and physicist, (full disclosure: a true life hero of mine) once famously said: Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas

This author's background doesn't intrigue me at all, though as a Lincoln Project founder' (?), I assume he hates Trump., So you and he have a bond!

That being said, he acknowledges at the outset that he is not an epidemiologist, but rather a numbers viralogist.

To your contention that he does not understand UV light and that this does not mean the virus will die down in the summer months, his source is this:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=3551767

And if you read the paper, the rate of transmission did reduce but only by a third. Given no human resistance other than recovered formerly sick people it does not guarantee it will die down, only slow the rate of spreading. Whether that is enough is not evident.

I did not read the paper, how well did they reproduce the actual transmission mechanism or was this a petri dish experiment? Lets assume the 33% number is dead on, that reduces the best guess transmissivity from 3.8 infections per carrier to 2.5 infections per carrier. You can still have a whale of an epidemic at that rate.

I just read the abstract - but it looks like a data study using Chinese statistics, accounting for place/time/weather of locations.

Ok, that's better, but susceptible to uncontrolled otherwise irrelevant influences. Did they account for things like rain, snow, fog which would clearly effect transmission??

PS: Are Chinese statistics like Chinese virus??

[RedFromMI]

Ok, that's better, but susceptible to uncontrolled otherwise irrelevant influences. Did they account for things like rain, snow, fog which would clearly effect transmission??

Not clear. But that would be reflected at least partially in humidity, which can be gleaned from the weather data, and affects the number/sizes of droplets formed...

[RedFromMI]

For those of you with some time on your hands (courtesy of WaPo):

How you can help during the coronavirus outbreak
Several nonprofit organizations could use your time and money to make sure vulnerable populations are cared for during the pandemic

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... rc404=true

A list of topics in the article (last one specifically for DC):

How to help nonprofits
Support restaurants and bars
How to help at risk seniors
How to help ‘flatten the curve’
How to help at stores
How to help in the D.C. region

[old salt]

Have we banned incoming Aeroflot flights or is Russian travel still open?

I checked. Of course we’re still open to Russia, where they are building emergency hospitals in days. Flights available today connecting Miami and New York to Moscow.

Might be a good time to visit Russia.

[CU77]

It is the people and their negative comments that got Trump elected in the first place....the more you complain, criticize, chastise, ......the more you appear to be the problem and help Trump. Are you really any different than Trump, if all you do is blame the other person? There are ways you can get your point across without trying to look and act smarter than everyone else or fall in line with the pack of negativity. Ain't nobody go time for dat.

OK, good point.

Certainly Trump is out of his element….

Absolutely, glad you see it too.

as would damned near anyone.

AND … you crash back into Trumpworld.

I would rather have Pence, or any randomly selected state governor, or big-city mayor, R or D, in charge of this than Trump.

Honestly, wouldn't you?

[MDlaxfan76]

It is the people and their negative comments that got Trump elected in the first place....the more you complain, criticize, chastise, ......the more you appear to be the problem and help Trump. Are you really any different than Trump, if all you do is blame the other person? There are ways you can get your point across without trying to look and act smarter than everyone else or fall in line with the pack of negativity. Ain't nobody go time for dat.

Certainly Trump is out of his element....as would damned near anyone. He has surrounded himself with some top notch people that collectively are attempting to their very best under the circumstances, and to use stable & accurate measures to make judgement calls. One could argue, that all Trump has been preaching is to make the US not so dependent on other countries..build our manufacturing (makes sense now), scrutinize and keep our borders in closer check (makes more sense now), bring our businesses home (makes more sense now).

I suppose learning from the 2016 campaign has not yielded any insight into actually how you beat Trump. It seems you all really do want Trump in 2020, that way you can continue bitchin' and moanin'.

I think we can do the political aspects of this discussion, ala next November, in other threads. [THERE YOU GO AGAIN, MINIMIZING AND TRYING TO CONTROL THINGS]

No one is criticizing Trump on this thread BECAUSE they want him to lose in November. [WRONG! AND YOU KNOW IT]

Rather, it's because what he is doing RIGHT NOW continues to be misleading the American public and, thus, failing to inspire the confidence necessary to meet this challenge as best we can, to take the actions we must. His massive errors of leadership over the past 6 weeks, at a minimum, are disastrous.

We WANT him to do WAY better, ASAP.
Lives depend on it, unfortunately.

You are proving my point. again....playing back seat driver. I suppose you cant help yourself.

A good leader, especially one in charge of ~350mm people, keeps things calm, optimistic, accomplish-able, etc, does not ensue panic, dismisses noise that is not productive (press bitchin' about anxious people...duh, that's why you keep calm and stay positive).

Let's just say that you and I disagree.
To me, a "good leader', in a time of crisis, tells the hard truth and inspires others to rise to the challenge.

And yeah, my opinion is that the political implications have other threads.
But that's my opinion, I have no "control".

[MDlaxfan76]

He is a total and absolute POS. His answer to a legit question from a reporter of what he would tell those Amercans who are scared and worried tells us all we need to know about the lack of leadership coming from the top.

He's no FDR but actually thinking about how FDR ran things at a time of similar crisis is somewhat hopeful. Think about that - FDR remains inspiring even though he's DEAD but he remains that more so than the current DOPUS.

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself" and the depression went on for 6 more years.

Unemployment averaged 18 percent during Roosevelt’s first eight years in office. Best President ever!

The absolute POS said he was hopeful. And that the total federal effort combined with American peoples cooperation was improving the situation. Thats all. Such a lack of leadership.

Sure thing, Hoover.

Typical.

Both men say "stay hopeful" but the republican is a POS.

was also honest about how dire the challenge was.

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself?" The most celebrated quote of the 20th century.

Sure, but clearly you know very little actual history of how he managed that massive challenge. Certainly not if you think that speech wasn't telling it straight.

I grew up with grandparents who absolutely hated FDR. Said they didn't have any problem finding work...

so, I actually studied it.
But yeah, his leadership was really, really good.
Not a perfect President by any means though, certainly made a number of mistakes.

Complicated as many of the measures didn't have enough impact to actually get us out of the Depression...really the war preparations were what did it. But we also didn't dissolve into fascism nor communism.
Without his leadership, I think we'd have most likely been fascist.
I'm very thankful for that leadership.

Wow, a life long Republican that loves FDR. You really are a strange creature. How many of your life long republican buddies have you shared this love affair with? Have you forgiven FDR for his imprisonment of Japanese/Americans. FDR was a deeply flawed POTUS. He was super secretive leader who never even told Truman about the Manhattan project. I suppose those warm and fuzzy fireside chats just melted your little ole republican heart.

come on cradle, you need to read what I wrote...

What you said was you grew up in an era where your relatives did not like FDR. Since I assume they were also life long Republicans, that makes sense. My family especially my grand parents who were due hard Democrats understood why FDR was successful. His wife Eleanor was the brains of the operation. FDR was a great politician but a seriously flawed individual. I can see you being in love with his good side while ignoring the bad.

Again, please read, with full comprehension focus, what I wrote.

I'm certainly not "ignoring the bad" re FDR, his mistakes etc...I could give quite a long list of such, I actually did a term paper and debate on the topic, taking the negative side. But I also see the good.

And for navigating through two immense challenges without resorting to fascism or communism, I'm indeed grateful.

And yes Eleanor was very bright, would have been a heck of a POTUS.

[RedFromMI]

I agree with CU77 - I think even many of us would be better crisis managers than Trump. His narcissism and lying get in the way of actually telling hard truths.

Check this article out about Trump administrations efforts to get help (filled with inconsistencies about what they are requesting):

The White House Asked Manufacturers for Help, Then Gave Them No Clear Instructions

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/the- ... structions

Last section of the article is telling about the incompetence:

On Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order invoking the Defense Production Act, which gives the president broad authority to require companies to prioritize government contracts and incentivize companies to expand production of critical goods. The executive order granted Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar additional powers to allocate medical supplies.

But the president has contradicted himself several times on whether he has actually triggered the DPA. In a Thursday press conference, he said “we hope we’re not going to need that” and put the onus on individual states.

“The federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping. You know, we’re not a shipping clerk,” Trump said.

Just hours later, governors on a teleconference with Trump, Pence, Azar and other senior officials complained that their efforts to get crucial supplies on the private market were floundering.

Pence said during that teleconference that although Trump had “activated” the DPA, “he has not initiated any other action underneath it” and suggested that voluntary decisions by American businesses would be sufficient to meet the critical needs.

“I think the president’s perception and the team’s perception is now” that “American industry is stepping forward very aggressively,” Pence said.

Then on Friday, in response to a question about whether Trump was using the DPA to “tell businesses they need to make ventilators, masks, respirators,” Trump nodded and said, “We are using it.”

“We are using the act, the act is very good for things like this,” Trump said. “We’re invoking it to use the powers of the federal government to help the states get things that they need, like the masks, like the ventilators.”

Minutes later, Trump appeared to backtrack, saying that “when we need something, we will use the act.”

[old salt]

So NY,CA & WA are dumbass states ?

Thanks for this useless snark.

How much of our PPE stockpile was consumed doing testing, yielding 90% negatives,
...when we were headed for social distancing & lockdowns anyway ?

Around 100,000 tests have been done in the US so far. The PPE need is in the tens of millions.

Tell me that you honestly didn't know this.

Not snark. Serious questions.
So which states are the dumbass states & why ?

We have smart states and dumbass states. Unfortunately, we have an ununited states that’s allowing the spread.

That's 90,000 sets of PPE consumed on testing healthy negative subjects who have to take the same precautions anyway.
Is that a judicious use of a critical resource. Has PPE (vice test kits) become the long pole in the tent ?
We need tens of million sets of PPE if we ramp up testing as planned, rather than conserving it to protect the med personnel treating the sick.
Does testing need to stay limited until the PPE supply necessary to implement it (without degrading urgent care) catches up ?

[Bart]

In case anyone here is genuinely interested in original analysis, which btw would require you not bring any partisan angle to this issue (foreverlax convinced me yesterday that absolutely zero Democrats care much anymore about fact-gathering), I'd suggest taking the time to read the following, incredibly well-laid out, data-driven, debunking of the hysteria in this country over Covid-19. If you find anything wrong in this man's report, feel free to post. As far as I am concerned, he has the answer and we will be back to business within 2 months tops.

https://medium.com/six-four-six-nine/ev ... 767def5894

Data is data. Our focus here isn’t treatments but numbers. You don’t need a special degree to understand what the data says and doesn’t say. Numbers are universal. I hope you walk away with a more informed perspective on how you can help and fight back against the hysteria that is driving our country into a dark place. You can help us focus our scarce resources on those who are most vulnerable, who need our help.

First, he (author) is a Silicon Valley technologist - no real expertise on pandemics. So everything he says has to be viewed within that light. Also the founder of the Lincoln Project, and pretty deeply involved in R politics (including Koch funding). Understanding the author and where he comes from is always useful.

Lots of misuse of data from my perspective. He has this whole section about a bell curve as if he can actually predict for the US when the peak will occur. He cannot - the information is not in the data yet. The whole thing about per capita has some limited value, and the US does have the advantage compared with other countries in that we have a lower average population density. But the US is also quite mobile, and with our lack of testing we have essentially spread the virus all over the country without knowing where it might be.

But the essential problem is he is making predictions on his "knowledge" of data, not on actual science of epidemics/pandemics. And any predictions on actual effects are meaningless in the face of rapidly changing situations on the ground with respect to social distancing, lockdowns, shutdowns, etc.

He is essentially misusing statistics to argue a political point (which is exactly what you would expect given that the Lincoln Project is actually his political project).

Also, just because the virus is sensitive to UV light does NOT mean that it will die down in the summer. It might slow the spread or it might not, but that is a speculation not yet evident in the data. BTW, look at the progression in Australia, coming of a hot summer. Still taking off like gangbusters.

This is a bit like Trump's hope that we can just fix this with some old drugs in new combinations. It _might_ be possible, but we do not actually know the answer. We can hope, but in the meantime we need to run the trials.

So I don't see a lot of value in his piece other than to make people who want to believe there is some magic way out of this. Which is a public disservice at this point.

Marie Curie, chemist and physicist, (full disclosure: a true life hero of mine) once famously said: Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas

This author's background doesn't intrigue me at all, though as a Lincoln Project founder' (?), I assume he hates Trump., So you and he have a bond!

That being said, he acknowledges at the outset that he is not an epidemiologist, but rather a numbers viralogist.

To your contention that he does not understand UV light and that this does not mean the virus will die down in the summer months, his source is this:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=3551767

And this study directly contradicts it: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 20022467v1

There are always two sides to the coin. That how nerds work. Which one will win out will only tell after all the data is in.

I do find it interesting that much of the data and ideas are coming from the Chinese data set where the efforts to social distance are so much different here.

I'm not certain that one study which explicitly states that "weather alone may not lead to a drop in COVID-19" is a direct contradiction of the other study which states that weather can "facilitate" a drop in the spread. They in fact might be saying the same thing. Certainly not a contradiction.

Also, the University of Maryland has published a map tool, based on weather, predicting the spread:

https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/new ... hrive.html

An further review...we will not need to wait for the data of other places. We have considerable areas not in the green. Most notably the redish yellow bands of Louisianan, Texas and Florida and most of California. I hope they are right.