All things CoronaVirus

[tech37]

Death count estimates for Wuhan in WaPo:

Chinese families should be sweeping graves now. But thousands still haven’t buried their dead.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/as ... story.html

Using photos posted online, social media sleuths have estimated that Wuhan funeral homes had returned 3,500 urns a day since March 23. That would imply a death toll in Wuhan of about 42,000 — or 16 times the official number. Another widely shared calculation, based on Wuhan’s 84 furnaces running nonstop and each cremation taking an hour, put the death toll at 46,800.

Wuhan residents say the activities belie the official statistics. “It can’t be right . . . because the incinerators have been working round the clock, so how can so few people have died?” a man, identified only by his surname of Zhang, told Radio Free Asia.

U.S. intelligence agencies have reportedly concluded that China’s numbers are much lower than they are in reality.

Or more...

If accurate, this report should not surprise anyone who's paying attention re Chicoms.

It shouldn't. But it did indeed surprise most of our leaders.

It's plainly, CLEARLY a surprise to many of our Federal and State leaders who laughed this off, from both parties.

And the entirety of FoxNews. FoxNews trusted that it was no big deal, and pumped its viewers with this notion for weeks.

Remember the wanker who wore the gasmask to Congress? That freaking guy thought it was a joke, and believed China, and ignored Italy.

The security briefings warned early on that China was minimizing the severity of the outbreak and that it had a very high chance of being a global pandemic. The people at the top were properly warned. They failed to act in a timely manner.

Yes, Trump's hopeful rhetoric to stem tide of panic here and support Xi there (others will say lies) but back channels sent tons of PPE to help China... guess someone listened to the security briefings.

[MDlaxfan76]

All Models are wrong. Some models are useful. - W. Deming

So true.

These Stanford docs predict 20-40k U.S. total deaths. Fauci and Birks predict 100-270k best case. UW predicts 100k, but with a possible range of 40-178k.

I'd point out that the Stanford low end of the range looks pretty unrealistic right now. Since we already have 6k deaths. Since current daily deaths are at 1,000. Suppose we flat line at 1,000 for the next two weeks and then drop to zero. That's 20k right there.

Three months from now, we'll know who is right. Problem is, you have to make decisions now.

So what is Gov. Six Foot going to do today...?

My post was that the people who created the models that the estimates came from are saying "Estimates, what estimates we didn't make no stinking estimates." And they're calling them the WHITE HOUSE estimates distancing themselves from any part of this. Looks a little bit fishy

The Seattle group model (https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections, and updated daily with new numbers) currently has deaths at 93500 with a range from 40K to 178K. Peak death rate per day at 2644 in 13 days. Predicts ICU beds, number of cases...

What I like about this site is the people involved (University of Washington) were involved early and often in this pandemic, and are quite upfront with their model data and results. You can use a drop down to look at an individual state as well.

Thanks for the link.
It will be interesting to see how the model compares to reality as the weeks play out ahead.

I'm skeptical of the tiny trail in early July, but here's hoping that's right!

[MDlaxfan76]

Death count estimates for Wuhan in WaPo:

Chinese families should be sweeping graves now. But thousands still haven’t buried their dead.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/as ... story.html

Using photos posted online, social media sleuths have estimated that Wuhan funeral homes had returned 3,500 urns a day since March 23. That would imply a death toll in Wuhan of about 42,000 — or 16 times the official number. Another widely shared calculation, based on Wuhan’s 84 furnaces running nonstop and each cremation taking an hour, put the death toll at 46,800.

Wuhan residents say the activities belie the official statistics. “It can’t be right . . . because the incinerators have been working round the clock, so how can so few people have died?” a man, identified only by his surname of Zhang, told Radio Free Asia.

U.S. intelligence agencies have reportedly concluded that China’s numbers are much lower than they are in reality.

Or more...

If accurate, this report should not surprise anyone who's paying attention re Chicoms.

It shouldn't. But it did indeed surprise most of our leaders.

It's plainly, CLEARLY a surprise to many of our Federal and State leaders who laughed this off, from both parties.

And the entirety of FoxNews. FoxNews trusted that it was no big deal, and pumped its viewers with this notion for weeks.

Remember the wanker who wore the gasmask to Congress? That freaking guy thought it was a joke, and believed China, and ignored Italy.

The security briefings warned early on that China was minimizing the severity of the outbreak and that it had a very high chance of being a global pandemic. The people at the top were properly warned. They failed to act in a timely manner.

Yes, Trump's hopeful rhetoric to ease panic here and support Xi there (others will say lies) but back channels sent tons of PPE to help China... guess someone listened to the security briefings.

"someone"...

But did they take it seriously enough to light a fire under our preparedness?

Apparently not.
And long after knowing of the tragedy in China (under ANY set of #'s) and the community spread beginning in the US...did we act? Or did we say, no problem, this is America???

[a fan]

Yes, Trump's hopeful rhetoric to stem tide of panic here and support Xi there (others will say lies) but back channels sent tons of PPE to help China... guess someone listened to the security briefings.

For the record, I think it's great that Trump sent help to China. I hope we as a country always reach out with aid to those in need.

Yes, I realize that left us short. Hindsight.

[MDlaxfan76]

Yes, Trump's hopeful rhetoric to stem tide of panic here and support Xi there (others will say lies) but back channels sent tons of PPE to help China... guess someone listened to the security briefings.

For the record, I think it's great that Trump sent help to China. I hope we as a country always reach out with aid to those in need.

Yes, I realize that left us short. Hindsight.

If we'd stamped down on the accelerator to re-stock, identifying and resolving all the choke points in supplies, whether tests, PPE, ventilators, etc...of course help the front lines (China) in trying to slow it down. And then at each new front line as it flared.

If there was ever a basis for international cooperation and support, it's a global pandemic. Rapid response with all international resources brought to bear is what's needed in such a challenge.

We did this very successfully with the Ebola outbreak.

[DocBarrister]

One of the most all-time famous articles in Life Magazine was published during the height of the Vietnam War. It displayed photos of all the American military personnel who had died in a single week.

In June 1969, LIFE magazine published a feature that remains as moving and, in some quarters, as controversial as it was when it intensified a nation’s soul-searching 45 years ago. On the cover was the image of a young man and 11 stark words: “The Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam: One Week’s Toll.” Inside, across 10 funereal pages, LIFE published picture after picture and name after name of 242 young men killed in seven days halfway around the world “in connection with the conflict in Vietnam.”

https://www.life.com/history/faces-of-t ... june-1969/

Now, there is certainly a distinction between the death of young people in their prime in a completely man-made phenomenon (war) and the death of primarily older individuals in the current pandemic.

Still, it’s worth noting that there was great power in seeing the faces of 242 young men who had died over a week. In today’s pandemic, we have seen over 1,000 Americans die IN A SINGLE DAY.

They used to chant, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?!?”

A variant of that would be an appropriate question for Trump, albeit not nearly as lyrical or poetic. Just how many thousands of Americans did Trump kill with his incompetence and malignant narcissism?

I am still hoping we don’t get anywhere near the fatality figures of current models. But if we do, we’re looking at fatality numbers that will dwarf those from Vietnam.

In a true case of bitter and cruel irony, many of the people dying today are from that Vietnam War generation.

A sobering perspective.

DocBarrister

[Trinity]

Dr Fauci a late scratch.

[Kismet]

Dr Fauci a late scratch.

Makes the usual "propaganda hour" even less relevant.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Death count estimates for Wuhan in WaPo:

Chinese families should be sweeping graves now. But thousands still haven’t buried their dead.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/as ... story.html

Using photos posted online, social media sleuths have estimated that Wuhan funeral homes had returned 3,500 urns a day since March 23. That would imply a death toll in Wuhan of about 42,000 — or 16 times the official number. Another widely shared calculation, based on Wuhan’s 84 furnaces running nonstop and each cremation taking an hour, put the death toll at 46,800.

Wuhan residents say the activities belie the official statistics. “It can’t be right . . . because the incinerators have been working round the clock, so how can so few people have died?” a man, identified only by his surname of Zhang, told Radio Free Asia.

U.S. intelligence agencies have reportedly concluded that China’s numbers are much lower than they are in reality.

Or more...

If accurate, this report should not surprise anyone who's paying attention re Chicoms.

It shouldn't. But it did indeed surprise most of our leaders.

It's plainly, CLEARLY a surprise to many of our Federal and State leaders who laughed this off, from both parties.

And the entirety of FoxNews. FoxNews trusted that it was no big deal, and pumped its viewers with this notion for weeks.

Remember the wanker who wore the gasmask to Congress? That freaking guy thought it was a joke, and believed China, and ignored Italy.

The security briefings warned early on that China was minimizing the severity of the outbreak and that it had a very high chance of being a global pandemic. The people at the top were properly warned. They failed to act in a timely manner.

Yes, Trump's hopeful rhetoric to stem tide of panic here and support Xi there (others will say lies) but back channels sent tons of PPE to help China... guess someone listened to the security briefings.

If he was so concerned that he sent tons of supplies, why tell the citizens of the USA that it’s just like the flu....people go to work and get better? So it was genius for him to attempt to fight the battle over there out of urgency but he tells us it’s no big deal...huh....so he listened to the security briefings but mislead the public? Is that your argument?

[Trinity]

Drink a shot every time some expert says Granular or Myriad.

[ggait]

In today’s pandemic, we have seen over 1,000 Americans die IN A SINGLE DAY.

Doc -- You are way off base here.

8,000 people in the U.S. die every day from all causes. So an increase of 1,000 is definitely serious and meaningful. Getting up to 2,000 a day would be even more serious. But your comparison to the body bags from Nam filled with young GI's violently cut down in their prime is just not apposite. Disrespectful imho.

Also, note that it is not like the U.S. is the only place where this is happening. Every country is experiencing this.

At present, the U.S. is definitely doing worse than some other countries in dealing with this virus (e.g. Canada and HK). But we are doing much much better than many other countries (on a death per million population basis): Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, Switzerland, UK, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark to name a few who are currently worse. TBD how the US will look on a relative basis after this is all over.

I think Trump is doing a completely lousy job. But ranting about how he's mowing down Americans like in wartime is too far to go.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Took a look at Trump’s press conference for the first time in over a week. Still in the buck stops over there mode.

[Trinity]

We’ve now reached the “empty shelves” portion of today’s performance by the guy who faked a foot injury to skip Vietnam.

[njbill]

Yes, Trump's hopeful rhetoric to stem tide of panic here and support Xi there (others will say lies) but back channels sent tons of PPE to help China... guess someone listened to the security briefings.

For the record, I think it's great that Trump sent help to China. I hope we as a country always reach out with aid to those in need.

Yes, I realize that left us short. Hindsight.

If we'd stamped down on the accelerator to re-stock, identifying and resolving all the choke points in supplies, whether tests, PPE, ventilators, etc...of course help the front lines (China) in trying to slow it down. And then at each new front line as it flared.

If there was ever a basis for international cooperation and support, it's a global pandemic. Rapid response with all international resources brought to bear is what's needed in such a challenge.

We did this very successfully with the Ebola outbreak.

Stomped down on the accelerator. Well put.

Putting aside Trump's idiotic "this is no big deal" comments that went on way too long and his shutting down the White House pandemic team, had the administration acted proactively (similar to CA) instead of reactively (which he is still doing), I'm confident we'd be in a much better position today AND we'd be getting out of this much more quickly than we will, with fewer deaths and less strain on the health care system.

No excuse for not pulling out ALL the stops to manufacture masks, PPE, and ventilators in January. Had manufacturers been pushed to go 24/7 two and a half months ago, we'd be in a much better position now in terms of supplies. What is the worst that would have happened? We end up with too many of them? So what? It would have frightened people "too soon"? Too soon? Are you kidding me? Look, Trump isn't the only one who was a day late and a dollar short. How many questioned the Ivies when they canceled their season? But he is the guy in charge who had the best info at the earliest point in time.

Had Trump been a leader instead of acting solely out of his own political interests for way too long (it's obvious he is pushing as much as possible on the states so he can try to blame the governors (a child can see that)), key parts of the country would have shut down earlier. Weeks even days would have made a huge difference.

Trump failed to invoke and broadly apply the DPA, which has exacerbated the manufacturing problem. ORDER these companies what to do and how, and at what price. Don't rely on their goodwill. Yes, many have acted altruistically (see our afan), but others haven't and some need prodding.

Trump has failed to have the feds take over ALL ordering and delivery of supplies. Instead, as Cuomo says, the states are bidding against themselves like on Ebay. This is not only idiotic, but it will cost the American taxpaper billions of dollars.

Trump is also woefully behind the curve on testing. In January, he should have ordered (using the DPA) all relevant companies to manufacture test kits 24/7 and to develop new, better ones. Better and earlier testing would have paid huge dividends, and saved the lives of many of our heroic health care providers.

Now that a quick (5/15 min.) and accurate test (Abbott) has been developed, Trump should use the DPA to order Abbott to manufacture machines and test kits 24/7 (they may be already doing so) and to license other manufacturers to do the same.

There are 18,000 Abbott machines in the country per Birx yesterday. But the government doesn't know where they are. Trump should sign an executive order requiring anyone with a machine to advise HHS or whatever is the appropriate entity of the machines' whereabouts and other relevant details within 3/5/7 (?) days so the government knows where they are. With that info, we'll be able to determine where new machine need to go and where we have enough of them. From what I've seen, the machine is relatively easy to operate and probably would only require a minimal amount of instruction for a low level tech.

Abbott says they can manufacture 50,000 tests a day which I assume is their 24/7 capacity. That is a small drop in the bucket for what the country needs. Abbott needs to be ordered to give up the propriety info, etc. to other manufacturers so we can dramatically increase the number of these 5/15 tests.

This won't be early enough for the first wave, but wide-spread testing is critical to the "lull" (hopefully we have a lull) and second wave phases. Obviously the testing needs to start with health care providers, first responders, employees of essential businesses, etc., but we need to get to the point where everyone in the country can get a 5/15 test whenever they want it, with no symptoms or exposure. Just for peace of mind.

Otherwise, we'll be flying blind when the second wave hits and we'll inevitably see brush fires springing up that run the risk of turning into wild fires, which could put us right back where we are now.

What is Trump's plan for the second wave? Seems as though he's sticking his head in the sand and hoping that we'll be done with all this once we've through the first phase. We won't be. We have time, at least some time, to plan for phase two. What's the plan, Donald?

It does sound like antibody testing (to test to see if someone has had the disease and recovered) is moving ahead, but this also needs to go full throttle as it will be critical to determine who likely will be immune during phase two.

[Trinity]

Where is the Admiral who doesn’t want to disrupt the free market supply chain?

[Farfromgeneva]

Don't know if everyone is aware of this, but all the fixed income folks get checks on the 1st of the month (lower income transfer pmts and retirees) and so I haven't been to one but suspect and hear that those people had run low on provisions and needed to hit stores hard this week. To the extent that people are in decent shape at home it's probably a good thing to do to lay off until mid next week and allow those people to get what is more critically needed and then go shopping. Just something that came up recently I was tuned into.

[a fan]

Nice work. My wife works for a non-prof that works to get people off of programs, and into jobs, and help them move up the job "food chain".

She's been circulating this news for weeks.....stay home and let the people who need it most shop in relative peace.

[ChairmanOfTheBoard]

comic interlude?

coronavirus cakes:

https://www.google.com/search?q=coronav ... 68&bih=802

[holmes435]

Most of the places around here have designated hours for elderly shoppers in the morning so they have a chance to get stuff on their own and away from less at-risk people. Some have first responder / healthcare worker hours too so they can stock up.

The low income people are gonna probably feel the most pain unfortunately.

[6ftstick]

One of the most all-time famous articles in Life Magazine was published during the height of the Vietnam War. It displayed photos of all the American military personnel who had died in a single week.

In June 1969, LIFE magazine published a feature that remains as moving and, in some quarters, as controversial as it was when it intensified a nation’s soul-searching 45 years ago. On the cover was the image of a young man and 11 stark words: “The Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam: One Week’s Toll.” Inside, across 10 funereal pages, LIFE published picture after picture and name after name of 242 young men killed in seven days halfway around the world “in connection with the conflict in Vietnam.”

https://www.life.com/history/faces-of-t ... june-1969/

Now, there is certainly a distinction between the death of young people in their prime in a completely man-made phenomenon (war) and the death of primarily older individuals in the current pandemic.

Still, it’s worth noting that there was great power in seeing the faces of 242 young men who had died over a week. In today’s pandemic, we have seen over 1,000 Americans die IN A SINGLE DAY.

They used to chant, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?!?”

A variant of that would be an appropriate question for Trump, albeit not nearly as lyrical or poetic. Just how many thousands of Americans did Trump kill with his incompetence and malignant narcissism?

I am still hoping we don’t get anywhere near the fatality figures of current models. But if we do, we’re looking at fatality numbers that will dwarf those from Vietnam.

In a true case of bitter and cruel irony, many of the people dying today are from that Vietnam War generation.

A sobering perspective.

DocBarrister

Just how many thousands of Americans did the Chinese Coronavirus and the Communist Chinese government kill with incompetence and malignant narcissism?