COVID-19 Megathread 4: Grandma Got Run Over by the Dow Jones

[jimrtex]

Surprised this hasn't been talked about yet in the thread, but Walmart an Target are rolling out new social distancing measures tomorrow limiting stores to 20% capacity.

https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1246277075100749824
Cities and counties are also starting to implement similar guidelines, like these new ones in Terrebone Parish, Louisiana (pop. 115k) that, among other things:

• All retail stores, including grocery stores and pharmacies, limited to 20% of fire marshal capacity
• Retail stores only open from 6AM to 8PM
• Shopping trips should only be made for "essential" items
• Only one person per family should go to the store at a time, if possible
• A 10PM to 5AM curfew is already in effect

I just don't understand the calculus here.  It's just a constant escalation of restrictions.  You can always find a way to be more aggressive in social distancing, but after a certain point the marginal costs exceed the marginal benefits.  Unfortunately, the sensationalist media and #FlattenTheCurve cultists will have these sorts of restrictions as their main raison d'etre by the middle of next week.

Panic buying is already a *major, major problem (and so far is actually a bigger problem than anything we've seen on the healthcare side).  Now the police are going to start enforcing a 20% limit?  What's the logical outcome here?  A bunch of people waiting several hours in line to buy groceries, contributing only to further panic and more runs on the supermarkets (which will lead to even longer lines in the best case scenario, violence in the worst).

Not to sound too alarmist here - but this is the *truly worrying stuff, not ICU/ventilator shortages.  The role of government in this situation should be to step-in and make sure essential retail operations remain open and accessible to all Americans.  If that means making people assume a bit more risk when they go out shopping, its a risk that's actually worth it in this case. 

What is fire marshal capacity for a Walmart (SuperCenter)?

With large numbers, it is harder to enforce social distancing in checkout lines. Competitors may also have complained that Walmart was getting an "essential retail" dispensation based on selling groceries, while bored customers were browsing the clothing aisles or buying bedspreads.

Walmart could organize a car queue to regulate customers coming in.

[jimrtex]

Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, besides being physically stronger than any other world leader, an excellent marksman and a skilled driver, is also a genius scientist who developed a vaccine that he is not sharing outside of Turkmenistan.

That, or he's simply concealing the numbers.

I thought you were making that up.

I remember a New Yorker cartoon that had a floor mounted globe about five-feet high. A Pentagon general, and a Senior Foggy Bottom diplomat pointed at the globe, and exclaimed, "We've been sending foreign aid to a booger!".

GB may be a booger.

[jimrtex]

South Dakota state representative dies from coronavirus, first sitting U.S. lawmaker to die after testing positive for COVID-19

https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-south-dakota-state-representative-bob-glanzer-dead-20200404-43tkdggt3zakfj26i7zoczghnu-story.html

Interesting that this happened in SD, given how few cases & deaths they've reported. Has it really not hit the Dakotas at all or are they just not testing?

South Dakota news reports say that his wife, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law had also tested positive. His niece died last week.

His wife had received treatment for breast cancer in early March, and the family had been welcoming her as she recovered. Huron is not very big (13,000). After receiving treatment in Huron, Glanzer was moved to a hospital in Sioux Falls.

I would suspect that the cancer treatment was in Minneapolis, or perhaps Rochester, Minnesota (Mayo clinic). If his wife was receiving chemo, her immune system would have been depressed. He would have been staying with her.

[jimrtex]

Well now we know for certain that this virus wasn't hatched at some lab in Wuhan province:

The COVID-19 Virus May Have Been in Humans For Years, Study Suggests

Can we make your conclusion?

Who put out the idea that the virus is a result of a recent cross-over from bats to humans at the wet market in Wuhan? Were the scientists at the lab ill-informed?

Presumably to sequence the genome of the virus you first isolate a sample. You don't do this by use of putting a human in a MRI do you? You put a sample in a test tube in a lab.

Can you the virus replicate in human tissue? Does that human tissue have to be inside a human body? The COVID-19 virus is supposedly good at attacking lung tissue, as opposed to a typical flu which attacks the throat.

Can hybridization occur in a lab?

Was the virus accidentally or deliberately released by the lab?

[jimrtex]

Its the same at the Wal-Mart I work at. Strict limits on most everything, and now with the restrictions on foot traffic to maintain social distancing, I think panic buying is dead.

How are the limits enforced with self checkout?

At the Walmart's that I am familiar with, there is a clerk monitoring the self-checkout area. It would be easy to program the checkout machine to check limits. You've probably had to wait for the store clerk to clear something out.

   "Please Wait For Store Clerk"

It could as easily say:

   "Please Wait For Police. Put hands over head. Do not make any sudden movements.
    You have the right to attorney. If you do not have an attorney, an attorney will
    be appointed for you.

    Customer: What is this about?

    "You have the right to remain silent. If you speak, everything you say will be
     used against you.

    Customer (agitated): Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot?

    (SWAT Team Arrives, Handcuffs Social Deviant)

[jimrtex]

https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-the-toilet-paper-shortage-c812e1358fe0

There’s another, entirely logical explanation for why stores have run out of toilet paper — one that has gone oddly overlooked in the vast majority of media coverage. It has nothing to do with psychology and everything to do with supply chains. It helps to explain why stores are still having trouble keeping it in stock, weeks after they started limiting how many a customer could purchase.

In short, the toilet paper industry is split into two, largely separate markets: commercial and consumer. The pandemic has shifted the lion’s share of demand to the latter. People actually do need to buy significantly more toilet paper during the pandemic — not because they’re making more trips to the bathroom, but because they’re making more of them at home. With some 75% of the U.S. population under stay-at-home orders, Americans are no longer using the restrooms at their workplace, in schools, at restaurants, at hotels, or in airports.

Georgia-Pacific, a leading toilet paper manufacturer based in Atlanta, estimates that the average household will use 40% more toilet paper than usual if all of its members are staying home around the clock. That’s a huge leap in demand for a product whose supply chain is predicated on the assumption that demand is essentially constant. It’s one that won’t fully subside even when people stop hoarding or panic-buying.

Pretty good points here!

There could still be panic buying in a situation like this.

A week or so ago, I was searching for trash bags. They were all gone - but happened to be on the shelf immediately next to the toilet paper. Presumably persons who had seen empty shelves on TV, remembered that when shopping, and decided to grab some for themselves, especially if you saw everyone else grabbing one or two. They then saw the trash bags, and put one of those in the cart. Why not, both are non-perishable.

This week, the trash bags were restocked. There were about three lonely packs of toilet paper on one end of the vast shelf (50 feet?), down by the trash bags. I really had to think about grabbing a pack, even though I only buy toilet paper every few months.

[jimrtex]

Surprised this hasn't been talked about yet in the thread, but Walmart an Target are rolling out new social distancing measures tomorrow limiting stores to 20% capacity.

https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1246277075100749824
Cities and counties are also starting to implement similar guidelines, like these new ones in Terrebone Parish, Louisiana (pop. 115k) that, among other things:

• All retail stores, including grocery stores and pharmacies, limited to 20% of fire marshal capacity
• Retail stores only open from 6AM to 8PM
• Shopping trips should only be made for "essential" items
• Only one person per family should go to the store at a time, if possible
• A 10PM to 5AM curfew is already in effect

I just don't understand the calculus here.  It's just a constant escalation of restrictions.  You can always find a way to be more aggressive in social distancing, but after a certain point the marginal costs exceed the marginal benefits.  Unfortunately, the sensationalist media and #FlattenTheCurve cultists will have these sorts of restrictions as their main raison d'etre by the middle of next week.

Panic buying is already a *major, major problem (and so far is actually a bigger problem than anything we've seen on the healthcare side).  Now the police are going to start enforcing a 20% limit?  What's the logical outcome here?  A bunch of people waiting several hours in line to buy groceries, contributing only to further panic and more runs on the supermarkets (which will lead to even longer lines in the best case scenario, violence in the worst).

Not to sound too alarmist here - but this is the *truly worrying stuff, not ICU/ventilator shortages.  The role of government in this situation should be to step-in and make sure essential retail operations remain open and accessible to all Americans.  If that means making people assume a bit more risk when they go out shopping, its a risk that's actually worth it in this case. 

What is fire marshal capacity for a Walmart (SuperCenter)?

With large numbers, it is harder to enforce social distancing in checkout lines. Competitors may also have complained that Walmart was getting an "essential retail" dispensation based on selling groceries, while bored customers were browsing the clothing aisles or buying bedspreads.

Walmart could organize a car queue to regulate customers coming in.

Depends on the square footage of the store. I have heard numbers of 5, 10, and 20 per thousand square footage of store.

I drove by my local Walmart - hoping to see if there was a posted occupancy limit. The parking lot was close to full. Perhaps not pre-Christmas full, but close to it. People may have heard about limited access and made a run on the store.

[jimrtex]

Trump has direct money interests in promoting Hydroxychloroquine.   Surprising no one.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-stake-company-hydroxychloroquine_n_5e8c41d7c5b6e1d10a696280

President Donald Trump reportedly owns a stake in a company that produces hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug he has repeatedly touted as a coronavirus treatment even though his experts say there’s no strong evidence it works.

Trump “has a small personal financial interest” in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine, The New York Times reported Monday.

Can anyone discern how supposedly small this small personal financial interest is? I can't read the Times article due to the pay wall. The link Huntington Post article says that the three Trump family trusts each have Holdings in a mutual fund, the largest investor in which is Sanofi. That leaves a lot of interpretation.

Trump’s personal stake in the malaria-drug maker Sanofi could be as small as $99

The article goes on to note that in Sanofi's latest financial statements they broke out revenue for 33 other drugs, but Plaquenil was so tiny they didn't bother.

[jimrtex]

Cuomo: Use of antimalarial drug in New York hospitals 'anecdotally' positive

Bad and or sick guy.

[jimrtex]

https://twitter.com/npratc/status/1247988083376549888?s=19

That's one way to try to hide the numbers: quit supporting tests all together. So, in what way would our handling be better than China's at that point?

F**ked up move.

In Texas, about 6% of tests have been conducted by public labs, and that includes state, county, and city labs, and that share has been declining.

[jimrtex]

OK,

Here are some predictive graphs from the 'Active Case' work I have been doing. I will add some realistic recoveries to UK and France tomorrow. So far, UK have only reported 340 recoveries which is clearly in error.

This dashboard for Texas appears to be estimating recoveries in a manner similar to yours. See footnote for Patients recovered.

Texas COVID-19

[jimrtex]

OK,

Here are some predictive graphs from the 'Active Case' work I have been doing. I will add some realistic recoveries to UK and France tomorrow. So far, UK have only reported 340 recoveries which is clearly in error.

This dashboard for Texas appears to be estimating recoveries in a manner similar to yours. See footnote for Patients recovered.

Texas COVID-19

Thanks, i will take a look. Recoveries are easy. It's like balancing a chemical equation.

If someone enters the New Cases graph, logically, that translates into a fatality or recovery 10-14 days later. Assuming the fatalaties are correct, average recovery rates are very predictable.

The USA is due for a lot of recoveries over the next fortnight for example and i will start adding those in if they dont materialize.

Despite everyone criticizing China's reporting, their data made sense. Their new cases matched closely with their recoveries.

There was an interview with a doctor whose specialty was infection diseases. He was asked how he would respond if a patient believed they had COVID-19. If they were having respiratory distress, he would direct them to a hospital, and get a description of their vehicle. When they arrived at the hospital, personnel would come out and get them and bring them in through a segregated entrance where they could not only be tested for the virus, but other tests run.

But other patients would be directed to an out-patient testing facility where a swab would be taken, and told to isolate in personal quarantine (you don't quarantine with your family).  There may have been zero follow-up other than reporting the test results. This may be why recoveries are not reported.

Testing in the US varies widely by state.

13 states and the District of Columbia have tested more than 1% of the population (10,000 tests per million). The positive rate varies:

NY 41.2% (NY is the only state with more than 2% tested)
NJ 40.1%
LA 20.9%
MA 20.5%
DC 17.7%
DE 13.4%
RI 13.1%
WA 11.0%
VT 7.8%
UT 5.2%
NM 4.0%
AK 3.3%
HI 2.9%
ND 2.9%

At the top-end NY and NJ are basically confirming that symptomatic persons do have the virus. At the bottom end, they have been able to not only test anyone with symptoms, but likely done contact and community testing and test medical personnel and first responders.

Among states with below 0.5% tested, less than 5000 tests per million.

GA 25.7%
AL 14.6%
CA 12.8%
VA 12.7%
TX 10.5%
KS 10.2%
ME 8.8%
NE 6.8%

It is hard to interpret this. Clearly lots of people without symptoms have been tested. So there is the possibility that the other 99.5% of the population that has not been tested will have similar results.

[jimrtex]

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1249007008264663042

America first?

Okay, Hillary.

Population size....what a stupid comparison.

We would've had a 110% more competent response with Hillary & you know it.

What does it matter?

[jimrtex]

Why is the administration so obsessed with hydrochloroquine when there are several other possible drugs out there that seem to have shown more promise with fewer side effects?

Does Trump have any personal financial stake in those other drugs?  

Quite likely. His trusts own considerable amounts of index funds.

[jimrtex]

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1249007008264663042

America first?

Okay, Hillary.

Population size....what a stupid comparison.

We would've had a 110% more competent response with Hillary & you know it.

What does it matter?

Life & death to many f**king people.

She would probably be saying that awful covideo was the trigger.

[jimrtex]

https://twitter.com/jkbjournalist/status/1249138171117539328


BEST GOVERNOR EVER

Does HIPAA permit them to release that information?

[jimrtex]

https://twitter.com/jkbjournalist/status/1249138171117539328

BEST GOVERNOR EVER

Yeah, that's a big violation of the attorney-client relationship. If I hire a law firm to file a lawsuit & some politician 'persuades' my attorney to not file said lawsuit, then that law firm should be facing discipline from the Bar.

What if that law firm has also worked for the state?

Imagine that Charles Cheatham esq. of Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe LLC (DCH) sends a letter to the state threatening to sue on behalf of "his" client. But he presumably uses the DCH letterhead.

But it happens that David Dewey of DCH had recently represented the state as outside counsel.

There is a potential conflict of interest. It is entirely proper for the Miami Herald to get another lawyer.

[jimrtex]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1249712413219397632

Northeast Democratic Governors say "nah"

https://twitter.com/GovMurphy/status/1249765507131232257?s=20

West Coast Governors also say "nah"

https://twitter.com/CAgovernor/status/1249780469421338624?s=20

Holy based

I need a Pritzker/Walz/Whitmer/Evers/DeWine alliance ASAP!

I want a Polis/Lujan-Grisham/Kelly alliance.

Add in Bullock and you've got a real Mountain West FF #Populist alliance.

Still won't be invited to any BCS bowls, though. 

(Sorry for the crappy low-quality posts today, guys.)

The real reason the NCAA Tournament was canceled so precipitously was they were afraid of a Gonzaga-Creighton-Butler-UH final four.

[jimrtex]

https://mobile.twitter.com/JimLaPorta/status/1249865253803954176
Peak Florida.

Apparently at the request of Jerry Demings, mayor of Orange County, and husband of Rep. Val Demings.

[jimrtex]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1249712413219397632

Northeast Democratic Governors say "nah"

https://twitter.com/GovMurphy/status/1249765507131232257?s=20

The whole area has high infection rates.

You can see the spread from NYC into NJ and CT, and now eastern Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, likely through community infection.

Other areas can more easily impose quarantines on these areas. To avoid truckers and the like spreading the virus, food can airdropped

[jimrtex]

Why was Nevada left out of the West Coast compact? It's a D trifecta that's pretty typically progressive aside from Sisolak. Is it because Sisolak was sluggish in getting started with emergency responses?

Nevada doesn't want California dictating about Las Vegas. Newsom probably hates people moving to Nevada because of high taxes and living costs. There is also a nasty puritanical streak in some progressives.

[jimrtex]

I need a Pritzker/Walz/Whitmer/Evers/DeWine alliance ASAP!

Minnesota has among the lowest infection rates. Why would they want to looped in with Michigan?

[jimrtex]

Why was Nevada left out of the West Coast compact? It's a D trifecta that's pretty typically progressive aside from Sisolak. Is it because Sisolak was sluggish in getting started with emergency responses?

Nevada doesn't want California dictating about Las Vegas. Newsom probably hates people moving to Nevada because of high taxes and living costs. There is also a nasty puritanical streak in some progressives.

Are you seriously suggesting that Nevada wasn't invited out of dislike for gambling and prostitution? 

They are hypocritical of course. They go to Nevada for gambling and prostitution and quickie divorces and Burning Man and avoiding exorbitant taxes (all wealth belongs to the state). Newsom probably doesn't understand that not everyone can afford to live in Ross.

[jimrtex]

Why was Nevada left out of the West Coast compact? It's a D trifecta that's pretty typically progressive aside from Sisolak. Is it because Sisolak was sluggish in getting started with emergency responses?

Nevada doesn't want California dictating about Las Vegas. Newsom probably hates people moving to Nevada because of high taxes and living costs. There is also a nasty puritanical streak in some progressives.

Wow. That's an impressive amount of conservative memes and virtue signaling wrapped into such a short post. Congratulations.

Look at the virtue signaling when Florida determined that WWF was an essential industry (at the behest of the mayor of Orlando Jerry Demings, who is married to Rep. Val Demings, who has been mentioned as a VP prospect).

Do you think Sisolak is going to be concerned about a key industry? Do you think Kate Brown is going to be concerned? Oregon is the only state that tried to force closure of private schools - you would be truant if you did not attend state schools.

[jimrtex]

My state, Georgia, isn’t projected to peak until May 1 (as of now) with a total death projection nearing 4000.

Meanwhile California, which far surpasses us population wise, is only projected to have something around 1500 deaths total.

Why such a far discrepancy considering the population differences?

I certainly believe that the individual responses of the state governors is a major factor in this. I don't like Gavin Newsom, but he has run a strong response to the pandemic in California, while Brian Kemp is ignorant and deferred on taking action.

That doesn't explain anything.  Tennessee wasn't super fast in shutting down, and the UW model only projects 481 deaths and a peak of less than 10% of hospital capacity.  For every example supporting that story, you can find one that doesn't support it.

I've underlined the critical sentence of my post in response to this. I did not try to claim that this was the only factor at play, but it is a factor. And for the record, Kentucky to your north responded much more quickly and effectively to this outbreak, and hence has a better trajectory in terms of cases. And there are many examples of where such decisive action might have curtailed the pandemic's spread, such as in Florida, which has been noted numerous times on here.

Kentucky has a higher death rate, it is not clear that it has a better trajectory for cases on a per capita basis. Tennessee has almost double the testing rate.