COVID-19 Megathread 3: Third time's a charm

[100% pro-life no matter what]

To break the massive wall of text here....we are so screwed

https://twitter.com/bad_takes/status/1243356330951204864?s=09

It's going to be horrible beyond what we can really comprehend even now, but the end result is that the dead are going to disproportionately be GOP voters (elderly, male, rural).

The total death toll of this is going to be in line with most flu seasons.

Numerous studies have shown death rates of less than 0.5%, perhaps only 0.2-0.3%.  Influenza is estimated at 0.1%.  The R2 value is also probably slightly higher than influenza, but not drastically so.  On the other hand, we took much more drastic measures than we do for the flu, so the death toll from the virus will go down.  Now, I think that the drastic measures will probably only take us from ~100K to ~50K deaths, so I do think that it is very much a question whether more than 50K people will die indirectly from the measures we took (mental health, loss of economic prosperity, overdoses, fewer people donating blood, etc.).

It is very much a debate we need to be having about whether it was worth it to shut down society like we did over a disease slightly worse than influenza.  It's hard to fault the initial response because of the massive degree of unknowns about the virus, but I strongly suspect that analysis after this is over will show that we overreacted mostly because we vastly overestimated the death rate by underestimating the number of asymptomatic or barely symptomatic carriers.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Not sure what DeSantis is doing.


https://twitter.com/adamplayford/status/1244048209896448000

DeSantis' poor response to this pandemic has been astounding, and has lowered my opinion of him-aside from his obstructionism of Florida's Amendment 4, as has been noted here. This is one of the weaknesses of our federal system-that the state-level responses to crises really do depend on the competency of the governors. Some governors (i.e. DeWine, Cuomo, Newsom, Baker, Hogan, Pritzker, Inslee, Beshear) have done a good or even an excellent job at responding to this pandemic, while others (i.e. Lee, Abbott, Ivey, Reeves, DeSantis) have done terribly.

More extreme restrictions does not equal doing better.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

How many deaths do you think we are going to actually see? 500,000? A million? Two million? Or more?

I can't speak for anyone else, but assuming a 20% infection rate and 1% deaths among the infected (neither of those assumptions being particularly pessimistic) gets to around 600,000 deaths in America. I'm not necessarily predicting it will go that high, but it's definitely plausible, especially when lots of areas still aren't taking this seriously.

Which is why I'm ending it tonight.

Are you being serious?

Yeah, I really hope he's joking (it's not funny though). Especially with what I know about his past.

Millions are going to die, that's apparent. My parents are both in the high risk population and my brother is a cleaner at a medical research facility.

No, I am not joking.

Brah, message me your phone number. We are men of science, we fear no worldly terror.

The Australian Corona-virus rate is 1.7% of tested cases as coming back as positive.

And our 'Active Case' curve is like Singapore, South Korea and Japan. We are actually dropping in case growth already.

I'm not giving out my phone number.

And yes, I'm going through with it.

Please don't.  This is not a hopeless situation- almost everyone will make it to the other side of this OK.  Your friends and family will need you to be there for them in this time, just like any other.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

90s country star Joe Diffie has passed away from coronavirus at age 61. This may be the most famous young-ish person to pass.

He's the first person I had ever heard of prior to coronavirus to pass away.  Not that it makes other deaths less significant.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

The U.S. was flattening the curve until today when those disastrous numbers from California came in.

Don’t forget Georgia and Florida!

There are going to be slight fluctuations, but a really key good sign is that the percentage increases have been going down each day (even if the raw numbers are slightly worse).  That's a good sign that we are starting to slowly turn the tide.  In fact, that was one of the first signs in late January that the Chinese epidemic was starting to peak (which it did sometime around February 1st).

[100% pro-life no matter what]

The updated numbers for COVID-19 in the U.S. are in for 4/1 per: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

I'll be keeping track of these updates daily and updating at the end of the day, whenever all states finish reporting for that day. The percentages represent the daily increase from the last report.

3/26:

• Cases: 85,390
• Deaths: ±1,200

3/27:

• Cases: 103,798 (+18,408 | ↑21.56%)
• Deaths: 1,693 (+493 | ↑41.03%)

3/28:

• Cases: 123,428 (+19,630 | ↑18.91%)
• Deaths: 2,211 (+518 | ↑30.60%)

3/29:

• Cases: 142,178 (+18,750 | ↑15.20%)
• Deaths: 2,484 (+273 | ↑12.35%)

3/30:

• Cases: 163,490 (+21,312 | ↑14.99%)
• Deaths: 3,148 (+664 | ↑26.73%)

3/31 (Yesterday):

• Cases: 187,917 (+24,427 | ↑14.94%)
• Deaths: 3,867 (+749 | ↑22.84%)

4/1 (Today):

• Cases: 215,003 (+27,086 | ↑14.41%)
• Deaths: 5,102 (+1,235 | ↑31.94%)

Yet another day that the percentage increase was less than the day before.  I think there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic that we'll be over the worst of this sooner than many of y'all do.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

1 million worldwide cases have been reached.

Realistically, there are probably 100 million cases out there, but with a much lower death rate- which is a good thing.  Another piece of good news is that most European countries are now clearly past peak and hopefully aren't too far from some semblance of society returning.  The US is probably still 1-2 weeks away from peak, but the percentage increase in new infections continued to slow today, despite an increase in testing.  On top of all of that, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh said that they believe they have a vaccine and are asking the FDA to fast-track the approvals to have it ready "soon" (probably still a couple months, but way better than the year timeline that seems to be everyone's mantra).  There has been so much promising work into treatments, and that, combined with better contact tracing, should blunt any second wave without the need for major disruption to everyday life.

This thread needs way more positivity and way less doom and gloom (I can barely read it anymore with all of the hysteria and pessimism).  We'll get past this- and we will sooner than y'all think.  By Memorial Day weekend, we will be grilling out with our friends and swimming in our pools.