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

[GoTfan]

It's going to get worse before it gets better. About 10k+ people will die in the USA from this.

It will be anywhere from 100,000 to 800,000.

University of Washington is saying 81,000, and they've been pretty on the money so far.

[GoTfan]

Thoughts?

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-intensive-care-units-for-coronavirus-expert-predicts/

[GoTfan]

Thoughts?

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-intensive-care-units-for-coronavirus-expert-predicts/

Close-to-best case scenario.

Trust me, Ferguson is no head-in-the-sand optimist. The guy was raising the alarm back in January, and he was the one who produced that report showing the UK suffering 500,000k+ fatalities.

[GoTfan]

The US response has really turned the corner.  We’re testing more than anyone else in the world by far.  We have a lot of ventilators and are ramping up production.  Things are really looking up.

By “things” I assume you are referring to case numbers and deaths.

We have the most cases of Covid in the World and yet still do not have a national lockdown like every other country in our position. The virus will continue to spread because Americans don’t do what they are told to do unless enforced by law. That’s why we can’t take a Singapore approach (also for other reasons)

As for testing, we are getting better, but your claims are dubious.
Do we have the most testing per capita?
Definitely not.
If you mean by raw numbers, I would still wager that China has done more testing.
As for ventilators, we should have been doing this months ago. Regardless, you are correct and we must continue to increase production because it’s clear we are seeing exponential case growth and hospitals don’t have enough for what we may be seeing.

Finally, Trump has made it worse by downplaying the pandemic and scapegoating the media as the problem when its a f**king virus killing thousands of Americans already.

Not even you are bothering to rehash your early doomsday predictions of millions of casualties.

We have the most in the world because we are comparing ourselves to an authoritarian state that clearly lied about its numbers (not to mention everything else).  Thats just repeating CCP propaganda.  Don’t be a tool for them.

Our case numbers increasing has tracked perfectly with our increased testing numbers.  There has been no surge at all in positive testing %.

Scientists, doctors and staticians are all saying thus is turning into a disaster. Are they communists as well?

No clue what that has to do with the CCP faking their numbers, but nice deflection.

"Millions of Americans might die" can be shown with numbers and stats and all kinds of things that don't involve China. It's not propaganda. Though possibly I read your post wrong.

Then why is the University of Washington saying 81,000 by June?

[GoTfan]

A projection meter for COVID-19 in the US.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections.

[GoTfan]

A projection meter for COVID-19 in the US.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections.

Predicted peak ventilator requirements: 20,000.

Start of June looks promising for an end to this thing. I am still thinking mid June to see cases drop to 10% of their peak in the USA. South Korea is currently dropping past 50% of their peak.

Do they have active cases anywhere, or just deaths?

Just deaths from what i can see.

The people in Washington state have been using this model and it seems to have been fairly accurate so far.

[GoTfan]

Forgive me for circling back, but I'm a bit confused about the projection model on this site posted earlier: https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections.

If my math is right, with total American deaths coming in at around 81,000, a death rate of 1% means we will only see ~8 million Americans get infected with this virus. How is that possible in a country as populous as the United States? Either the death rate is wrong and there is a ridiculous proportion of asymptomatic cases, or the virus will come back with just as much force as before... right?

One thing the US has working its favour is population density.

The reason why NYC in particular is getting hit hard is because everyone is packed tightly in. The US outside of the coast and industrial states is reasonably spread out.

[GoTfan]

A projection meter for COVID-19 in the US.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections.

I have my doubts about that projection.
Even if we implemented a full nationwide Wuhan style lockdown across the entire country, case growth itself wouldn’t decline up to April 10, and active case numbers would probably peak 7-10 days after.
At best, we will have a peak by mid-April, but I think early May is more likely. Also I do think more people will die and be infected without further intervention.

it also does have projections for each state.

[GoTfan]

Lower population density is all well and good, as is basing this model on trends we have seen elsewhere, but I guess I am having a hard time reconciling this model with logic. Unless every last stitch of this virus is cut off from the potential to spread and then dies out, it is going to linger. 8 million infections by the end of that curve in the model is nowhere near enough to achieve herd immunity. So isn't it, like... extremely likely it will return?

And when it does, and we start to open things back up, are we really going to be able to do enough tracking, contact tracing, and quarantining of resurgent cases/exposures to put a lid on things before  we get another curve? I'm very pessimistic, sorry.

Currently, it seems to be barely outpacing their pessimistic projections.

[GoTfan]

Forgive me for circling back, but I'm a bit confused about the projection model on this site posted earlier: https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections.

If my math is right, with total American deaths coming in at around 81,000, a death rate of 1% means we will only see ~8 million Americans get infected with this virus. How is that possible in a country as populous as the United States? Either the death rate is wrong and there is a ridiculous proportion of asymptomatic cases, or the virus will come back with just as much force as before... right?

You're corrrect.

Any model showing less than 250,000 deaths need to explain why the following isn't true:

- AT LEAST 0.5% of infected Americans will die (probably more)
- AT LEAST 25% of all Americans will eventually get COVID-19 (probably more)
- If herd immunity doesn't materialize, simply containing the virus is a stopgap

All three are true... no?

Punch in the US population on a calculator, multiplied by 0.25 infected, multiplied by 0.005 death rate, and keep in mind I'm using conservative numbers here. I'd be glad to be wrong about this, but nobody has shown me why I'm wrong as of yet. I'm open-minded to changing my mind here.

You can contact them. They have their details at the bottom of the page.

[GoTfan]

Forgive me for circling back, but I'm a bit confused about the projection model on this site posted earlier: https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections.

If my math is right, with total American deaths coming in at around 81,000, a death rate of 1% means we will only see ~8 million Americans get infected with this virus. How is that possible in a country as populous as the United States? Either the death rate is wrong and there is a ridiculous proportion of asymptomatic cases, or the virus will come back with just as much force as before... right?

You're corrrect.

Any model showing less than 250,000 deaths need to explain why the following isn't true:

- AT LEAST 0.5% of infected Americans will die (probably more)
- AT LEAST 25% of all Americans will eventually get COVID-19 (probably more)
- If herd immunity doesn't materialize, simply containing the virus is a stopgap

All three are true... no?

Punch in the US population on a calculator, multiplied by 0.25 infected, multiplied by 0.005 death rate, and keep in mind I'm using conservative numbers here. I'd be glad to be wrong about this, but nobody has shown me why I'm wrong as of yet. I'm open-minded to changing my mind here.

You can contact them. They have their details at the bottom of the page.

I'm also curious at the very wide disparities in when they project the peak will occur for each state: doesn't have any obvious correlation with when containment policies were implemented, how early the virus got there, or really any obvious parameter.

Like I said, they have an email address at the bottom of the page if you want to contact them for anything.

[GoTfan]

A projection meter for COVID-19 in the US.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections.

Listen to Scientists, folks!

According to these, US will need 20,000 ventilators at the peak, so may be 15,000 additional ventilators (most states has unused capacity). Cuomo requested ADDITIONAL 40,000. Now, obviously, their projection isn't the worst case scenario, but as for now Trump's claim are backed by SCIENCE, not Cuomo's.

I will say that this is a projection based on strictly maintained social distancing and lockdown measures. The issue is that projections are inherently unrelaiable by nature.

Do not take this one as the gospel truth.

[GoTfan]

Read this twitter thread regarding that study that said there would be only 80k deaths in the USA. It explains the assumptions behind this, and shows why (IMO) it is unjustifiably over-optimistic. It is based on curve fitting assuming that the epidemic in the USA will be like in Wuhan, i.e. assuming that the US lockdown measures will be as effective as the Wuhan lockdown was. Based on what I have seen of how people are behaving in supposed "lockdown," I am pretty doubtful of that. I don't know what it is like where you all are, but when I look around my area (which is supposedly "shelter in place," I see lots of gatherings and contact still occurring. It is interesting as an "what if" if-then exercise, but should be interpreted with caution - interpret it as "what will happen if certain assumptions are true" rather than as a projection.

https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1243853350984179713

Back to suicide then.

Dude, you need to get some help to chill out. You will make it, you are stronger then this event and your own perception of yourself. We all are gonna make it out, not cleanly no, but we all will survive this together.

I doubt it.

[GoTfan]

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.

[GoTfan]

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.

[GoTfan]

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.

[GoTfan]

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.

Really? Seems pretty f***ing hopeless.

At least a million will die in the US, I know that's a given, but it will likely be over 2 million. And that's likely just the virus alone.

So no, not almost everyone will be okay. I'm done.