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

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

No many the quantity of threads, this is still an overblown reaction. Glad Trump is waking up to the economic consequences.

The Republican party cares about a fertilized egg more than the elderly. Sick! (or bad)

Make America Dead Again!

[Florida Man for Crime]

https://twitter.com/Yascha_Mounk/status/1242657146392784896

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

No many the quantity of threads, this is still an overblown reaction. Glad Trump is waking up to the economic consequences.

The Republican party cares about a fertilized egg more than the elderly. Sick! (or bad)

Make America Dead Again!

It is worth remembering, that Mississippi would have only voted for Romney by 3% without the 65 plus vote.

Obama won the youngest vote and the middle two groups were R+10. 65 plus though was R+56.

The loss of boomers would flip much of the South to the Democrats. The only exceptions would be states like MO, AR, TN, KY, WV where the population is less diverse and less stratified by age.

You would think Republicans would be smarter about how they handle the lives and health care for this group.

[Florida Man for Crime]

I’m not sure what is unclear about these numbers, especially in Korea.  It seems to me to be an unmitigated success.  They’ve been getting around 100 new case per day for 2 weeks.  This is a number that any country should be happy with maintaining indefinitely unless a vaccine is developed. They still see clusters of new infections popping up, but they squash them quickly with sophisticated tracing.  Moon Jae-In should be held up as a model of progressive leadership around the world.

It is certainly a success relative to what has happened elsewhere, of course! However, what seems to be not yet clear is whether it is still spreading in a way such that it will gradually grow, or not. If it doesn't gradually grow larger, then it is a sustainable strategy, and can be continued indefinitely. But if it does gradually grow larger, then given a sufficient amount of time we will nonetheless have a problem (albeit a less severe problem than otherwise) and something more will be needed to drop the R_0 lower (below 1).

[ProudModerate2]

I’ll just leave this cartoon here for those who think the DOW Jones is more important than people’s lives:

I find this cartoon really rich.  We’re going to end up huddled around fires in caves because ICU capacity was breached?  This is the likely outcome if we shut everything down for 3+ months

Of course, I doubt this cartoon is about Coronavirus

It's not. The cartoon has been circulating here in Atlas for at least 2 or 3 years.

[ProudModerate2]

https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1242580468840751104

Again, I don't see how it can possibly be in Trump's political interest for this to happen to his base voters in Florida.

OMG, what a horrible story.
There should be some punishment to those workers who just completely abandoned the place.
Like, who was feeding the elderly that were still alive?
It's maddening.

[Xing]

I’ll just leave this cartoon here for those who think the DOW Jones is more important than people’s lives:

I find this cartoon really rich.  We’re going to end up huddled around fires in caves because ICU capacity was breached?  This is the likely outcome if we shut everything down for 3+ months

Of course, I doubt this cartoon is about Coronavirus

It’s an exaggeration, but the idea that putting some restrictions down is worse than allowing this disease to fester out of control, killing thousands (if not over a million) more is ludicrous. The economy is going to tank if this gets out of control anyway.

[ProudModerate2]

40 people in Connecticut exposed to coronavirus at a party, officials say.

About 40 people who attended a farewell party in Connecticut in early March were exposed to Covid-19 after a partygoer was confirmed to have the virus, three local Connecticut officials confirmed to CNN.

The town of Westport now has 79 cases, the most of any Connecticut municipality, according to local officials. In Fairfield County, the surrounding county, there are 384 confirmed cases, more than half of Connecticut's total number of cases.

https://us.cnn.com/2020/03/25/us/connecticut-party-coronavirus-exposure/index.html

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

A group of young adults held a coronavirus party in Kentucky to defy orders to socially distance. Now one of them has coronavirus.

At least one person in Kentucky is infected after taking part at a "coronavirus party" with a group of young adults, Gov. Andy Beshear said Tuesday.
The partygoers intentionally got together "thinking they were invincible" and purposely defying state guidance to practice social distancing, Bashear said.
"This is one that makes me mad," the governor said. "We have to be much better than that."

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/24/health/kentucky-coronavirus-party-infection/index.html

This is insane.
By doing this, they not only jeopardize themselves, but their own family members and friends (not to mention the rest of their community).

Calling this a “coronavirus party” seems misleading, in that it obviously invokes “chicken pox parties” in which one infected kid deliberately infected other kids so they would all gain immunity in a controlled environment.  We’ve also seen “measles parties” pop up among anti-vaxxers.  Some people have suggested this might be a possibility for coronavirus, but it doesn’t sound like that was the goal here at all.

[Penn_Quaker_Girl]

Finally, though we still have yet to see the actual text of the bill.  

https://mobile.twitter.com/alexsalvinews/status/1242682456215416833

[Mr. Morden]

https://twitter.com/ErinBurnett/status/1242647637012221953

[Meclazine for Israel]

More un-clear bouncing around in #s of cases from the East Asian seeming success stories South Korea is creeping back up again, but Singapore and Hong Kong went down slightly:

South Korea:

Mar 25: 100
Mar 24: 76
Mar 23: 64
Mar 22: 98
Mar 21: 147
Mar 20: 87
Mar 19: 152
Mar 18: 93
Mar 17: 84
Mar 16: 74
Mar 15: 76

Just look at "Active Cases" in context of the overall behavioural pattern of the pandemic in each Country to make a more effective interpretation.


https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/

Net loss of "Active Cases" today in South Korea was another 130-150 cases downhill, so things are decaying as one would expect beyond the edge of this graph.

The mathematical parameters which control the height and spread of the bell curve are still in place:

• Zoonotic cases
• Transmission rate
• Reservoir of people available to infect
• Unreported rate

If those parameters do not change, then you are shooting for the stars on the downhill slide to success.

PQG quite rightly mentioned parameters like Government action (social distancing, quarantine, travel restriction) which can all be included in transmission rate.

With a mortality rate of 1.38%, South Korea is managing the transmission rate really well. They were way down the list with both infection rate and mortality rate.

Infection rate for South Korea is 0.018%.
Infection rate for USA is 0.017%.

[T'Chenka]

Finally, though we still have yet to see the actual text of the bill.  

https://mobile.twitter.com/alexsalvinews/status/1242682456215416833

AOC claims it is lacking in worker relief and has $0.5 trillion in corporate bailouts.

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

No many the quantity of threads, this is still an overblown reaction. Glad Trump is waking up to the economic consequences.

First post in and of course it's this guy and his "hot takes"

Guess I'll be avoiding these COVID-19 megathreads for good now

[T'Chenka]

No many the quantity of threads, this is still an overblown reaction. Glad Trump is waking up to the economic consequences.

First post in and of course it's this guy and his "hot takes"

Guess I'll be avoiding these COVID-19 megathreads for good now

Just out him on Ignore.

Don't let trumpanzees ruin Atlas for you.

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

No many the quantity of threads, this is still an overblown reaction. Glad Trump is waking up to the economic consequences.

First post in and of course it's this guy and his "hot takes"

Guess I'll be avoiding these COVID-19 megathreads for good now

Just out him on Ignore.

Don't let trumpanzees ruin Atlas for you.

My ignore button has been broken for months. All it does it take me to the first page of the thread

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Finally, though we still have yet to see the actual text of the bill.  

https://mobile.twitter.com/alexsalvinews/status/1242682456215416833

AOC claims it is lacking in worker relief and has $0.5 trillion in corporate bailouts.

The goal of every ideologue is to grand stand and be perpetually dissatisfied. It is no different than what Ted Cruz did and what Rand Paul continues to do.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

"You cannot serve God and Mammon." -Matthew 6:24

Relevant passage for these times.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

"You cannot serve God and Mammon." -Matthew 6:24

Relevant passage for these times.

We live in strange times where the Democrats are pro-life and the Republicans are big spending socialists.

"All you need to understand is, everything you know is wrong!"

[Smeulders]

Regarding the Oxford study that Greenline just posted on the other thread that claimed that 50% of the UK population was already infected, I wrote up a better reply to that on the other thread, but it got eaten since the other thread was suddenly locked.

So I will make a shorter reply.

The paper does not suggest that at all. The analysis in the paper is simply that if you assume a very low value of a particular parameter, then 50% of the population in the UK is already infected.

But no justification whatsoever for that assumption is provided in the paper. I would explain why, but I am not going to go to the effort to re-type everything.

Rather than just looking at a sensationalist headline in a news article (which is all Greenline did), look at the actual paper to see why -

that is here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/oxmu2rwsnhi9j9c/Draft-COVID-19-Model%20%2813%29.pdf

https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/foc67z/fundamental_principles_of_epidemic_spread/


p.s. to the mods - it is very annoying when a megathread gets locked, because now it is impossible to quote posts from the previous megathread.

A bit late to this post, but I wanted to further support this. Some choice quotes from the paper.

We focus on model solutions which take into consideration previous
estimates of critical epidemiological parameters [...], with the intention of exploring the sensitivity of the system to the actual fraction of the population vulnerable to severe disease and death.

The authors deliberately chose a very low number for people susceptible to severe symptoms (1% and even 0.1%) to see what that would do to the numbers. While the Diamond Princess demographics mean they are not a great model for the vulnerability of the population at large, they do clearly show that way more than 1% will develop severe symptoms (0.2% of all people onboard the ship died, 1% of those confirmed infected). Why do they choose these rather extreme numbers? Of course I can not read the minds of the researchers, but the following quotes do shed quite a bit of light on their thinking.

There is thus an urgent need for investment in technologies such as virus (or
viral pseudotype) neutralization assays and other robust assays which provide reliable
read-outs of protective immunity,

Urgent development and assessment of such tests should be followed by rapid implementation at scale to provide real-time data. These data will be critical to the proper assessment of the effects of social distancing and other measures currently being adopted to slow down the case incidence and for informing future policy direction.

Simply put, they are saying that there are still quite a few unknowns. By picking extreme values for some of these unknowns, they show that these can have extremely important implications for policy.   By doing so, they wish to show the need for additional research to estimate these values more accurately and precisely.

[Penn_Quaker_Girl]

Finally, though we still have yet to see the actual text of the bill.  

https://mobile.twitter.com/alexsalvinews/status/1242682456215416833

AOC claims it is lacking in worker relief and has $0.5 trillion in corporate bailouts.

Twitter is pretty full of confusion right now.  Lots and lots of figures, numbers, rumors, etc. getting thrown around.  

-  "I'm a dependent who recently graduated from college and got a job.  I filed taxes in 2019 but not 2018 as I was not working. Will I see any money?"

- "I'm on social security but don't make enough to file taxes. Are people on social security even included in this bill? Will I see any money?"

- "I make more than 75K but live in an area with an extremely high cost of living.  Will I see any money?"

Etc. Etc.

[Smeulders]

Some snippets from Dutch media suggest they have started testing for antibodies in the general population, to try and establish the percentage of immune people. I'm very interested in the results. Let's hope they show current testing of symptomatic patients is indeed a very large underestimation.

[Penn_Quaker_Girl]

https://mobile.twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1242762567413571587

[Torrain]

https://mobile.twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1242762567413571587

Well. The next fortnight is going to be a tabloid fever dream here. Nothing gets the UK media roiled up like a good royal panic.

While we shouldn't get too hung up on the illness of one man, amongst hundreds of thousands of patients, this does have constitutional ramifications for us.

If Charles is incapacitated, or worse, it could affect the line of succession, and more importantly, puncture morale.

BBC News is reporting that the Queen hasn't met with Charles since March 12th, so that shouldn't be an issue.

[Penn_Quaker_Girl]

https://mobile.twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1242762567413571587

Well. The next fortnight is going to be a tabloid fever dream here. Nothing gets the UK media roiled up like a good royal panic.

While we shouldn't get too hung up on the illness of one man, amongst hundreds of thousands of patients, this does have constitutional ramifications for us.

If Charles is incapacitated, or worse, it could affect the line of succession, and more importantly, puncture morale.

BBC News is reporting that the Queen hasn't met with Charles since March 12th, so that shouldn't be an issue.

Oh come now, I'm sure The Sun and dailymail will be very civilized and reasonable.  

This may be a dumb question, but the tweet says "working from home". What does this "work" entail for Prince Charles?  Genuinely asking.