COVID-19 Megathread 5: The Trumps catch COVID-19

[Beet]

He did it on you know who's birthday.

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As if this couldn't get any weirder, a white hat hacker group has just posted the online login information for all employees of the WIV, CDC, NIH, WHO, and the Gates Foundation. They say they are going through the data now, but one authentic appearing screenshot from an employee of the Wuhan Institute of Virology appears to show a discussion of inserting an HIV single nucleotide protein into a coronavirus. If this is true, prepare for World War III.

[Beet]

As if this couldn't get any weirder, a white hat hacker group has just posted the online login information for all employees of the WIV, CDC, NIH, WHO, and the Gates Foundation. They say they are going through the data now, but one authentic appearing screenshot from an employee of the Wuhan Institute of Virology appears to show a discussion of inserting an HIV single nucleotide protein into a coronavirus. If this is true, prepare for World War III.

Oh God it's now here on the forum as if I didn't see enough of it on reddit and twitter

My sister has been talking about this for the past week. I just can't...

The dumps were uploaded last night. I would post more proof but I don't know if it's against the rules.

[Beet]

This article points to sewage as a possible means of epidemic detection.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/coronavirus-found-paris-sewage-points-early-warning-system

I could see this being standard in the future for disease control. Regularly measure human waste for viruses to track emerging outbreaks.

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The virus apparently causes blood clotting. In at least one young patient, the first symptom was a stroke. NY doctors are now prescribing blood thinners as standard care.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-blood/alarmed-as-covid-patients-blood-thickened-new-york-doctors-try-new-treatments-idUSKCN22421Z

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According to the university of Maryland impact analysis platform you can see data on who is social distancing by state and county. http://data.covid.umd.edu

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According to the university of Maryland impact analysis platform you can see data on who is social distancing by state and county. http://data.covid.umd.edu

Pretty non-sensical.

Those in Manhattan travel relatively short distances packed into subways. Someone in Wyoming drives 50 miles to work in their truck by themselves.

The index is calculated on a relative basis. Those who normally travel longer distances are not penalized for continuing to do so.

Traveling alone in you truck may be a safer practice, but it doesn't really count as "social distancing" to keep doing the same thing you were before.

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Conservatives rejecting remdesivir, still promoting hydroxychloroquine
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/02/donald-trump-coronavirus-remdesivir-229765

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Very bad news.

It was abruptly reported today that three boys died of Covid-19. A four year old in New Jersey, a five year old in New York City, and a seven year old in Westchester. Symptoms apparently don't start for up to six weeks after exposure which is why we're only seeing it now. Now 73 children are being treated. This follows similar reports recently in the U.K. and Italy.

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A private report by a group called MACE based on cell phone location data says that there was no activity in a high security section of the Wuhan Institute of Virology between Oct. 7 and 24 of last year. Further it appears there is additional evidence that there may have been an accident at the lab between Oct. 6 and 11, rather specific dates. If this is true then there has been a half-year long coverup of how this thing started. Just breaking on NBC now.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/report-says-cellphone-data-suggests-october-shutdown-wuhan-lab-experts-n1202716

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"We're the last major domestic mask company," he wrote on Jan. 23. "My phones are ringing now, so I don't 'need' government business. I'm just letting you know that I can help... I'm a patriot first, businessman second."

In the end, the government did not take Bowen up on his offer. Even today, production lines that could be making 7 million masks a month sit dormant.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/in-the-early-days-of-the-pandemic-the-us-government-turned-down-an-offer-to-manufacture-millions-of-n95-masks-in-america/2020/05/09/f76a821e-908a-11ea-a9c0-73b93422d691_story.html

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Did anyone else see the Michael Osterholm interview on Meet the Press this morning.  He’s one of the two medical experts that Chuck Todd interviewed in the first block.  I thought his interview was bizarre, because he seemed to be directly contradicting the other guest, but neither that guest nor Chuck ever pushed back at him. 

This seemed to me to be his message:
- Enhanced testing and tracing as futile at the point
- It is not possible to test any more than we are now anyway
- Social distancing restrictions will not substantially reduce infections, only “nibble at the edges”
- We cannot control the spread of the virus at all, and it will inevitably infect 60-70% of the population
- We “need a plan” to get from 5-15% infection rate to 60-70%, though he never really clarified what the basic contours of the “plan” should be

Is this a respected person?  If so, what “plan” is he talking about? 

More generally, it is striking to me that medical experts never really challenge one another in any of these interviews, even when it is obvious that they hold very different beliefs and positions.  They rarely even try to clarify their differences or the assumptions that are generating them. They all just seems to speak as if they are agreeing with each other even when it is obvious they are not.

He's very respected. Him and Marc Lipsitch at Harvard have been saying this since the beginning. The problem is, if they're wrong, then this kind of advice tends to become a self fulfilling prophecy.

[Beet]

Did anyone else see the Michael Osterholm interview on Meet the Press this morning.  He’s one of the two medical experts that Chuck Todd interviewed in the first block.  I thought his interview was bizarre, because he seemed to be directly contradicting the other guest, but neither that guest nor Chuck ever pushed back at him.  

This seemed to me to be his message:
- Enhanced testing and tracing as futile at the point
- It is not possible to test any more than we are now anyway
- Social distancing restrictions will not substantially reduce infections, only “nibble at the edges”
- We cannot control the spread of the virus at all, and it will inevitably infect 60-70% of the population
- We “need a plan” to get from 5-15% infection rate to 60-70%, though he never really clarified what the basic contours of the “plan” should be

Is this a respected person?  If so, what “plan” is he talking about?  

More generally, it is striking to me that medical experts never really challenge one another in any of these interviews, even when it is obvious that they hold very different beliefs and positions.  They rarely even try to clarify their differences or the assumptions that are generating them. They all just seems to speak as if they are agreeing with each other even when it is obvious they are not.

He's very respected. Him and Marc Lipsitch at Harvard have been saying this since the beginning. The problem is, if they're wrong, then this kind of advice tends to become a self fulfilling prophecy.

I am not familiar with Osterholm, but I find your characterization of Lipsitch's positions strange. He is one of the people responsible for https://covidpathforward.com/ (well worth having a look at). The "path forward" plan goes directly against most of the points Osterholm apparently makes in that interview. Maybe his position has changed in the meantime, or maybe he made some points that have been twisted to appear in support of a herd immunity strategy (he did speculate herd immunity may be reached much earlier than 60-70% infected due to network effects, which the open up, herd immunity crowd obviously liked. I haven't seen him advocate that position though).

The path forward is saying that things should be done, yes, but it's short of saying this can be contained. If you look at his twitter feed, he's still talking about herd immunity thresholds and speculating about 20%-60% of the population getting infected, which is down from his earlier estimate of 40%-70%.

That being said, he does pretty strongly deny supporting herd immunity in an article on India, so perhaps I've gotten his views wrong.

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Trump says testing is overrated.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-says-coronavirus-testing-overratedclaims-fewer-cases-if-no-testing-2020-05-14

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https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1261267252365623297

Ironic, as Lancet is inserting themselves into politics with this statement, while their authority comes from sticking to science. While I agree with this statement, they should focus on publishing papers and leave it to Joe Biden to make the case against Trump.

[Beet]

https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1261267252365623297

Ironic, as Lancet is inserting themselves into politics with this statement, while their authority comes from sticking to science. While I agree with this statement, they should focus on publishing papers and leave it to Joe Biden to make the case against Trump.

Or rather, is it just telling that it's gotten so so bad with Trump trying to play  Nero 2.0 that even the Lancet has to wade into politics?

It is ironic because they are saying that the president should be guided by "public health" and presumably science, and not partisan politics. The essence of their complaint is that politics is being inserted where only public health and science belong. Yet by making this statement they, until now one of the few institutions respected as purely scientific and non political, are explicitly inserting their own paper into partisan politics. Both Trump's behavior and Lancet's behavior is reflective of the same problem, which is politicization of the pandemic and pandemic response. Which is irrational since the problem is a virus, which attacks all people equally. If even Lancet can't resist politics, how can they expect Trump, a politician, to resist politics?

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All of this is the greatest self sabotage of all time - after 9/11, forever wars, and the Great Recession we were on target for immense peace and prosperity. And then society decided to lose its sh**t and react irrationally and irresponsibly. It’s important to remember, all of the response (reaction) was a choice.

Warning of the Fermi Paradox, as well....

Correct. We should have put all international travelers on 14 day quarantine in late January & did aggressive test & trace. That would have reduced this by 99%.

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https://twitter.com/blogwood/status/1263672945517498368

[Beet]

The linked article is very interesting, not that long, and worth a read.

https://twitter.com/mims/status/1264503963518468098

As a working hypothesis, I'd conjecture that low transmission rates on airplanes might be related to how dry the air is aboard airplanes.

Most airplanes are fitted with high-efficiency particle filters (HEPA) that take small particles out of the air. And while the virus at 0.1 microns is too small for most HEPA filters, it could get caught in a side effect of these filters whereby the air particles are "slung" across bends repeatedly in a process called diffusion. Ironically, the smaller a gas particle is, the more likely it is to be caught by this process since it takes less energy to send it into "Brownian" motion. That at least, is the claim of the HEPA vendors.

[Beet]

There's absolutely no evidence that accelerating towards herd immunity works. First of all, the virus does all sorts of unknown damage to your body, not only your lungs but cardiovascular system, nervous system, digestive system, reproductive system and mental health. Many of these effects are long term. The military is concerned enough that it is not even accepting any recruits from recoverees. It also has unknown effects on children and in areas of very high spread we have seen child mortality. It is also not known how long immunity even lasts even once you've gotten it.

Further, even in areas of very high spread like Spain and Italy, antibody tests show only 5%-10% of the population have them. That would have to be 40% to 70% to reach herd immunity. So you'd be looking at what some of the worst countries have already been through, plus another 4 to 14 times.

Then there's the fact that there are no successful examples of herd immunity. The prime argument for it is supposed to be economic, but so far Sweden has taken about the same economic hit as its neighbors despite having worse health outcomes. There is no trade off. It has nothing to do with mandates from authorities either; if the outbreak is bad enough people will simply voluntarily curtail their activity. In fact the worse the outbreak is, the longer and worse the economic damage will be (with all the consequences that of that.) Meanwhile there are countries who have reopened their economies more or less fully already, but it was due to successful containment, not herd immunity.

That leaves containment. The notion that the virus can't be contained is thus far unproven. I mean look no further than New York City, which even six weeks ago was the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, and now is seeing steadily declining numbers on a regular basis. Obviously, the more strict you are, the faster the virus can be contained, but the idea that it absolutely requires measures that won't fly in a democratic country is off base. Not only is it possible to contain the virus, but a number of states have already done so or are the path to doing so.

[Beet]

In the past week, new cases worldwide have started to accelerate again and between 40-45% of all new cases worldwide are in the U.S. or Brazil. The thing is going absolutely wild in Brazil.

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Another look at the jobs currently lost

This is already shaping up to be worse than the Great Depression. If action isn’t taken soon, the strings connecting this country could snap.

Hispanic women have been hit hardest by job losses. Maybe Joe Biden should pick a Hispanic woman as VP. The Democrats have never had a Hispanic candidate on the ticket. It would be groundbreaking.

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https://twitter.com/barbmcquade/status/1271225360638599168

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It doesn’t seem like many people are harshly criticizing California’s response.  And despite locking down very early, they are following the same path as Texas and Florida.

This just seems to me like more evidence that lockdowns alone are not very effective unless they are also bolstered by partial herd immunity.  The reason that places like Italy and Spain and New York were effective last month (and it seems like the UK has been effective a month later) is that they didn’t lock down until a significant portion of their population had already been infected.  But of course, this also resulted in horrible death tolls in all these places. 

So you could definitely make an argument that California locked down too early.  Ultimately, it was impossible for them to stop the spread of cases before enough people had been infected that they had an immunity buffer.  But at least now we have much better testing and treatment that we can identify and treat cases where there is a new surge, resulting in a lot less death than we saw in Spain or NYC.

Except New York and Italy only have 5%-15% infected, and you need much higher than that (70%) for herd immunity. There is no meaningful benefit below the threshold. Besides, other states like Ohio that locked down very early are seeing low cases. California is an exception to the general trend that the numbers tend to be worse in states that locked down late and opened early, and good in states with very strict rules.

[Beet]

It doesn’t seem like many people are harshly criticizing California’s response.  And despite locking down very early, they are following the same path as Texas and Florida.

This just seems to me like more evidence that lockdowns alone are not very effective unless they are also bolstered by partial herd immunity.  The reason that places like Italy and Spain and New York were effective last month (and it seems like the UK has been effective a month later) is that they didn’t lock down until a significant portion of their population had already been infected.  But of course, this also resulted in horrible death tolls in all these places.  

So you could definitely make an argument that California locked down too early.  Ultimately, it was impossible for them to stop the spread of cases before enough people had been infected that they had an immunity buffer.  But at least now we have much better testing and treatment that we can identify and treat cases where there is a new surge, resulting in a lot less death than we saw in Spain or NYC.

Except New York and Italy only have 5%-15% infected, and you need much higher than that (70%) for herd immunity. There is no meaningful benefit below the threshold. Besides, other states like Ohio that locked down very early are seeing low cases. California is an exception to the general trend that the numbers tend to be worse in states that locked down late and opened early, and good in states with very strict rules.

I’m not talking about strict herd immunity.  But it is absolutely not true that “there is no meaningful benefit below the threshold”.  If you institute a lockdown that reduced R to 1.1 when a very small percentage of the population has been infected, the virus will continue to grow.  But use the same measures when 15% of the population is immune, and the R will be .93, and the virus will slowly die out.   That’s why the same measures that lead to the decline of the virus in NY might lead to its continued growth in CA.

But the problem is that 15% of the population being immune implies that you already have the large number of deaths required to get there. So in the end, the result is the same either way.

Now I don't necessarily disagree that a very early universal lockdown is overkill. Contact tracing, selective isolation, or more localized lockdowns, may have been a better alternative, provided the testing capacity and other intelligence is there to implement that.

But again, California isn't the only state that did this. Most states across the north did the same thing, and saw success. There is something else uniquely bad about California that is not related to the strictness of their measures that is causing their current surge.