We Need Better Data Before Trusting Most Things Anyone Says About Wuhan Virus

[Steeleballz 7,550]

1 hour ago, yuna628 said:

I think it would be understandable that some reopenings could happen if a working treatment is developed, but ultimately that will not help fully unless we can isolate via mass testing. The risk of continuing extreme pressure and failure on the medical system is too great. We need to accept that pandemics have big consequences not just to loss of life but on our entire medical system and economy. H1N1's effect was greatest on children and younger people and resulted in school closures. That was the largest disruption it caused. Not the same in this case unfortunately. I hope when this is all over that we start stockpiling and upgrading our hospital infrastructure, and pay particularly close attention to poor rural care and the lack thereof. This won't be the last pandemic... there's even worse bugs out there that would likely destroy us greater than it has now.

 

  I think if people just understood that 2-3 weeks of staying home is probably all that we need and we could start getting things open again. Unfortunately we have a situation where some people have stayed home already for 2 weeks while other people were out gathering in groups and continuing to spread the virus around so it is getting worse.

 

  It really sucks to be in that first group not having a job for 2 or 3 weeks already and now having to do another 3 weeks because other people are not doing their part and states are having to force people to stay home. People just need to each do their part, or it ends up being worse for everyone.

[OriZ 3,157]

Here is some balanced data...

in order to try and figure out what is the actual mortality rate, I looked at all states AND countries that have over 1,000 cases, and then narrowed them down to those that: 1. have tested more than 1,000 per million(in other words more than 0.1% of population tested) and 2. have a ratio of cases to tests of less than 30%. Those usually mean the testing was sufficient to get a better picture than from the countries or states that didn't do that(for example, in california, they only tested 324 per million, although their case/test ratio is only 11%. in contrast, NY which made the cut, has tested 0.4%, but their ratio is 26%. VT has tested 0.19% of population and has a case/test ratio of 6%, but with only 75 cases, it didn't make it. NJ only tested 0.04% and has a ratio of a whopping 86%. ok so now lets look at those that did make the cut, from top to bottom(or left to right): New York state, Washington state, Louisiana, Mass, Italy, Israel, Spain, Germany, France, S Korea,  Switzerland, UK, netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Canada, Denmark, Australia

 

 

Now moving on, lets look at the deaths. Quite the wide range, from 0.04%, to 8.57%. Why is this? Well, in Italy we know that not only were there many old people who got sick, but it also all happened so fast that they simply couldn't treat everybody.
What about Washington? Well, they had a similar situation initially, with nursing home getting hit. otherwise they would be down to around 3%, although still not great
Spain's healthcare system has also gotten slammed, so that is no surprise. 
However look at Norway with only 0.33%, and as we've seen, they tested ALOT. We can see that overall, in countries where many have been tested and there's a better chance they have been able to account for many of the infected, mortality rates aren't as high as believed. In NY it's only 0.49%, so far. It takes a while for people to die so some of those might still go up a bit
in South Korea which has been the gold standard of handling an outburst, it is so far only 1.1%.
Even if I include the extreme cases in Italy(in order  to compensate for the short amount of time passed in some other countries), we get an average of 2.03%, not nearly as scary.

 

 

And there are other approaches, too. for example, we can look at the cruise ship, because we know nearly everyone got tested there. The mortality? 1%, but adjusted for the age groups on the ship, it's only 0.5%.Because it's a relatively small sample the true number can be anywhere from 0.2% to 1.2%.

 

Also, in Feb 23 there was a lockdown placed on a town in Italy called  Vò. There are 3,000 people living there, and once the first infected person was discovered, they closed it down and tested people door to door. they found out, 3% of people there had the virus. In other words, they "found" the "first" infected person when there were already 90 times as many.
This tells us at times the amount of infected people could be 100x the detected ones, which means mortality rate could be 100th of what is claimed.

IF that town is any indication(and I'm not necessarily saying it is) that means 3 weeks ago 3% of northern italy had the virus. Based on that mortality would only be 0.1%-0.4%. Moreover in that case, by March 8th which is when they locked the whole country down, a large part of the population was already infected. if we start at 3% and assume it doubles every 3-4 days, we know after 8-12 days most of the vulnerable already had it.

This also supports the theory that we are now seeing the peak of the virus in Italy, after which there should already be herd immunity for most of the population.Viruses can only spread as long as they have people to spread to who are vulnerable enough to it. My assumption is most of us have already been exposed to this virus in some form or fashion and didn't get sick. If it is so easy as they say to be infected, and it stays in the air and on surfaces for so long, and there are so many infected around us, and we still go outside for certain reasons, even in places with a lockdown, that would make total sense to me.

 

Now, in recent days and weeks, alot of those countries as well as some that didn't make the cut are actually seeing a big improvement in their rate of change. Remember this model I introduced a week or so ago? well, so far not only is it not overly optimistic(quite the opposite, actually, however I'm trying to account for potential acceleration in other places, the US for one, but others who haven't taken many measures so far like India, etc.), but it's not Italy or Spain or France or South Korea that's contributing most to it right now, but the US(and especially NY which is at a rate of around 56% additional cases per day right now on a 7 day(weekly) average basis).

 

 

I'll explain again on the above, red is projected confirmed cases, orange is projected active cases, green is projected closed cases. light blue actual cases, purple actual active, dark green actual closed.

 

Europe is largely on its way to recovery imo. Lets take a look at how some others are doing... it's a little confusing because they're all competing over who's going to decline the fastest. now note, some are right axis and some are left(to make it easier to see). so Denmark, Austria, FRance, Germany, Spain and Washington state are right axis. the others are left. You can see all those countries and states already declining in numbers as far as rate of change goes, this is a weekly average, not daily. all of them start at 100th case except for italy which starts at its first ones.  as a reminder - we need that average to go under 7% for a week and that will mean there isn't even 1 new person infected for each person who has the virus.

 

Europe is largely on its way to recovery imo. Lets take a look at how some others are doing... it's a little confusing because they're all competing over who's going to decline the fastest. now note, some are right axis and some are left(to make it easier to see). so Denmark, Austria, FRance, Germany, Spain and Washington state are right axis. the others are left. You can see all those countries and states already declining in numbers as far as rate of change goes, this is a weekly average, not daily. all of them start at 100th case except for italy which starts at its first ones.  as a reminder - we need that average to go under 7% for a week and that will mean there isn't even 1 new person infected for each person who has the virus.

 

 

so how is the total average, including US and other countries, but excluding china doing you ask? well, not as good but decent. note the last day is today and today isn't over yet. However, if we're just looking at the average, we're down to around 15-16%

[Orangesapples 1,954]

2 hours ago, Dashinka said:

Why is everything compared to Italy and Europe instead of South Korea?

Because the US response is nothing like what South Korea did? 

[90DayFinancier 910]

2 hours ago, Dashinka said:

Why is everything compared to Italy and Europe instead of South Korea?

Are we doing what the south Koreans did in a similar time Frame? No, the us is behind the curve. 

It is also likely that china and sk have rebounded numbers after people relax.

[yuna628 9,758]

2 hours ago, Dashinka said:

Why is everything compared to Italy and Europe instead of South Korea?

Honestly I don't think you can compare the US to SK. Because SK got on the testing thing pretty good and seem very prepared. They also seem to have good hospital system.

 

Perhaps we should look to Iceland that decided to test everyone and could aggressively isolate - regardless of if they appeared sick or not as a system that is trying to handle cases best. It's easy to throw out numbers (I even asked if my husband could run an algorithm to predict anything because he studies the numbers every day) but we won't know for sure until it's all over. That doesn't mean that we say ''oh well it's just a small percentage no big loss"... it's not a blip to me, it's still going to be a great deal of people suffering and dying. We need to stop that...somehow. We were not proactive, so we more or less shot ourselves out of the gate.

 

The UK numbers concern me greatly. They are doing... barely nothing. Even when they act like they are doing something it's merely halfway. At 8000+ cases they are beginning to have a high death ratio, nearly just 170 persons off of our own.

Edited March 24, 2020 by yuna628

[Dashinka 24,980]

25 minutes ago, 90DayFinancier said:

Are we doing what the south Koreans did in a similar time Frame? No, the us is behind the curve. 

It is also likely that china and sk have rebounded numbers after people relax.

South Korea has tested approximately 350k people so far, the US is quickly catching up.  Should it have been done sooner.  Sure, should NY be locked down like Wuhan/Hubei, maybe, but I don’t think we are anywhere near Italy’s or the EU’s response.

[Dashinka 24,980]

20 minutes ago, yuna628 said:

Honestly I don't think you can compare the US to SK. Because SK got on the testing thing pretty good and seem very prepared. They also seem to have good hospital system.

 

Perhaps we should look to Iceland that decided to test everyone and could aggressively isolate - regardless of if they appeared sick or not as a system that is trying to handle cases best. It's easy to throw out numbers (I even asked if my husband could run an algorithm to predict anything because he studies the numbers every day) but we won't know for sure until it's all over. That doesn't mean that we say ''oh well it's just a small percentage no big loss"... it's not a blip to me, it's still going to be a great deal of people suffering and dying. We need to stop that...somehow. We were not proactive, so we more or less shot ourselves out of the gate.

 

The UK numbers concern me greatly. They are doing... barely nothing. Even when they act like they are doing something it's merely halfway. At 8000+ cases they are beginning to have a high death ratio, nearly just 170 persons off of our own.

South Korea was very prepared, they learned a valuable lesson from the last virus threat to them from China.  That being said, they have only actually performed around 350k tests, and I think the US is getting closer to that number.  The Koreans also tried to seal off Daegu as much as possible which is hard in such a small country (you can get from one side to the other in a little over two hours on the ground via trains).   No one is suggesting we do not do anything, the question is what do we do.  I will criticize President Trump on one item, he should have shut down EU travel at least two weeks before he did, now maybe we should isolate NY like South Korea did to Daegu or the Chinese did for Hubei/Wuhan.

[Orangesapples 1,954]

20 minutes ago, Dashinka said:

South Korea has tested approximately 350k people so far, the US is quickly catching up.  Should it have been done sooner.  Sure, should NY be locked down like Wuhan/Hubei, maybe, but I don’t think we are anywhere near Italy’s or the EU’s response.

Southampton Korea tested a lot of people before the virus had spread aggressively and they actually tested everyone who had been in contact with an infected person. The US is doing none of that. 

[Dashinka 24,980]

2 minutes ago, Orangesapples said:

Southampton Korea tested a lot of people before the virus had spread aggressively and they actually tested everyone who had been in contact with an infected person. The US is doing none of that. 

Yes, the testing in the US was bad from the start thanks to CDC.  

[Voice of Reason 10,298]

8 minutes ago, Dashinka said:

South Korea was very prepared, they learned a valuable lesson from the last virus threat to them from China.  That being said, they have only actually performed around 350k tests, and I think the US is getting closer to that number.  The Koreans also tried to seal off Daegu as much as possible which is hard in such a small country (you can get from one side to the other in a little over two hours on the ground via trains).   No one is suggesting we do not do anything, the question is what do we do.  I will criticize President Trump on one item, he should have shut down EU travel at least two weeks before he did, now maybe we should isolate NY like South Korea did to Daegu or the Chinese did for Hubei/Wuhan.

Herein lies the key.  I believe I read a long while back that when MERS hit Korea, they were essentially unprepared, and they decided afterwards to change the way their version of the CDC responded to situations like that.  As such, they had better protocols in place and were able to ramp up a response to covid-19 faster than most everyone else.  As I am sure will happen after covid-19 is handled here in the US - the CDC will change the way we prepare for unknown diseases like this.  Essentially, we became lazy because we haven't been as affected as other nations in the past decade.   Korea learned a hard lesson, and improved upon that learning.  Hopefully we do the same.

[Voice of Reason 10,298]

5 minutes ago, Orangesapples said:

Southampton Korea tested a lot of people before the virus had spread aggressively and they actually tested everyone who had been in contact with an infected person. The US is doing none of that. 

Bear in mind that S. Korea is about the size of Indiana.  A bit easier to test a large group of people in a small geographic area.  

[90DayFinancier 910]

47 minutes ago, Dashinka said:

South Korea was very prepared, they learned a valuable lesson from the last virus threat to them from China.  That being said, they have only actually performed around 350k tests, and I think the US is getting closer to that number.  The Koreans also tried to seal off Daegu as much as possible which is hard in such a small country (you can get from one side to the other in a little over two hours on the ground via trains).   No one is suggesting we do not do anything, the question is what do we do.  I will criticize President Trump on one item, he should have shut down EU travel at least two weeks before he did, now maybe we should isolate NY like South Korea did to Daegu or the Chinese did for Hubei/Wuhan.

What does one do now?

Hasn't your governor and local officials given guidance? It is a national emergency, listen to their guidance.

 

[Orangesapples 1,954]

43 minutes ago, Dashinka said:

Yes, the testing in the US was bad from the start thanks to CDC.  

Everything was bad in the US, and it still is. So many states are not even on lockdown. This is going to get extremely bad. 

40 minutes ago, Voice of Reason said:

Bear in mind that S. Korea is about the size of Indiana.  A bit easier to test a large group of people in a small geographic area.  

It's even easier if you, well, produce tests and have an actual strategy for dealing with epidemics, not fire the pandemic experts. 

[Orangesapples 1,954]

45 minutes ago, Voice of Reason said:

Herein lies the key.  I believe I read a long while back that when MERS hit Korea, they were essentially unprepared, and they decided afterwards to change the way their version of the CDC responded to situations like that.  As such, they had better protocols in place and were able to ramp up a response to covid-19 faster than most everyone else.  As I am sure will happen after covid-19 is handled here in the US - the CDC will change the way we prepare for unknown diseases like this.  Essentially, we became lazy because we haven't been as affected as other nations in the past decade.   Korea learned a hard lesson, and improved upon that learning.  Hopefully we do the same.

Hopefully, but I doubt it. 

[Dashinka 24,980]

30 minutes ago, 90DayFinancier said:

What does one do now?

Hasn't your governor and local officials given guidance? It is a national emergency, listen to their guidance.

 

So the US hotspot is NY,  why is that state not shut down and isolated from the rest of the US following the Chinese South Korea models.