Israeli Professor Shows Virus Follows Fixed Pattern

[Dashinka 24,629]

21 minutes ago, OriZ said:

Do you think it's the same thing to peak at x infected/deaths vs peaking at a multiple of x?

Depends on what that multiple is, if it is 0.5 then it would be better.  My point is there is no way you can determine what effect the measures have since you cannot go back and rerun the numbers of less drastic measures were taken.  We may very well have the same outcome if the governors had just pushed the testing, and pushed the self distancing without adding in the police.  The simple fact that we have governors playing nanny only leads to more and more of that mentality.

[Ban Hammer 13,421]

19 minutes ago, Dashinka said:

 The simple fact that we have governors playing nanny only leads to more and more of that mentality.

on the bright side, we will see some interesting governor races in the future.

[Steeleballz 7,550]

1 hour ago, Dashinka said:

Ok, so what is all this talk from the experts about flattening the curve with all these measures?  If the trend is the same, what are we really doing to the curve?

 

   The trend would be transmission rates tend to peak then drop off after 40 days and be back to minimal levels at 70 days. Flattening the curve means that due to social distancing measures, less people will die during those 70 days, at the risk of having the curve extend farther out than 70 days. Some people think the economy should be prioritized over the number of people who die, some want to minimize the death rate at all costs at the expense of the economy, and some are looking for the right balance. Ultimately it's not an experiment, so you can't go back and run the numbers. Most places seem to have taken the approach that saving lives is more important than the economy.

[Nature Boy 2.0 8,376]

21 minutes ago, Steeleballz said:

 

   The trend would be transmission rates tend to peak then drop off after 40 days and be back to minimal levels at 70 days. Flattening the curve means that due to social distancing measures, less people will die during those 70 days, at the risk of having the curve extend farther out than 70 days. Some people think the economy should be prioritized over the number of people who die, some want to minimize the death rate at all costs at the expense of the economy, and some are looking for the right balance. Ultimately it's not an experiment, so you can't go back and run the numbers. Most places seem to have taken the approach that saving lives is more important than the economy.

 its slowing due to a lot of these measures.

Of course becuase the measures are working, the  tinfoil conspiracy fringe that thinks we should do nothing, is now saying...See we told you its not as bad as they said it could be.

[Dashinka 24,629]

53 minutes ago, Steeleballz said:

 

   The trend would be transmission rates tend to peak then drop off after 40 days and be back to minimal levels at 70 days. Flattening the curve means that due to social distancing measures, less people will die during those 70 days, at the risk of having the curve extend farther out than 70 days. Some people think the economy should be prioritized over the number of people who die, some want to minimize the death rate at all costs at the expense of the economy, and some are looking for the right balance. Ultimately it's not an experiment, so you can't go back and run the numbers. Most places seem to have taken the approach that saving lives is more important than the economy.

So where is the balance?  There are studies correlating suicide to unemployment during an economic crisis.  These potential deaths need to be considered as well, so economic harm should not be ignored when making decisions like these.

[yuna628 9,686]

9 minutes ago, Dashinka said:

So where is the balance?  There are studies correlating suicide to unemployment during an economic crisis.  These potential deaths need to be considered as well, so economic harm should not be ignored when making decisions like these.

I don't know where the balance is, but I'm sure there are people working to find that balance that do care. As for suicides, they aren't an infectious disease that spreads from person to person. It's a choice that someone makes about themselves for a variety of reasons. They have the freedom to choose to live. They have the freedom to choose to die. People catching this disease and dying don't have that choice.

[Nature Boy 2.0 8,376]

11 minutes ago, Dashinka said:

So where is the balance?  There are studies correlating suicide to unemployment during an economic crisis.  These potential deaths need to be considered as well, so economic harm should not be ignored when making decisions like these.

There is a whole group of very smart people trying to figure that out, and its still going to be a judgment call!

 

Of course I am sure in addition to expert Virologists, Brilliant Economists and Hilarious comedians, I am sure Chest will soon have experts on proper times to reopen 

[Steeleballz 7,550]

24 minutes ago, Dashinka said:

So where is the balance?  There are studies correlating suicide to unemployment during an economic crisis.  These potential deaths need to be considered as well, so economic harm should not be ignored when making decisions like these.

 

  The balance is governments are leaning more towards prioritizing saving lives than stabilizing the economy. It's not perfectly in the middle, but it is what it is. I tend to agree. The economy won't really matter to me when I'm dead. 

[OriZ 3,157]

So I read the analysis in Hebrew. This professor is saying basically that he supports replacing lockdowns with moderate social distancing, so apparently he doesn't completely believe in "life as usual". This brings up another point - there are cultural differences between the countries used for this analysis(and then there are countries where due to certain circumstances - such as the dormitory situation in Singapore - have, likely temporarily, diverged from this pattern, so he ignored those countries altogether). The Israelis, French, and Italian are much less disciplined than the Swedes, for example. So in Sweden, you could still get people to practice good social distancing without having to force them to. 

 

He then looks at the addition of new cases per day in Israel and the doubling rate(nothing groundbreaking here). He then looks at daily new cases in the US, and, based on a single day, claims it proves it's not exponential

 

 

But wait, I thought most states are on lockdown? Anyway, it's not that I disagree as I've been sharing the % increase per day here for a while now, and yes, in absolute numbers as well, worldwide there is stability in the number of cases per day over the last few days(normally between ~70k-90k).

 

He shares this chart to show it:

 

 

Ok, any one of us can plot it based on worldometer. In fact, here, again, is my version of it(% based though)

 

 

Then he goes on to say countries that behaved completely different(and gives Italy and Sweden as an example) share this same pattern.

 

 

Then he makes the case that the weekly average of daily increase usually peaks in the dozens of % range(an observation I'm sure we've all made - seems to be between 30% to 50% usually, depends where) and declines into the 5-10% after 6 weeks. Again, can't dispute that, but it's beside the point(also in reality there's a big difference between 5% and 10%. 10% means each person still infects more than 1 person, and thus, the virus is still spreading. 5% means each person only infects 0.7 other people).

 

Then he actually goes on to make the distinction between full lockdown and closure of work places, to social distancing, preventing big gatherings, etc. He says there's "no doubt" that a lockdown decreases the number of infections. But that those decrease even without it, and is similar to countries under lockdown. He also says right now there's not enough data to understand the reason for that.

 

His conclusion is to end the lockdowns and closures, but to wear masks, perform more tests(which I have stated needs to be done as well), prevent large gatherings, etc. He then recommends increasing the work force to 50% and a week to 10 days later to 100%, except for in a few hotspots where there will be need to further gauge the rate of increase. Removing measures there, he says, should be based on that rate going beneath 5% per day(he doesn't state for how long though. but I have always thought that's pretty much what everyone should do - wait till we're comfortably beneath 5%, I prefer 3%, for a couple of weeks at least before you gradually start easing while deploying many of the other successful but less draconian measures instead).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 16, 2020 by OriZ

[OriZ 3,157]

4 hours ago, Dashinka said:

Depends on what that multiple is, if it is 0.5 then it would be better.  My point is there is no way you can determine what effect the measures have since you cannot go back and rerun the numbers of less drastic measures were taken.  We may very well have the same outcome if the governors had just pushed the testing, and pushed the self distancing without adding in the police.  The simple fact that we have governors playing nanny only leads to more and more of that mentality.

Sure you can. You can compare Italy and Spain pre-measures to after them. Same with NY. Even Sweden, while it may be showing a similar trend, has double the number of cases as Norway and Denmark(and 4 times the cases Finland has), is adding new ones at a rate of 5% per day vs 3% or lower in Norway, Finland and Denmark, all 3 of which took more drastic measures. 

 

Testing was, and still is, probably one of the most important things. Social distancing, without big government, is also important, if people take this seriously. However, most didn't so they needed to be shook a bit. Maybe now they'll continue practicing it even after restrictions are removed. I think for many it really took putting the fear of god in them.

 

I want to add something about testing - when I say testing I don't mean lets test 10% more than we do. I really, really think we should be testing at least 1 million people per day. Now, you can say that's not realistic but many countries are ramping up testing. Israel is getting ready to test 30,000 people per day. As a percent of the population, it's equal to around 1 million in the US. That's an average of only 20,000 per state, less than Israel would be testing(of course, in a small state like vt, it would be much lower than that, while in a state like CA, much higher). I really think if we ramped up testing to that level we could survive just fine with very few other measures. We can split it into half even - 500,000 tests on symptomatic patients ranging from the most mild to more severe, right now only the more severe are tested. and 500,000 which would be totally random, like Iceland does it. Or it doesn't even have to be totally random...you could test more people in areas that are harder hit, to try and prevent a large outburst. etc.

Edited April 16, 2020 by OriZ

[Voice of Reason 10,298]

And how do you propose labs that are currently testing 11-13,000 per day in the US make that leap to 1,000,000 tests per day?

[OriZ 3,157]

Speaking of 1 million per day, this just in and will certainly help:

 

https://abbott.mediaroom.com/2020-04-15-Abbott-Launches-Third-COVID-19-Test-a-Laboratory-Based-Antibody-Blood-Test-That-Will-Ship-in-the-U-S-Starting-Tomorrow

17 minutes ago, Voice of Reason said:

And how do you propose labs that are currently testing 11-13,000 per day in the US make that leap to 1,000,000 tests per day?

Honestly, I'm quite fed up with the excuses. If other countries with much more limited resources can do it, I'm sure the US can find a way. 

Edited April 16, 2020 by OriZ

[Voice of Reason 10,298]

4 minutes ago, OriZ said:

Honestly, I'm quite fed up with the excuses. If other countries with much more limited resources can do it, I'm sure the US can find a way. 

I'm sure they can.

 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

[TBoneTX 45,571]

Ain't gonna test anywhere near 330-whatever million Americans.

And someone testing negative on Tuesday could go positive on Friday.

[Dashinka 24,629]

5 hours ago, Steeleballz said:

 

  The balance is governments are leaning more towards prioritizing saving lives than stabilizing the economy. It's not perfectly in the middle, but it is what it is. I tend to agree. The economy won't really matter to me when I'm dead. 

Dead is dead whether the cause is Covid19 or due to an economic depression.