RSS
As I responded to John Ioannidis’s “A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data:” Well, let’s get the data. Let’s set up random samples to figure out how widespread the infection is so that we can estimate more accurately the case fatality rate.
From the Colorado Sun:
A Telluride couple is paying for their entire county’s coronavirus tests. They hope the results will stop the disease everywhere.
The idea is that the data collected in the testing can be used far beyond the box canyon that holds Telluride and broader San Miguel CountyPUBLISHED ON MAR 20, 2020 3:00AM MDT
Jesse Paul
@jesseapaul
The Colorado Sun — [email protected]San Miguel County in southwest Colorado through Thursday had no confirmed cases of the new coronavirus. But already it has sent a handful of people with severe respiratory ailments to hospitals where they’re receiving critical care for suspected infections.
In response and as a precaution, the county has taken some of the state’s most drastic measures to try to limit the spread of the disease. On Wednesday, the San Miguel County public health department ordered its roughly 8,000 residents to shelter in place until at least April 3.
The problem is the county, which includes the ritzy resort town of Telluride, has had little to no testing for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Final results from the screening that has been done on just 38 people aren’t yet available, so health officials are essentially flying blind.
(UPDATE: On Friday, the county announced it had received word that a 54-year-old man tested positive for the virus. He is isolation at home and is “recovering well.”)
“We are presuming we have disease,” county spokesman Susan Lilly said. “We just don’t know how widespread it is.”
But two part-time Telluride residents have stepped in to try to solve the testing problem. They’re paying for everyone in the town of about 2,500 — whether they are symptomatic or not — and county to be screened twice in the coming two weeks for coronavirus using a new blood test that’s received preliminary OK from the Food and Drug Administration.
The test was created by their own company, a subsidiary of United Biomedical Inc., and some 15,000 kits will be provided — representing roughly double San Miguel County’s population. Testing will be done in the town first and then expanded out into the county.
“Data is power,” said Mei Mei Hu, who along with her husband, Lou Reese, is making the testing possible.
They spoke to The Colorado Sun on Thursday morning as they were preparing their plane to ship an initial phase of samples — taken from emergency first responders and their family members — to a lab in California to be tested. Results are expected back in a few days — and then once everyone in the town and county is tested a first time, they will then be tested again.
There’s a hope that the data collected can be used far beyond San Miguel County and the one-road-in-one-road-out box canyon that holds Telluride. Hu and Reese believe their endeavor will mark the first time everyone in a U.S. county is tested for the virus. (Participation is voluntary.)
“This will be one of the first times where we screen a whole population,” Hu said. “What you do by testing en masse is you say, ‘What is active outbreak prevalence?’ If you’re positive on antibodies, that means you’ve been exposed to it at some time. If you test again in 14 days and you see that everyone is in the same state, it means that you didn’t have any new infections and you can then begin releasing people.”
Perhaps most significantly: The testing may be able to show how many people in Telluride and San Miguel County are infected with coronavirus but aren’t aware of it. In most cases, the disease results in only mild symptoms. Some people show no symptoms at all.
“In the event that there’s a lot, then I think it really informs the public,” Reese said.
Hu and Reese point to a similar mass testing completed in a town that was at the center of Italy’s outbreak. The experiment in Vo allowed authorities in the town near Venice to completely stop the spread of the illness by taking targeted social distancing measures and ensuring infected people were isolated.
If they are successful in Telluride, they may be able to replicate their model across the U.S.
iSteve commenter O’Really points out:
what’s notable about the test being administered in Telluride is that it is an antibody test, which will tell if you were ever exposed – as opposed to a standard infection swab that only tells if you are sick now
It sounds like this rich couple know what they are doing and intend to do it right. America has lots of talented and/or rich people who can step up and help out.
In other ski news, from Bloomberg:
Vail Emerges as Virus Hotbed for Mexican Skiers Returning Home
By Andrea Navarro
March 19, 2020, 12:58 PM PDT
Jalisco government searching for 400 travelers to U.S. resort
At least three executives contracted virus after going to Vail
Prince Albert II of Monaco, the 62-year-old son of movie star Grace Kelly, has the virus.
The Prince’s maternal line are perhaps the second most glamorous Irish-American Catholic family after the Kennedys. His grandfather Jack Kelly was a bricklayer and amateur rower. He was banned from the 1920 Henley Regatta on the grounds that his trade of bricklaying gave him a muscular advantage over the English gentleman rowers. So instead he went to the 1920 Olympics where he beat the English winner of Henley in a dramatic race by one second. He then mailed his cap to the King of England with the note “Greetings from a bricklayer.”
He is an avid skier and his winter had been full of ski-related charity events and meet and greets. Here’s a press release from January:
Event Description
Welcome to World Snow Day by the Federation Monegasque de ski.An avid skier, Prince Albert II of Monaco is a greater supporter of children and the next generation. To celebrate his passion the HSH Prince Albert in conjunction with the Federation Monegasque de Ski will be hosting a 2 day World Snow Day event in Isola 2000. …
HSH Prince Albert will be looking to make an appearance. We hope you have a chance to meet him in person.
Who wouldn’t want to be able to say: “On my vacation to the Alps, guess whose hand I shook? The Prince of Monaco: Grace Kelly’s son!”
So far, this has been The Popular People’s Pandemic.
With the entire state on lockdown, wouldn’t this be a great time to play LACC or BelAir?
I can picture the headline now:
"Trespassing golfer eaten by mountain lion on Bel-Air golf links"
Here’s an interesting Twitter thread. Apparently, Imperial College has projected different scenarios for the Corona epidemic.
I should add that Imperial College is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.
If the American govt does nothing, 4 million Americans will die. Globally, 90 million will die.
If we run a “mitigation” strategy, 2 million Americans die. Globally, 45 million people die.
If we run a very severe “suppression” strategy, “only” thousands die. However, we have to be super strict and never relax the “suppression.”
14-18 months to get a vaccine. Minimum. Perhaps even longer.
So this is really extreme.
Either we take 18 months off from regular life, or many millions will die.
In 2020, that's a good sign to ignore everything they say
Here’s something I just learned - death cannot be prevented. We can only delay it at best and even then there’s always a quality/quantity trade off.
So by all means, let’s destroy the global economy, our national economy, and imperil tens of millions of healthy Americans living on the fiscal edge due to the globalization that gave us the WuFlu. We may get starving kids, but by golly we’re going to keep those geezers and deaths-edge population alive an extra few weeks, months, or (at very best) years to continue producing nothing and consuming the lion’s share of our healthcare system’s resources (20%+ of GDP no?).
Somehow I get the impression that the elites who decided this course are disproportionately affluent (definitely not subsisting on a paycheck) and old while the peons who will shoulder the cost are that minority in the private sector earning (and desperately needing) the now missing paycheck.
They have ridiculous scenarios where I would make 10-20 million dollars or some such number or lose it all fast.
Vanguard tells you to ignore those and look at the middle results.
You can run a model for anything.
Even 8 years ago, they knew what they were doing.
Equally surprising is that a nation that put all it had to build carriers, submarines, aircraft etc., failing spectacularly in not being able to ramp up production of test kits and ventilators but also PPEs. Anyone with sewing machine and fabric can stitch those gowns and masks and our doctors are relying on donations from home depot etc., to operate in ICUs.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/america-isnt-failing-its-pandemic-testwashington-is/608026/
I love the smell of fear porn in the evening. This was a ZHedge-grade comment.
I should add that Imperial College is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world."
It sounds like Imperial College uses the same computer models that predicted global warming would render Earth uninhabitable by 2010.
An institution is only prestigious when you don't have to remind people it is prestigious.
100% certified fake news.
I don't necessarily find it panic inducing that people that were a few months from death happened to die with the COVID in their system. A lot of countries are counting deaths from other diseases as COVID deaths just because that was present in their system at the time.
If we're going to take 18 months off for people with a year left on their lives we'll be sacrificing the other hundred millions of lives to poverty.
The wealth and livelihoods that are being destroyed isn't just paper wealth either.. it's real tangible stuff as a result of keeping a population locked up for months.
Newsflash: Many more will die as a result of TPTB induced financial crash and the ultimate world war TPTB will launch in an attempt to drag what is left of us out of it.
So even without a vaccine, perpetual suppression need not be the only alternative to a holocaust.
Thanks for this, very interesting !
I should add that Imperial College is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.
https://twitter.com/jeremycyoung/status/1239975682643357696
If the American govt does nothing, 4 million Americans will die. Globally, 90 million will die.If we run a "mitigation" strategy, 2 million Americans die. Globally, 45 million people die.If we run a very severe "suppression" strategy, "only" thousands die. However, we have to be super strict and never relax the "suppression."14-18 months to get a vaccine. Minimum. Perhaps even longer.So this is really extreme.
Either we take 18 months off from regular life, or many millions will die.
“Imperial College is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.”
In 2020, that’s a good sign to ignore everything they say
This is not about skiing, but the material is both virus related and very i-stevey, so I am posting it here:
https://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=142595
The site is called the Rumor News Mill so right off the bat you know it is more accurate than CNN. I will repost the text, without all the videos and bells and whistles of the site:
“The controversial Ethiopian politician and Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, claimed in a press conference in early March that the fatality rate for the coronavirus was many multiples that of the fatality rate of the common flu.
“This egregiously false premise has led to the greatest economic panic in world history.
“The Director General of the WHO spoke on March 3, 2020 and shared this related to the coronavirus:
“While many people globally have built up immunity to seasonal flu strains, COVID-19 is a new virus to which no one has immunity. That means more people are susceptible to infection, and some will suffer severe disease.
“Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected.
“This statement led to the greatest panic in world history as the global elite media shared and repeated that the coronavirus was many, many times more deadly than the common flu.
“The problem is his statement is false.
“It was not accurate!
“A look at the numbers:
(there is a table, but I don’t know how to post tables here and the bullets below explain the table pretty well)
** Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus used the actual number of deaths due to coronavirus divided by confirmed cases to get his 3.4% mortality rate number (from last week -since that time the mortality rate based on current reported numbers is near 4%)
** Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus then compared the actual coronavirus mortality rate to an estimated flu mortality rate of 0.1% — The US flu mortality rate is based on an estimated 22,000 deaths divided by an estimated 36 million flu cases giving a 0.1% mortality rate.
** Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus compared known numbers for coronavirus (3.4 percent mortality rate) but did not include the estimated number of those infected who are asymtomatic. This number is likely in the tens of thousands and could be in the millions! There is no way of knowing right now. One study released this week revealed that 6 of 7 people infected by coronavirus are asymptomatic! They do not know they are infected!
** Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus then compared the known numbers of 206,845 cases of coronavirus to the millions of estimated annual cases of flu cases. Again he does not include the asymtomatic cases, the 6 of 7 people infected who do not suffer severe symptoms.
** If asymtomatic cases are included in Ghebreyesus’s calculation the actual mortality rate of the coronavirus is somewhere between 0.2% to 0.8% or lower.
** Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’s calculations of a 3.4% mortality rate is off by nearly 3.0%!
“Ghebreyesus compared apples to oranges and his numbers were completely inaccurate!
“As of Wednesday morning.
“There were 7,301 confirmed cases in the US.
“There were 116 confirmed deaths associated with the coronavirus in the US.
“The mortality rate for those two sets of numbers is 1.6%.
“We also know that according to a new study by the journal Science — 6 of 7 coronavirus victims, or 86% of infections, were undocumented.
“If latest study published in the Science journal is correct then the coronavirus scare will be the greatest hoax in world history causing trillions and trillions of dollars in economic damage.
“The WHO and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus need to be held responsible! ”
So pretty much the accusation is that all this is caused by the UN hiring as a senior bureaucrat someone without good math skills, and no one catching this.
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/817974987/every-single-individual-must-stay-home-italy-s-coronavirus-deaths-pass-china-s
Reminds me of the Vanguard investing scenarios they run for you to see if your investments will last.
They have ridiculous scenarios where I would make 10-20 million dollars or some such number or lose it all fast.
Vanguard tells you to ignore those and look at the middle results.
You can run a model for anything.
Mexico should be an interesting case in the coming weeks. AMLO’s basically taken a “let’s have a cerveza and a siesta” approach to the virus and now he’s got some rich folks spreading it around. Could be quite a ride for them.
This is nothing but rich racists showing off. It is just more white people pretending they are not selfish and filling their days with schemes to harm Numinous Negroes and Generously Just Jews.
It is most disgustingly racist that they slip in an Asian name, pretending to see Asians as anything other than Coolies.
When the sacred Diversity of this country means that whites are well below 50% is when it can become paradise.
Just like Detroit and the Dominican Republic.
I should add that Imperial College is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.
https://twitter.com/jeremycyoung/status/1239975682643357696
If the American govt does nothing, 4 million Americans will die. Globally, 90 million will die.If we run a "mitigation" strategy, 2 million Americans die. Globally, 45 million people die.If we run a very severe "suppression" strategy, "only" thousands die. However, we have to be super strict and never relax the "suppression."14-18 months to get a vaccine. Minimum. Perhaps even longer.So this is really extreme.
Either we take 18 months off from regular life, or many millions will die.
The OP has an exciting glimmer of hope that could come from mass testing, as was done in one town in Italy.
If you’re over 70 and in good health wouldn’t it make sense to try to get the virus so that you can get a ventilator before the system overloads and they run out?
I should add that Imperial College is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.
https://twitter.com/jeremycyoung/status/1239975682643357696
If the American govt does nothing, 4 million Americans will die. Globally, 90 million will die.If we run a "mitigation" strategy, 2 million Americans die. Globally, 45 million people die.If we run a very severe "suppression" strategy, "only" thousands die. However, we have to be super strict and never relax the "suppression."14-18 months to get a vaccine. Minimum. Perhaps even longer.So this is really extreme.
Either we take 18 months off from regular life, or many millions will die.
Except that it’s a false choice.
Here’s something I just learned – death cannot be prevented. We can only delay it at best and even then there’s always a quality/quantity trade off.
So by all means, let’s destroy the global economy, our national economy, and imperil tens of millions of healthy Americans living on the fiscal edge due to the globalization that gave us the WuFlu. We may get starving kids, but by golly we’re going to keep those geezers and deaths-edge population alive an extra few weeks, months, or (at very best) years to continue producing nothing and consuming the lion’s share of our healthcare system’s resources (20%+ of GDP no?).
Somehow I get the impression that the elites who decided this course are disproportionately affluent (definitely not subsisting on a paycheck) and old while the peons who will shoulder the cost are that minority in the private sector earning (and desperately needing) the now missing paycheck.
In a bad flu year, the CDC guesses that 60,000 people over 65 die from the flu. Let’s say we have a year in which a million people over 65 die of a viral illness, namely Covid-19.
This is what doctors said a hundred years ago about pneumonia, which is how respiratory illnesses kill:Is it worth creating a really bad economic situation that frankly I can’t see a way out of, if anti-virals don’t work, and vaccines (if they even work) are years away.
Don’t forget the coronaviruses that cause colds. There’s no such thing as a vaccine, and there really isn’t an effective antiviral medication.
What if the Covid-19 virus is here to stay, there’s no vaccine, no anti-viral, and it gets passed around like the common cold?
Welcome to the 1800’s.
Yet, the virus seems like a genuine threat, judging by the ever-expanding case load in hospitals in Italy. If it were no worse than the flu, then why are the hospitals overflowing?
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/817974987/every-single-individual-must-stay-home-italy-s-coronavirus-deaths-pass-china-s
Here is the ISS website: http://old.iss.it/chis/index.php?lang=2&tipo=9
There are various articles on the internet about the findings, though I wouldn't expect NPR to cover this story. Here is one:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/19/iss-report-99-of-covid19-deaths-already-ill/
Here is the ISS website: http://old.iss.it/chis/index.php?lang=2&tipo=9
There are various articles on the internet about the findings, though I wouldn't expect NPR to cover this story. Here is one:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/19/iss-report-99-of-covid19-deaths-already-ill/
Here is the ISS website:
http://old.iss.it/chis/index.php?lang=2&tipo=9
There are various articles on the internet about the findings, though I wouldn't expect NPR to cover this story. Here is one:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/19/iss-report-99-of-covid19-deaths-already-ill/
RumorMillNews? Now that takes me back.
In 2020, that's a good sign to ignore everything they say
Imperial is a serious institution.
https://twitter.com/SirSocks/status/1238777568410599424?s=20
This is a small step forward.
But it seems to me what we need is a solid experiment to see what the real case fatality rate is. And i think we’ve got a perfect group of volunteers.
There are 535 members of Congress. They are the people who have brought us globalization–open borders, mass immigration, moving industry to China, including medical supply chains–and done absolutely nothing to prepare for a pandemic despite repeated (SARS, H1N1, Ebola) shots across our bow.
So it is only fair that the 535 members of Congress be infected with the Covid-19 virus. They receive excellent medical care–much better than the typical American–so will be a best case scenario. From them we can in the next few weeks, quickly determine the real case fatality rate. Do the math for age–and other demographic adjustments–and we’ll have a very good idea where we stand.
Trump needs to get the ball rolling on this forthwith as this is a national crisis–lives and livelihoods are in the balance. Get Congress infected and let’s get the data we need!
ANALYST: Behold our new pandemic strategy! We will seal off the Capitol with both houses of Congress inside, then infect each member with the Coronavirus.
CLIENT: Are you sure this will help us research the virus?
ANALYST: ....research the virus?
https://youtu.be/eFCzoXhNM6c
what’s notable about the test being administered in Telluride is that it is an antibody test, which will tell if you were ever exposed – as opposed to a standard infection swab that only tells if you are sick now
I should add that Imperial College is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.
https://twitter.com/jeremycyoung/status/1239975682643357696
If the American govt does nothing, 4 million Americans will die. Globally, 90 million will die.If we run a "mitigation" strategy, 2 million Americans die. Globally, 45 million people die.If we run a very severe "suppression" strategy, "only" thousands die. However, we have to be super strict and never relax the "suppression."14-18 months to get a vaccine. Minimum. Perhaps even longer.So this is really extreme.
Either we take 18 months off from regular life, or many millions will die.
Don’t count on a vaccine in 14 months. People have been trying for a HIV vaccine for 35 years. But nice to see an analysis that covers at least the obvious stuff about death rates with medical care.
Thanks.
I should add that Imperial College is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.
https://twitter.com/jeremycyoung/status/1239975682643357696
If the American govt does nothing, 4 million Americans will die. Globally, 90 million will die.If we run a "mitigation" strategy, 2 million Americans die. Globally, 45 million people die.If we run a very severe "suppression" strategy, "only" thousands die. However, we have to be super strict and never relax the "suppression."14-18 months to get a vaccine. Minimum. Perhaps even longer.So this is really extreme.
Either we take 18 months off from regular life, or many millions will die.
Reminds me of the Vanguard investing scenarios they run for you to see if your investments will last.
They have ridiculous scenarios where I would make 10-20 million dollars or some such number or lose it all fast.
Vanguard tells you to ignore those and look at the middle results.
You can run a model for anything.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/19/818698736/prince-albert-ii-of-monaco-tests-positive-for-coronavirus
Google News has him at many more skiing events leading up to this one. He may have been infected multiple times.
I took a few sick days just out of being so sick of hearing about this shit. Now, I’ve gotta hear about it at home. The nice thing will be teaching the elementary-school boy latitude/long coordinates. We’re trying to knock out the stupid on-line school crap in the morning, so we can learn stuff later on in the day.
Oh, I finally saw most of Ford vs. Ferrari. It was very good, Steve. Don’t anyone tell me the last 40 minutes, as they’d just gotten going in the Le Mons race when I had to quit watching due to the plane pulling into the gate.
I should add that Imperial College is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.
https://twitter.com/jeremycyoung/status/1239975682643357696
If the American govt does nothing, 4 million Americans will die. Globally, 90 million will die.If we run a "mitigation" strategy, 2 million Americans die. Globally, 45 million people die.If we run a very severe "suppression" strategy, "only" thousands die. However, we have to be super strict and never relax the "suppression."14-18 months to get a vaccine. Minimum. Perhaps even longer.So this is really extreme.
Either we take 18 months off from regular life, or many millions will die.
Any relation to the Imperial Palace in Las Vegas? Very prestigious 2nd rate hotel. Asian themed. Renamed the Quad in 2012. As in, Quadintine, round eye!
Even 8 years ago, they knew what they were doing.
So, it went from being a second-rate hotel to a second-rate Harvard dorm?
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/817974987/every-single-individual-must-stay-home-italy-s-coronavirus-deaths-pass-china-s
The figures being released by the Italian Institute of Health, which seems to be their equivalent of the CDC, contradict these reports, which seem to be media reports not backed by anything.
Here is the ISS website: http://old.iss.it/chis/index.php?lang=2&tipo=9
There are various articles on the internet about the findings, though I wouldn’t expect NPR to cover this story. Here is one:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/19/iss-report-99-of-covid19-deaths-already-ill/
Also, every country in the world is taking drastic actions. It seems like it would have to be a big conspiracy.
Rather than "shelter-in-place", maybe it would be better if we just required the elderly/infirm to wear an N95 mask. It wouldn't be very enforceable, but when something is a law, then people feel like they can do it, without anyone thinking they're crazy. Also, it can be explained that it's in their own interest and it will help to prevent the overloading of hospitals.
If we did this, then it would be fine to scare people a little bit, with the images of overloaded hospitals. If some people wear masks, it won't shut down the economy and people won't be frightened by government overreach, with loss of liberty. In general, life could continue as normal.
The problem is we don't have enough masks. But if we just made the order, then people may find a way. Here's a good DIY video that uses a "Merv 13 Filter" to remove small particles, possibly serving as a good substitute for an N95 mask.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grRqoHxPjaY
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/817974987/every-single-individual-must-stay-home-italy-s-coronavirus-deaths-pass-china-s
The figures being released by the Italian Institute of Health, which seems to be their equivalent of the CDC, contradict these reports, which seem to be media reports not backed by anything.
Here is the ISS website: http://old.iss.it/chis/index.php?lang=2&tipo=9
There are various articles on the internet about the findings, though I wouldn’t expect NPR to cover this story. Here is one:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/19/iss-report-99-of-covid19-deaths-already-ill/
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/817974987/every-single-individual-must-stay-home-italy-s-coronavirus-deaths-pass-china-s
The figures being released by the Italian Institute of Health, which seems to be their equivalent of the CDC, contradict these reports, which seem to be media reports not backed by anything.
Here is the ISS website:
http://old.iss.it/chis/index.php?lang=2&tipo=9
There are various articles on the internet about the findings, though I wouldn’t expect NPR to cover this story. Here is one:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/19/iss-report-99-of-covid19-deaths-already-ill/
OT: Walmart now letting their
wage-slavesassociates declare their pronouns:https://www.zerohedge.com/political/woke-elite-walmart-surge-preferred-pronouns
Here’s something I just learned - death cannot be prevented. We can only delay it at best and even then there’s always a quality/quantity trade off.
So by all means, let’s destroy the global economy, our national economy, and imperil tens of millions of healthy Americans living on the fiscal edge due to the globalization that gave us the WuFlu. We may get starving kids, but by golly we’re going to keep those geezers and deaths-edge population alive an extra few weeks, months, or (at very best) years to continue producing nothing and consuming the lion’s share of our healthcare system’s resources (20%+ of GDP no?).
Somehow I get the impression that the elites who decided this course are disproportionately affluent (definitely not subsisting on a paycheck) and old while the peons who will shoulder the cost are that minority in the private sector earning (and desperately needing) the now missing paycheck.
You nailed it. Once people understand this, I don’t see how it’s tolerated.
But it seems to me what we need is a solid experiment to see what the real case fatality rate is. And i think we've got a perfect group of volunteers.
There are 535 members of Congress. They are the people who have brought us globalization--open borders, mass immigration, moving industry to China, including medical supply chains--and done absolutely nothing to prepare for a pandemic despite repeated (SARS, H1N1, Ebola) shots across our bow.
So it is only fair that the 535 members of Congress be infected with the Covid-19 virus. They receive excellent medical care--much better than the typical American--so will be a best case scenario. From them we can in the next few weeks, quickly determine the real case fatality rate. Do the math for age--and other demographic adjustments--and we'll have a very good idea where we stand.
Trump needs to get the ball rolling on this forthwith as this is a national crisis--lives and livelihoods are in the balance. Get Congress infected and let's get the data we need!
Or, as the Stonetoss guy might play it:
ANALYST: Behold our new pandemic strategy! We will seal off the Capitol with both houses of Congress inside, then infect each member with the Coronavirus.
CLIENT: Are you sure this will help us research the virus?
ANALYST: ….research the virus?
Here’s something I just learned - death cannot be prevented. We can only delay it at best and even then there’s always a quality/quantity trade off.
So by all means, let’s destroy the global economy, our national economy, and imperil tens of millions of healthy Americans living on the fiscal edge due to the globalization that gave us the WuFlu. We may get starving kids, but by golly we’re going to keep those geezers and deaths-edge population alive an extra few weeks, months, or (at very best) years to continue producing nothing and consuming the lion’s share of our healthcare system’s resources (20%+ of GDP no?).
Somehow I get the impression that the elites who decided this course are disproportionately affluent (definitely not subsisting on a paycheck) and old while the peons who will shoulder the cost are that minority in the private sector earning (and desperately needing) the now missing paycheck.
I think you make good points. Americans have been hypnotized by their TVs into thinking they will never die, or that death is rare or unusual.
In a bad flu year, the CDC guesses that 60,000 people over 65 die from the flu. Let’s say we have a year in which a million people over 65 die of a viral illness, namely Covid-19.
This is what doctors said a hundred years ago about pneumonia, which is how respiratory illnesses kill:
Is it worth creating a really bad economic situation that frankly I can’t see a way out of, if anti-virals don’t work, and vaccines (if they even work) are years away.
Don’t forget the coronaviruses that cause colds. There’s no such thing as a vaccine, and there really isn’t an effective antiviral medication.
What if the Covid-19 virus is here to stay, there’s no vaccine, no anti-viral, and it gets passed around like the common cold?
Welcome to the 1800’s.
Even 8 years ago, they knew what they were doing.
“Renamed the Quad in 2012”
So, it went from being a second-rate hotel to a second-rate Harvard dorm?
Even 8 years ago, they knew what they were doing.
Ah yes, what a dump it was. Did have a nice collection of classic cars on the top floor tho.
I should add that Imperial College is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.
https://twitter.com/jeremycyoung/status/1239975682643357696
If the American govt does nothing, 4 million Americans will die. Globally, 90 million will die.If we run a "mitigation" strategy, 2 million Americans die. Globally, 45 million people die.If we run a very severe "suppression" strategy, "only" thousands die. However, we have to be super strict and never relax the "suppression."14-18 months to get a vaccine. Minimum. Perhaps even longer.So this is really extreme.
Either we take 18 months off from regular life, or many millions will die.
Even if one takes one hundredth of their estimated deaths, 40000 deaths would be like a mini nuclear bomb attack. So, we spent trillions of dollars over 50 years trying to fight a nuclear war and would be done in now because someone wanted a bowl of bat soup.
Equally surprising is that a nation that put all it had to build carriers, submarines, aircraft etc., failing spectacularly in not being able to ramp up production of test kits and ventilators but also PPEs. Anyone with sewing machine and fabric can stitch those gowns and masks and our doctors are relying on donations from home depot etc., to operate in ICUs.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/america-isnt-failing-its-pandemic-testwashington-is/608026/
This should provide some sound data. Testing an entire geographical area will provide a cross section of western Colorado – rich ski wastrels, ski bums, ski town baristas but also ranchers, shopkeepers etc. Yeah, it’s remote so the exposure should be low, but still – solid data.
Got to endorse rich people using their money with some intelligence instead of stupidity. I notice that the couple in question is in Telluride rather than New Zealand, where Bezos’ jet has been for a while.
I should add that Imperial College is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.
https://twitter.com/jeremycyoung/status/1239975682643357696
If the American govt does nothing, 4 million Americans will die. Globally, 90 million will die.If we run a "mitigation" strategy, 2 million Americans die. Globally, 45 million people die.If we run a very severe "suppression" strategy, "only" thousands die. However, we have to be super strict and never relax the "suppression."14-18 months to get a vaccine. Minimum. Perhaps even longer.So this is really extreme.
Either we take 18 months off from regular life, or many millions will die.
“Either we take 18 months off from regular life, or many millions will die.”
I love the smell of fear porn in the evening. This was a ZHedge-grade comment.
Mei Mei who? Oh, Mei Mei Reese, the best-yclept Reese since Pee Wee.
Lou Reese– taking a walk on the wild side.
Why are things on planes “shipped”? Or on trains or trucks, for that matter?
Mexicans ski?
I should add that Imperial College is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.
https://twitter.com/jeremycyoung/status/1239975682643357696
If the American govt does nothing, 4 million Americans will die. Globally, 90 million will die.If we run a "mitigation" strategy, 2 million Americans die. Globally, 45 million people die.If we run a very severe "suppression" strategy, "only" thousands die. However, we have to be super strict and never relax the "suppression."14-18 months to get a vaccine. Minimum. Perhaps even longer.So this is really extreme.
Either we take 18 months off from regular life, or many millions will die.
“Apparently, Imperial College has projected different scenarios for the Corona epidemic.
I should add that Imperial College is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.”
It sounds like Imperial College uses the same computer models that predicted global warming would render Earth uninhabitable by 2010.
An institution is only prestigious when you don’t have to remind people it is prestigious.
100% certified fake news.
I should add that Imperial College is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.
https://twitter.com/jeremycyoung/status/1239975682643357696
If the American govt does nothing, 4 million Americans will die. Globally, 90 million will die.If we run a "mitigation" strategy, 2 million Americans die. Globally, 45 million people die.If we run a very severe "suppression" strategy, "only" thousands die. However, we have to be super strict and never relax the "suppression."14-18 months to get a vaccine. Minimum. Perhaps even longer.So this is really extreme.
Either we take 18 months off from regular life, or many millions will die.
We’re not working with enough data, and some countries aren’t weighing deaths properly.
I don’t necessarily find it panic inducing that people that were a few months from death happened to die with the COVID in their system. A lot of countries are counting deaths from other diseases as COVID deaths just because that was present in their system at the time.
If we’re going to take 18 months off for people with a year left on their lives we’ll be sacrificing the other hundred millions of lives to poverty.
The wealth and livelihoods that are being destroyed isn’t just paper wealth either.. it’s real tangible stuff as a result of keeping a population locked up for months.
I just have to find a hole in the fence.
I can picture the headline now:
“Trespassing golfer eaten by mountain lion on Bel-Air golf links”
Thanks.
Viruses love low temperatures. If you’re out for a couple of hours on the slopes, zooming downhill and shrieking yiiipppppeeeee! into that cold wind and sucking in great gouts of icy air, sorry, you’ve just created the perfect environment for Covid-19 to thrive in your nose, mouth, throat, and lungs. Spending hours every day in cold air is a really bad idea if you’re harboring a respiratory virus.
The problem with a vaccine for Covid-19 is that there are multiple strains of it. A vaccine may only target 1 strain. Covid-19 may be similar to the flu, where they concoct a shot of 3-4 strains of what they think may be the most prevalent flu types this year and just hope they don’t guess wrong.
The Prince makes an odd appearance as a supporting character in the “Social Network”, talking up his rowing connections to the Winkelvoss brothers at the Henley Royal Regatta. His grandfather had quite a career. Much healthier than skiing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Kelly_Sr.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Kelly_Sr.
Because of the limitations of the website software, the period at the end of your link didn’t parse as part of the link.
John B. Kelly Sr.
Did you see India is going to start testing random samples of 1,000 people at a time?
For those wondering, Monaco has no king, so Albert is reigning prince.
Albert is a former Winter Olympic athlete. He competed in the bobsleigh in all five games held from Calgary 1988 to Salt Lake City 2002. After his father died in 2005 he stopped competing.
I’m sure you made your Grace Kelly references tongue in cheek, but I don’t think Americans know who Grace Kelly is anymore. She got married in 1956 and never acted again.
As an aside, Albert is an alumnus of Amherst. He did not attend only because he was then an American citizen. Plenty of other foreign royalty also attend college in America. Can anyone speculate why that is?
More a competitor than an athlete
I have a memory from some long ago Winter Olympics of Prince Albert sitting in the bobsleigh while his three other team members pushed the thing before they jumped in . With all other teams all four team members did the push starting but, heh, (joke ) royalty isn't allowed to perspire or something .
Iwould like to think that the days are over of joke competitors like the Monaco bobsleigh team being allowed to participate in any Olympic event .
They are a very bad look when many quite able competitors are denied Olympic participation. Monaco bobsleighing started and finished with Prince Albert
Hopefully
I should add that Imperial College is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.
https://twitter.com/jeremycyoung/status/1239975682643357696
If the American govt does nothing, 4 million Americans will die. Globally, 90 million will die.If we run a "mitigation" strategy, 2 million Americans die. Globally, 45 million people die.If we run a very severe "suppression" strategy, "only" thousands die. However, we have to be super strict and never relax the "suppression."14-18 months to get a vaccine. Minimum. Perhaps even longer.So this is really extreme.
Either we take 18 months off from regular life, or many millions will die.
Aka. the Cambridge Reject Bin
But it seems to me what we need is a solid experiment to see what the real case fatality rate is. And i think we've got a perfect group of volunteers.
There are 535 members of Congress. They are the people who have brought us globalization--open borders, mass immigration, moving industry to China, including medical supply chains--and done absolutely nothing to prepare for a pandemic despite repeated (SARS, H1N1, Ebola) shots across our bow.
So it is only fair that the 535 members of Congress be infected with the Covid-19 virus. They receive excellent medical care--much better than the typical American--so will be a best case scenario. From them we can in the next few weeks, quickly determine the real case fatality rate. Do the math for age--and other demographic adjustments--and we'll have a very good idea where we stand.
Trump needs to get the ball rolling on this forthwith as this is a national crisis--lives and livelihoods are in the balance. Get Congress infected and let's get the data we need!
AnotherDad, the House’s most prominent member has already volunteered:
A friend is a scientist at Imperial, they are as loony left as the rest of academia and wouldn’t hesitate to BS if they thought it would advance their political cause.
The priority here in Britain is to develop the antibody test, they claimed that it is nearly ready.
Here is the ISS website:
http://old.iss.it/chis/index.php?lang=2&tipo=9
There are various articles on the internet about the findings, though I wouldn't expect NPR to cover this story. Here is one:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/19/iss-report-99-of-covid19-deaths-already-ill/
Sorry for the triple post, the site kept giving an error message when I tried to post. Then I got a message warning me about posting too much in an hour, when I discovered my post had hit three times but I couldn’t apologize since I had just inadvertently spammed the site.
Albert is a former Winter Olympic athlete. He competed in the bobsleigh in all five games held from Calgary 1988 to Salt Lake City 2002. After his father died in 2005 he stopped competing.
I'm sure you made your Grace Kelly references tongue in cheek, but I don't think Americans know who Grace Kelly is anymore. She got married in 1956 and never acted again.
As an aside, Albert is an alumnus of Amherst. He did not attend only because he was then an American citizen. Plenty of other foreign royalty also attend college in America. Can anyone speculate why that is?
“Albert is a former Winter Olympic athlete ”
More a competitor than an athlete
I have a memory from some long ago Winter Olympics of Prince Albert sitting in the bobsleigh while his three other team members pushed the thing before they jumped in . With all other teams all four team members did the push starting but, heh, (joke ) royalty isn’t allowed to perspire or something .
Iwould like to think that the days are over of joke competitors like the Monaco bobsleigh team being allowed to participate in any Olympic event .
They are a very bad look when many quite able competitors are denied Olympic participation. Monaco bobsleighing started and finished with Prince Albert
Hopefully
All death statistics are from government data.
Is anyone checking to see if the data is correct?
Does anyone know the name of one person who died from Covid-19?
Has anyone checked to see what the death certificate states as cause of death?
Is anyone checking…anything?
Or are people just running around like chickens with their head cut off?
Is anyone checking to see if the data is correct?
Does anyone know the name of one person who died from Covid-19?
Has anyone checked to see what the death certificate states as cause of death?
Is anyone checking…anything?
Or are people just running around like chickens with their head cut off?<<
This is classic skepticism which when unleavened by rational thought becomes rancid cynicism.
How can we tell that? Note that all of these questions, which are a jumble of lazy thoughts, assume that Mr./Ms. Anyone should be jumping up and "checking" to see if the data is correct. Mr. Realist here, often a decent commentator, makes an assumption that no one hasn't already "checked." Why that assumption? The reports from authoritative sources are checked by staffers, doctors, scientists and academics. The "reports" put out on Facebook, Twitter and most personal Internet blogs are not checked and are usually hyping click bait rumors or are merely mental illness on parade.
As for China and the Third World, those stats can't usually be independently verified. In China that is forbidden and punished when disclosed. Yet the MSM parrots the CCP Party Line that the Chinese virus is now nearly petering out. This should be "checked" but can't be. Third World stats are always bad. If Mr. Realist wants to verify what he reads he is free to attempt to do so. As for me, the local news does report the names of the COVID-19 fatalities and many of those who are now sick. Death certificates are normally filed at county clerk offices. Feel free to check those yourself.
Don't simply imply that everything we hear is random noise when you have not lifted your own finger to verify anything yourself. Or even read a local paper or watch a local news broadcast. Don't be a silly child about this, as many are now becoming. You are better than that.
The following is Bill Gates’ response to the Imperial study. As an aside, while I disagree almost entirely with his politics, I once had the opportunity to sit in on small group with Gates and was struck how knowledgeable and informed he was on a topic I had no idea he knew anything about. He listens, reads, and interrogates….
Fortunately it appears the parameters used in that model were too negative. The experience in China is the most critical data we have. They did their “shut down” and were able to reduce the number of cases. They are testing widely so they see rebounds immediately and so far there have not been a lot. They avoided widespread infection. The Imperial model does not match this experience. Models are only as good as the assumptions put into them. People are working on models that match what we are seeing more closely and they will become a key tool. A group called Institute for Disease Modeling that I fund is one of the groups working with others on this.
Fortunately it appears the parameters used in that model were too negative. The experience in China is the most critical data we have. They did their “shut down” and were able to reduce the number of cases. They are testing widely so they see rebounds immediately and so far there have not been a lot. They avoided widespread infection. The Imperial model does not match this experience. Models are only as good as the assumptions put into them. People are working on models that match what we are seeing more closely and they will become a key tool. A group called Institute for Disease Modeling that I fund is one of the groups working with others on this.
For epidemiology competence among extremely famous celebrity Americans, I’d probably rank Gates #1.
Imagine the money Elizabeth Holmes could be making now!
Steve, I assume that’s sarcasm given the low bar for celebrities. Regardless, as I mentioned, I was impressed with how knowledgeable he was on a topic I knew pretty well, namely, large scale, dynamic environments. Gates knew his stuff including the math, academic papers, and practical applications. I later learned he’s a big fan of Vaclav Smil, who is one of the world’s leading experts. I mention this to suggest Gates isn’t another BS artist pushing his agenda but seems to have some knowledge of or familiarity with the subject.
Hey, Wuhan is the former Hangcow!
Somehow, with that apércu, I suddenly feel less lost. Ok, even though, in truth, I never really knew anything about Hangcow except its name.
Just wanted to toss than in for the benefit of other boomers here who, like me, are annoyed with the unwarranted obsolescence of the knowledge we so painstakingly consolidated in our young days while looking for boobie pictures in National Geographic.
Hottentots! Starfish! Killer Whales! Peking! … Hangcow!
A good friend who worked for me in 1986 got a job at Microsoft in 1987 and became head of Microsoft’s New York office and a close friend of Bill Gates in whose service he worked himself to death at age 37:
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/01/us/john-neilson-37-microsoft-vice-president.html
He said Bill Gates was much smarter than corruscatingly brilliant John Malec, the founder of the company where we’d worked together.
You may wish to correct "corruscatingly" to coruscatingly if you as an unz.com author can do so.
No need to approve this comment.
Respectfully,
Ickenham
Steve
The study does what it says it does, but no more. I’ve written similar simulations. They don’t really intend to model reality, to be what are called “predictive” simulations. They can’t – reality is chaotic in the technical sense, and eve if it were “well behaved” in the sense of not being highly sensitive to initial conditions, the initial conditions are not known. That’s a favorite topic here, you alreay knew that.
the study uses a “design simulation”. The idea is to define plausible “scenarios” (as the study says it does) and then see _what happens when you vary the controllable variables_. You do this because systems described by differential equations (or difference equations) that are linked to each other with a time delay in the linkage can act in unexpected ways. They are “counterintuitive”. Consider the recent bitcoin/goal price drops — the “hedge assets” didn’t protect, as _everything_ was sold to cover margin costs.
So a “design simulation” is intended to keep you from knowing “what ain’t so”, because that’s where the danger lies. In this case, the “ain’t so” part is that the infection can be allowed to “burn out”, to run it’s course without intervention, and that the infection can now be completely suppressed and never seen again. The final impossibility is that changes in human behavior can avoid fairly large numbers of untreated cases of COVID-19, given the assumed R0.
In effect, “design studies” don’t tell what will happen, they tell what policy or design is most likely to do whatever goal was of interest to the people who wrote the simulation. In this case, the goal is to determine policies that minimize deaths (or at least to allow the politicians to say they tried). The fidelity of the test to reality is just adequate to support this decision, no more.
Don’t count on the numbers. With current data, they could be off by an order of magnitude either way — maybe more if global trade stops and countries war over remaining resources, maybe less if some common and effective cure is found. So don’t confuse a “predictive” simulation with a “design” simulation — two different animals.
And remember — events tend to cluster, like the arrival of cars at a gas station, or customers at a convenience mart. That includes events humans generally call “good” and events called “bad”. Expect something to land on your back about the time the epidemic has taken hold. It’s the way the universe works.
"Herd immunity" has not yet been demonstrated; there are at least two patients reported (in the news) who recovered from COVID-19, then sickened from COVID-19 again later. Doesn't prove anything -- and that "anything " it doesn't prove is herd immunity, which has _not_ been demonstrated. If there is no herd immunity, then the Imperial College design simulation will have to be reclassified as "don't I wish" and the "superior" policy will be shown to be so much wasted effort, and filed under "can't win them all". Again, nature of the universe. You really can't win them all, and a study that says we're going to be wiped out by a 10km asteroid hit tomorrow cannot, in the nature of things, be useful to policy makers. You _have to_ make the assumptions that lead to a survivable case, and that's what the Imperial College people have done. And that's yet another reason why the numbers in the Imperial College study (which is actually a very good study) are not to be taken seriously as absolute magnitudes, and why the authors don't say to take them seriously. They do suggest that the _relative_ order of loss of life be taken seriously, and that's the best they or anybody can do given available reports on observations.
Computers aren't soothsayers, but there is a tendency to take them as such. This can lead to quite the run-arround:
https://youtu.be/QPds0-hZ1tM?t=66
Blood donors are a convenient source for testing to make decent population-wide approximations.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-netherlands-testin/dutch-test-blood-donations-for-unseen-coronavirus-spread-idUSKBN2161S4
I should add that Imperial College is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.
https://twitter.com/jeremycyoung/status/1239975682643357696
If the American govt does nothing, 4 million Americans will die. Globally, 90 million will die.If we run a "mitigation" strategy, 2 million Americans die. Globally, 45 million people die.If we run a very severe "suppression" strategy, "only" thousands die. However, we have to be super strict and never relax the "suppression."14-18 months to get a vaccine. Minimum. Perhaps even longer.So this is really extreme.
Either we take 18 months off from regular life, or many millions will die.
Yes, because models by prestigious institutions, even when based on biased samples too small to be reliable, can be used to reliably predict the future.
Newsflash: Many more will die as a result of TPTB induced financial crash and the ultimate world war TPTB will launch in an attempt to drag what is left of us out of it.
I should add that Imperial College is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.
https://twitter.com/jeremycyoung/status/1239975682643357696
If the American govt does nothing, 4 million Americans will die. Globally, 90 million will die.If we run a "mitigation" strategy, 2 million Americans die. Globally, 45 million people die.If we run a very severe "suppression" strategy, "only" thousands die. However, we have to be super strict and never relax the "suppression."14-18 months to get a vaccine. Minimum. Perhaps even longer.So this is really extreme.
Either we take 18 months off from regular life, or many millions will die.
Those who have already been infected and recovered need not be isolated. They have essentially been vaccinated. We can let these people roam freely and loosen up things slowly for others, only allowing a relatively small number to be infected at any given time. With good social practices – increased and thorough hand washing, working from home more often, thorough testing of the population, tracing of any outbreaks, a health care system focused on mitigating the severe cases, isolation of those infected, etc. etc. etc. – this plague can be released in a fairly controlled manner. Eventually, it will become a mere nuisance with cases and localized clusters needing suppression popping up from time to time. There will still be a lot of deaths, but spread out over time and much less than with an uncontrolled lessening of suppression.
So even without a vaccine, perpetual suppression need not be the only alternative to a holocaust.
But as has been stated a thousand times now, you want to "flatten the curve" so that everyone doesn't get it all at once and overwhelm the medical system. Unfortunately this also prolongs the economic pain.
Now the "overwhelmed" thing is based on a lot of dumb static assumptions like we only have X ventilators and X ICU beds which is just not true - in a real crisis we can improvise, dig stuff out of mothballs, turn hotels into hospitals, make more ventilators, etc. Even the # of medical personnel is not fixed - you can call people out of retirement, take people who do similar work (e.g. dentists, vets) and train them enough to tend a ventilator, etc.
Today there was an article about a guy who figured out that you can actually hook up TEN people to one ventilator. You need some one way valves so they don't cross contaminate (but they all have the Chinese Virus already anyway) and you need to try to roughly match their lung capacity but it's not at all impossible or even difficult - you just need a bunch of hoses. Of course the ventilator mfrs never advertised this - they'd rather sell 10 ventilators.
There was another article about a hospital in Italy that ran out of ventilator valves and the mfr couldn't supply them fast enough so the hospital found some guy to 3D print them at a cost of $1 each. The mfr charges $11,000 for the same valve and when he called them up and asked them for the plans they threatened to sue him for patent infringement. He scanned the valve and made it anyway.
“So far, this has been The Popular People’s Pandemic.”
Or the navel gazer’s pandemic. YPMV.
Here are the graphs from worldometers.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
I broke the lines into 3 (roughly) linear portions and just calculated the exponential growth for each sections.
The first rate, from Jan 22 to Feb 5, is 27% per day. Very steep.
The second, from Feb 13 to March 4 is much shallower, @ 2% per day.
The third, from Mar 8 to Mar 19 is steeper, @ 7% per day.
What happened at these turning points to cause the change in slope?
Likely, the first portion is the discovery stage.
Second stage was flat because Chinese lock down began having an effect.
Third stage rises as cases appear world-wide.
Interesting to note that death curve closely tracks incidence curve. (“Incidence” containing all the ambiguities, imprecision and vagueness noted by Unz commenters.)
The fact that a fair percentage of Unz comments argue,”What the hell. So millions die? Who cares? I shouldn’t have to close down my business just to save their sorry asses.” frankly shocks me. Only reinforces my perception that free-market libertarians are very peculiar people. I suppose you would want to sue the people who delayed you in your car on the interstate because their fatal accident prevented you from attending an important (in your eyes, anyway) business meeting.
I love the smell of fear porn in the evening. This was a ZHedge-grade comment.
ZeroHedge comments mostly range from apocalyptic to sophomoric, but at least that site was spotlighting the carnage in China way back in January — while our mainstream media was all-in trying to Impeach Fo Fi
Here is an excellent article from Caitlin Johnstone:
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/liberal-npcs-hate-russia-conservative-npcs-hate-china-9b4ac2f853
I should add that Imperial College is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.
https://twitter.com/jeremycyoung/status/1239975682643357696
If the American govt does nothing, 4 million Americans will die. Globally, 90 million will die.If we run a "mitigation" strategy, 2 million Americans die. Globally, 45 million people die.If we run a very severe "suppression" strategy, "only" thousands die. However, we have to be super strict and never relax the "suppression."14-18 months to get a vaccine. Minimum. Perhaps even longer.So this is really extreme.
Either we take 18 months off from regular life, or many millions will die.
20% of the people confined to the Diamond Princess got it but 80% of everyone on land in the US is going to get it? Is there any other disease that has behaved this way? If not then doubt it is going to happen. In medicine you can model all you want but real world experience trumps your deterministic modeling in complex systems.
If all the passengers of the DP had stayed on the DP, then eventually most of them would have gotten it too. That's how I read it. Real life lasts longer than a cruise, and gives a virus more time to spread.
And if the DP had had schoolrooms where kids swapped germs starting every September, and and then took them home to the rest of the family, then they'd hit that 80% level even sooner.
Actually looks like the 1918 pandemic hit that percentage of the population so objection withdrawn
The study does what it says it does, but no more. I've written similar simulations. They don't really intend to model reality, to be what are called "predictive" simulations. They can't - reality is chaotic in the technical sense, and eve if it were "well behaved" in the sense of not being highly sensitive to initial conditions, the initial conditions are not known. That's a favorite topic here, you alreay knew that.
the study uses a "design simulation". The idea is to define plausible "scenarios" (as the study says it does) and then see _what happens when you vary the controllable variables_. You do this because systems described by differential equations (or difference equations) that are linked to each other with a time delay in the linkage can act in unexpected ways. They are "counterintuitive". Consider the recent bitcoin/goal price drops -- the "hedge assets" didn't protect, as _everything_ was sold to cover margin costs.
So a "design simulation" is intended to keep you from knowing "what ain't so", because that's where the danger lies. In this case, the "ain't so" part is that the infection can be allowed to "burn out", to run it's course without intervention, and that the infection can now be completely suppressed and never seen again. The final impossibility is that changes in human behavior can avoid fairly large numbers of untreated cases of COVID-19, given the assumed R0.
In effect, "design studies" don't tell what will happen, they tell what policy or design is most likely to do whatever goal was of interest to the people who wrote the simulation. In this case, the goal is to determine policies that minimize deaths (or at least to allow the politicians to say they tried). The fidelity of the test to reality is just adequate to support this decision, no more.
Don't count on the numbers. With current data, they could be off by an order of magnitude either way -- maybe more if global trade stops and countries war over remaining resources, maybe less if some common and effective cure is found. So don't confuse a "predictive" simulation with a "design" simulation -- two different animals.
And remember -- events tend to cluster, like the arrival of cars at a gas station, or customers at a convenience mart. That includes events humans generally call "good" and events called "bad". Expect something to land on your back about the time the epidemic has taken hold. It's the way the universe works.
OK, another example of the non-predictive nature of the Imperial College study:
“Herd immunity” has not yet been demonstrated; there are at least two patients reported (in the news) who recovered from COVID-19, then sickened from COVID-19 again later. Doesn’t prove anything — and that “anything ” it doesn’t prove is herd immunity, which has _not_ been demonstrated.
If there is no herd immunity, then the Imperial College design simulation will have to be reclassified as “don’t I wish” and the “superior” policy will be shown to be so much wasted effort, and filed under “can’t win them all”.
Again, nature of the universe. You really can’t win them all, and a study that says we’re going to be wiped out by a 10km asteroid hit tomorrow cannot, in the nature of things, be useful to policy makers. You _have to_ make the assumptions that lead to a survivable case, and that’s what the Imperial College people have done. And that’s yet another reason why the numbers in the Imperial College study (which is actually a very good study) are not to be taken seriously as absolute magnitudes, and why the authors don’t say to take them seriously. They do suggest that the _relative_ order of loss of life be taken seriously, and that’s the best they or anybody can do given available reports on observations.
Computers aren’t soothsayers, but there is a tendency to take them as such. This can lead to quite the run-arround:
Here is the ISS website: http://old.iss.it/chis/index.php?lang=2&tipo=9
There are various articles on the internet about the findings, though I wouldn't expect NPR to cover this story. Here is one:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/19/iss-report-99-of-covid19-deaths-already-ill/
The “off-guardian” article you linked, has some good points:
But then, it ends with:
I’ve heard the death rate could be higher, such as 5%. Also, hospitals are reporting an overload, which would make sense if the hospitalization rate is as high as 15% as often reported.
Also, every country in the world is taking drastic actions. It seems like it would have to be a big conspiracy.
Rather than “shelter-in-place”, maybe it would be better if we just required the elderly/infirm to wear an N95 mask. It wouldn’t be very enforceable, but when something is a law, then people feel like they can do it, without anyone thinking they’re crazy. Also, it can be explained that it’s in their own interest and it will help to prevent the overloading of hospitals.
If we did this, then it would be fine to scare people a little bit, with the images of overloaded hospitals. If some people wear masks, it won’t shut down the economy and people won’t be frightened by government overreach, with loss of liberty. In general, life could continue as normal.
The problem is we don’t have enough masks. But if we just made the order, then people may find a way. Here’s a good DIY video that uses a “Merv 13 Filter” to remove small particles, possibly serving as a good substitute for an N95 mask.
Is anyone checking to see if the data is correct?
Does anyone know the name of one person who died from Covid-19?
Has anyone checked to see what the death certificate states as cause of death?
Is anyone checking…anything?
Or are people just running around like chickens with their head cut off?
>>All death statistics are from government data.
Is anyone checking to see if the data is correct?
Does anyone know the name of one person who died from Covid-19?
Has anyone checked to see what the death certificate states as cause of death?
Is anyone checking…anything?
Or are people just running around like chickens with their head cut off?<<
This is classic skepticism which when unleavened by rational thought becomes rancid cynicism.
How can we tell that? Note that all of these questions, which are a jumble of lazy thoughts, assume that Mr./Ms. Anyone should be jumping up and "checking" to see if the data is correct. Mr. Realist here, often a decent commentator, makes an assumption that no one hasn't already "checked." Why that assumption? The reports from authoritative sources are checked by staffers, doctors, scientists and academics. The "reports" put out on Facebook, Twitter and most personal Internet blogs are not checked and are usually hyping click bait rumors or are merely mental illness on parade.
As for China and the Third World, those stats can't usually be independently verified. In China that is forbidden and punished when disclosed. Yet the MSM parrots the CCP Party Line that the Chinese virus is now nearly petering out. This should be "checked" but can't be. Third World stats are always bad. If Mr. Realist wants to verify what he reads he is free to attempt to do so. As for me, the local news does report the names of the COVID-19 fatalities and many of those who are now sick. Death certificates are normally filed at county clerk offices. Feel free to check those yourself.
Don't simply imply that everything we hear is random noise when you have not lifted your own finger to verify anything yourself. Or even read a local paper or watch a local news broadcast. Don't be a silly child about this, as many are now becoming. You are better than that.
I’m safe, no chance of me getting it.
From the same Colorado Sun piece linked by Steve:
The San Miguel public health folks may want to get checked for estrogen poisoning.
Some health authority staff may also be suffering from congenital YCDS (Y-Chromosome Deficiency Syndrome). In the most common form of YCDS, an X chromosome is substituted for the normal Y chromosome, resulting in a double-X combination. This in turn affects hormonal balance and engenders numerous other physical symptoms.
So even without a vaccine, perpetual suppression need not be the only alternative to a holocaust.
That’s what happened with the Spanish Flu. Notice that millions don’t die from the Spanish Flu anymore. Even a year or two later it had faded. In a pandemic, either you get the disease and it kills you, in which case you can’t spread it anymore. Or else you get it and survive, in which case you’re immune and can’t get it again or spread it to anyone else. At some point enough people are either dead or immune so the disease stops spreading even among those who are not immune (“herd immunity”).
But as has been stated a thousand times now, you want to “flatten the curve” so that everyone doesn’t get it all at once and overwhelm the medical system. Unfortunately this also prolongs the economic pain.
Now the “overwhelmed” thing is based on a lot of dumb static assumptions like we only have X ventilators and X ICU beds which is just not true – in a real crisis we can improvise, dig stuff out of mothballs, turn hotels into hospitals, make more ventilators, etc. Even the # of medical personnel is not fixed – you can call people out of retirement, take people who do similar work (e.g. dentists, vets) and train them enough to tend a ventilator, etc.
Today there was an article about a guy who figured out that you can actually hook up TEN people to one ventilator. You need some one way valves so they don’t cross contaminate (but they all have the Chinese Virus already anyway) and you need to try to roughly match their lung capacity but it’s not at all impossible or even difficult – you just need a bunch of hoses. Of course the ventilator mfrs never advertised this – they’d rather sell 10 ventilators.
There was another article about a hospital in Italy that ran out of ventilator valves and the mfr couldn’t supply them fast enough so the hospital found some guy to 3D print them at a cost of $1 each. The mfr charges $11,000 for the same valve and when he called them up and asked them for the plans they threatened to sue him for patent infringement. He scanned the valve and made it anyway.
"Herd immunity" has not yet been demonstrated; there are at least two patients reported (in the news) who recovered from COVID-19, then sickened from COVID-19 again later. Doesn't prove anything -- and that "anything " it doesn't prove is herd immunity, which has _not_ been demonstrated. If there is no herd immunity, then the Imperial College design simulation will have to be reclassified as "don't I wish" and the "superior" policy will be shown to be so much wasted effort, and filed under "can't win them all". Again, nature of the universe. You really can't win them all, and a study that says we're going to be wiped out by a 10km asteroid hit tomorrow cannot, in the nature of things, be useful to policy makers. You _have to_ make the assumptions that lead to a survivable case, and that's what the Imperial College people have done. And that's yet another reason why the numbers in the Imperial College study (which is actually a very good study) are not to be taken seriously as absolute magnitudes, and why the authors don't say to take them seriously. They do suggest that the _relative_ order of loss of life be taken seriously, and that's the best they or anybody can do given available reports on observations.
Computers aren't soothsayers, but there is a tendency to take them as such. This can lead to quite the run-arround:
https://youtu.be/QPds0-hZ1tM?t=66
Seems pretty unlikely. Generally you can’t get the same virus twice. Possibly there is more than 1 strain of Covid and the strains are different enough that they don’t confer immunity to each other but that seems pretty unlikely too. And a sample of two is an anecdote, not data.
I should add that Imperial College is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.
https://twitter.com/jeremycyoung/status/1239975682643357696
If the American govt does nothing, 4 million Americans will die. Globally, 90 million will die.If we run a "mitigation" strategy, 2 million Americans die. Globally, 45 million people die.If we run a very severe "suppression" strategy, "only" thousands die. However, we have to be super strict and never relax the "suppression."14-18 months to get a vaccine. Minimum. Perhaps even longer.So this is really extreme.
Either we take 18 months off from regular life, or many millions will die.
No, we can’t afford that! Save the Boomers, lol!
Is anyone checking to see if the data is correct?
Does anyone know the name of one person who died from Covid-19?
Has anyone checked to see what the death certificate states as cause of death?
Is anyone checking…anything?
Or are people just running around like chickens with their head cut off?<<
This is classic skepticism which when unleavened by rational thought becomes rancid cynicism.
How can we tell that? Note that all of these questions, which are a jumble of lazy thoughts, assume that Mr./Ms. Anyone should be jumping up and "checking" to see if the data is correct. Mr. Realist here, often a decent commentator, makes an assumption that no one hasn't already "checked." Why that assumption? The reports from authoritative sources are checked by staffers, doctors, scientists and academics. The "reports" put out on Facebook, Twitter and most personal Internet blogs are not checked and are usually hyping click bait rumors or are merely mental illness on parade.
As for China and the Third World, those stats can't usually be independently verified. In China that is forbidden and punished when disclosed. Yet the MSM parrots the CCP Party Line that the Chinese virus is now nearly petering out. This should be "checked" but can't be. Third World stats are always bad. If Mr. Realist wants to verify what he reads he is free to attempt to do so. As for me, the local news does report the names of the COVID-19 fatalities and many of those who are now sick. Death certificates are normally filed at county clerk offices. Feel free to check those yourself.
Don't simply imply that everything we hear is random noise when you have not lifted your own finger to verify anything yourself. Or even read a local paper or watch a local news broadcast. Don't be a silly child about this, as many are now becoming. You are better than that.
Yes, they should care if the data is accurate.
I am asking the question…you are making the assumption that the data has been checked.
The authoritative sources can always be a problem…it usually means government data. It should be checked by independent groups.
Any intelligent person should want the information they get to be verified by independent sources.
So then answer my question give a name of a Covid-19 fatality?
I didn’t ask how to do it…I ask is anyone doing it. Since I have never heard a name given of a Covid-19 fatality…it is impossible to find a death certificate.
The data so far is from government sources, passed on by the media…both of which are always suspect. I live north of Chicago and the local news does not release the names of fatalities.
You are the one making numerous assumptions and believing what you hear from the government and media.
You are the one making numerous assumptions and believing what you hear from the government and media.<<
Oh, I guess I have overlooked the fact that Mr. Realist here is demanding answers and that it is everyone else's obligation to rush to find satisfactory answers to his numerous skeptical inquiries. I must have forgotten that his time is more valuable than mine or everyone else's.
Getting him these facts he demands from others will be tough however. He doesn't believe anything he sees anywhere in print or online, from news media or the government. See, "north of Chicago" is a wilderness, where folks like him must live in darkness and sad skepticism. Also, he fails to tell his inferiors exactly what data or sources would be acceptable to His Highness. So we are left to guess and ponder. I better start making those phone calls pronto!
But Mr. Realist can relax. I will get right on his numerous demands for information which I can somehow find which he can't, being in what, northern Illinois or even worse, southern Wisconsin. I recommend he come back to my reply here every hour or so to check the status. Looks like he'll have plenty of time for that, if nothing else. I'll get cracking on this immediately.
The first virus patient in West Virginia turns out to be a…skier
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/21/us/west-virginia-coronavirus-patient-one-test/index.html
I still can’t believe the hysteria and damage this disease is causing and it hasn’t killed anyone in America under 19.
OK, so there are different strains of 2019-ncov. Maybe two, maybe more. That (if true) would likely invalidate the assumptions of the Imperial College simulation. If the 2019-ncov mutates often (and it is an RNA virus, so it would), then it could be like the rapidly mutating “cold”, except possibly fatal. Or possibly become harmless, who knows?
In other words, again, the Imperial College simulation does not attempt to predict the actual future. It merely compares policies with their results under the same sort of assumptions that you seem to favor — that nothing terribly different is happening. People develop immunity to COVID-19. Probably a valid assumption, but in no way is the Imperial College study equivalent to a forward looking time machine, nor do its authors claim that.
I’ve noticed that usually things go as one expects, but on some days the Mouseketeers had it right:
“20% of the people confined to the Diamond Princess got it but 80% of everyone on land in the US is going to get it?”
If all the passengers of the DP had stayed on the DP, then eventually most of them would have gotten it too. That’s how I read it. Real life lasts longer than a cruise, and gives a virus more time to spread.
And if the DP had had schoolrooms where kids swapped germs starting every September, and and then took them home to the rest of the family, then they’d hit that 80% level even sooner.
Newsflash: Many more will die as a result of TPTB induced financial crash and the ultimate world war TPTB will launch in an attempt to drag what is left of us out of it.
Old countries don’t goto war. Correct about the cost of this.
Here’s something I just learned - death cannot be prevented. We can only delay it at best and even then there’s always a quality/quantity trade off.
So by all means, let’s destroy the global economy, our national economy, and imperil tens of millions of healthy Americans living on the fiscal edge due to the globalization that gave us the WuFlu. We may get starving kids, but by golly we’re going to keep those geezers and deaths-edge population alive an extra few weeks, months, or (at very best) years to continue producing nothing and consuming the lion’s share of our healthcare system’s resources (20%+ of GDP no?).
Somehow I get the impression that the elites who decided this course are disproportionately affluent (definitely not subsisting on a paycheck) and old while the peons who will shoulder the cost are that minority in the private sector earning (and desperately needing) the now missing paycheck.
“So by all means, let’s destroy the global economy, our national economy, and imperil tens of millions of healthy Americans living on the fiscal edge due to the globalization that gave us the WuFlu.”
That would happen anyways in ANY of those situations as outlined by Imperial College. Why? Because investors get spooked by monumental events like, say, a pandemic.
Good evening, Steve,
You may wish to correct “corruscatingly” to coruscatingly if you as an unz.com author can do so.
No need to approve this comment.
Respectfully,
Ickenham
No, ZeroHedge was sensationalising the carnage in China. ZeroHedge has a hate China theme going.
Here is an excellent article from Caitlin Johnstone:
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/liberal-npcs-hate-russia-conservative-npcs-hate-china-9b4ac2f853
You mean lousy investors who think short-term are scared of monumental events. As we speak, the Chinese are buying large chunks of Western corporations.
If so, why did the Gates Foundation contribute so much to the growth of African population, the world’s petri dish of old and novel diseases?
>>The data so far is from government sources, passed on by the media…both of which are always suspect. I live north of Chicago and the local news does not release the names of fatalities.
You are the one making numerous assumptions and believing what you hear from the government and media.<<
Oh, I guess I have overlooked the fact that Mr. Realist here is demanding answers and that it is everyone else's obligation to rush to find satisfactory answers to his numerous skeptical inquiries. I must have forgotten that his time is more valuable than mine or everyone else's.
Getting him these facts he demands from others will be tough however. He doesn't believe anything he sees anywhere in print or online, from news media or the government. See, "north of Chicago" is a wilderness, where folks like him must live in darkness and sad skepticism. Also, he fails to tell his inferiors exactly what data or sources would be acceptable to His Highness. So we are left to guess and ponder. I better start making those phone calls pronto!
But Mr. Realist can relax. I will get right on his numerous demands for information which I can somehow find which he can't, being in what, northern Illinois or even worse, southern Wisconsin. I recommend he come back to my reply here every hour or so to check the status. Looks like he'll have plenty of time for that, if nothing else. I'll get cracking on this immediately.
You are the one making numerous assumptions and believing what you hear from the government and media.<<
Oh, I guess I have overlooked the fact that Mr. Realist here is demanding answers and that it is everyone else's obligation to rush to find satisfactory answers to his numerous skeptical inquiries. I must have forgotten that his time is more valuable than mine or everyone else's.
Getting him these facts he demands from others will be tough however. He doesn't believe anything he sees anywhere in print or online, from news media or the government. See, "north of Chicago" is a wilderness, where folks like him must live in darkness and sad skepticism. Also, he fails to tell his inferiors exactly what data or sources would be acceptable to His Highness. So we are left to guess and ponder. I better start making those phone calls pronto!
But Mr. Realist can relax. I will get right on his numerous demands for information which I can somehow find which he can't, being in what, northern Illinois or even worse, southern Wisconsin. I recommend he come back to my reply here every hour or so to check the status. Looks like he'll have plenty of time for that, if nothing else. I'll get cracking on this immediately.
Thanks for your dumbass screed of meaningless gibberish…the fact is you lied about your local news reporting names of Covid-19 fatalities.
The media does not release names of fatalities, because of privacy concerns.