COVID-19

[Seppia]

Did you mean to say that they delayed about 20% of the population getting infected? Did someone invent a cure and/or a vaccine when I wasn't looking?

On way that the delays may have resulted in less deaths is that it seems like the virus is losing potency.

if you use google translate, this is from italy's largest newspaper.

https://www.corriere.it/salute/20_giugn ... 9147.shtml

TL;DR: new cases in italy are significantly weaker, two of the main northern italian hospitals (including the one in Milan, a big hotspot) have seen zero new ICU patients in a month-a month and a half.

[nomadscientist]

Corona seems dead. The riots have not caused a second wave in the US. Largely reopened countries (Italy, Iran, etc.) have not experienced second waves. As far as I am aware there have been no second waves anywhere. Either improvised masks and mild distancing (i.e. voluntary measures that became common) are way more effective than expected at suppressing R0, or the epidemiological models we used for this are wrong.

[Seppia]

Largely reopened countries (Italy, Iran, etc.) have not experienced second waves.

It's early to say, we just reopened a week ago.
Clearly, there's some encouraging news

[nomadscientist]

@classical liberal - I know right. Getting my money's worth now at least!

Mind you, I am still thinking about it. When I watch videos like this one the contrast is palbable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0OQ2-k ... _3Awqq0h9I

- I cant believe she is earning $80k USD in her 20s at a job like that which sounds kind of cruisey and nice. Thats about $122k NZD. Here, you are lucky to earn that much money in your 40s let alone your 20s. And it would be a high stress, high pressure "status" job that you should "be grateful" for, with long hours, demands and responsibilities . Someone her age with that type of job here would probaly be earning about $35k USD>

A management job at the National Parks Service NGO in DC is a status job. That is probably one of the hardest jobs to get in the USA. Especially without affirmative action, which will have narrowed the field enormously for her.

- She is not frugal at all yet she is on "millenial finance". My god. This would be regarded as extravagant expenditure by normal NZ standards. 2 gym memberships and $100 on hair every month and nails?! Yet she is still owning it.

I'm actually not sure she is saving any money at all. Stated $80k salary with $6,257/mo budget of which $1,280 is savings. But $80k in DC is $4,778/mo which is less than her budget minus savings. My guess is she adds a bit to the credit cards each month from her post-tax salary and the "savings" are employer contributions to locked accounts (retirement, health savings, etc.). Either that or the numbers are just made up.

I can't explain the house valuations. DC is expensive in general. She seems to have piggybacked various programs for the DC poor* while being rich actually. Nice work if you can get it. The average salaryman pays for these programs, rather than benefiting.

*wait but Im European so I thought the US had no welfare...

[7Wannabe5]

@Augustus:


Nope. I still think the lockdown was warranted, and offer my condolences regarding your business.

[nomadscientist]

410,000 deaths in the whole world of old and sick people is not actually very many.

But that isn't what I mean. Corona is real, the lockdowns are inadvisable, epidemiology is flawed science, the riots were inadvisable, the narrative on the riots is being cooked. All these can be true simultaneously.

Either Corona was never going to saturate at 70-80% of the population infected, or cheap precautions against Corona are very effective. Or both.

I agree on the Hitler comment, at least in the most general sense; USA today smells strongly of 1930s Europe.

[7Wannabe5]

I think it’s more like 1910s Europe.

[jennypenny]

Are we really at the Hitler mention in the pandemic thread? Nurse, I'm calling it!

For those interested in whether the virus has a natural origin ... Bret Weinstein and Yuri Deigin

[thrifty++]

Corona seems dead. The riots have not caused a second wave in the US. Largely reopened countries (Italy, Iran, etc.) have not experienced second waves. As far as I am aware there have been no second waves anywhere. Either improvised masks and mild distancing (i.e. voluntary measures that became common) are way more effective than expected at suppressing R0, or the epidemiological models we used for this are wrong.

Singapore had a second wave. It seemed to have it under control and was being globally praised and then had a second wave and its virus numbers went through the roof. It has a very large number of cases for a population that small. It seems to be trending downward again now. The death numbers are really low comparatively, but then the deaths seem to come a bit later on down the track.

410,000 deaths in the whole world of old and sick people is not actually very many.

Thats not going to be the actual number. new disease pandemics are notoriously under-reported in real time. In reality the death toll will be in the millions. At least two million. It has already been regularly reported that even UK deaths are clearly under reported by at least 10, 000. And we are onyl dealing with the first wave. I am not aware of a global pandemic only having one wave.

[nomadscientist]

Singapore had a second wave. It seemed to have it under control and was being globally praised and then had a second wave and its virus numbers went through the roof. It has a very large number of cases for a population that small. It seems to be trending downward again now. The death numbers are really low comparatively, but then the deaths seem to come a bit later on down the track.

I looked into that at the time.

Singapore had two first waves in two different populations: Singaporeans (who were subject to trace and quarantine) which peaked early with small numbers, and guest workers (who were subject to imperfect lockdowns) which peaked later and with larger numbers. That's why they have almost no deaths: all the people getting infected are term workers in their 20s and 30s.

Singapore has not had the disease come back within one of these population.

Thats not going to be the actual number. new disease pandemics are notoriously under-reported in real time. In reality the death toll will be in the millions. At least two million. It has already been regularly reported that even UK deaths are clearly under reported by at least 10, 000. And we are onyl dealing with the first wave. I am not aware of a global pandemic only having one wave.

I don't believe deaths are 5x under-reported in developed countries, which appear to be the main victims so far.

[thrifty++]

I don't believe deaths are 5x under-reported in developed countries, which appear to be the main victims so far.

I guess thats the point though. Are the develope countries the main victims or is it just because they record and report statstics more accurately. I think its the latter. Every past disease pandemic was under reported by an order of magnitude as far as I am aware. Even the recent swine flu. At the time of swine flu, when it was completely finished the death toll was only 12,000 people. Then after, a couple of years later the death toll was worked out to be around 284,000 people. Most of the death reporting then was from developed countries too I think from the looks of things.

[tonyedgecombe]

I guess thats the point though. Are the develope countries the main victims or is it just because they record and report statstics more accurately. I think its the latter.

Developed countries tend to have older populations, I suspect that is going to make far more difference.

[nomadscientist]

Right, corona is not really a social problem in Nigeria where only 3% of the population is over 65.

But developing countries with some state capacity and big testing programs are not seeing a whole lot of corona, or at least they're seeing it much later than other countries. India for example. Big corona outbreaks took place in countries that have a lot of international air travel passing through them. You can even see this pattern inside developed countries where NYC has almost been burnt through while places like Utah think there's no problem because they're behind the curve when in fact spread of the disease is still exponential.

[7Wannabe5]

Also it doesn’t exactly make sense to say that Covid is becoming less deadly. It’s not one entity spreading across the globe like a giant slime mold. It may be the case that there is a strain or strains of Covid that are more infectious and less deadly, but those strains aren’t going to directly eliminate the more deadly strains until/unless herd immunity.

[thrifty++]

Right, corona is not really a social problem in Nigeria where only 3% of the population is over 65.

But developing countries with some state capacity and big testing programs are not seeing a whole lot of corona, or at least they're seeing it much later than other countries. India for example. Big corona outbreaks took place in countries that have a lot of international air travel passing through them. You can even see this pattern inside developed countries where NYC has almost been burnt through while places like Utah think there's no problem because they're behind the curve when in fact spread of the disease is still exponential.

Well, that doesnt seem to be the trend. Corona is not dying at all It had the largest number of new cases on Sunday. And it seems to be growing the most in the developing countries now. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/a ... d=12338553

I remember when it was the beginning people were saying its just a flu with 5,000 people dead and more people die from other things. But the patterns were what was concerning. Now some people are saying there is ony around 400,000 people dead so its nothing to worry about. At what point does it become serious? Will people still be saying the same thing once we have reported 5 million dead?

[nomadscientist]

Sure, it is growing in developing countries. The claim that was made was that there were huge numbers of undetected cases in developing countries, predicated on the assumption that they probably already had outbreaks as big as ours scaled for their populations. That might be true, but I consider it less likely.

It is not unserious. But it is perhaps no longer a big issue for the future in developed countries. It would be different if it were still growing exponentially despite the lockdowns or if it began growing exponentially again after lockdowns began to be relaxed (Italy, Iran etc.) or widely ignored (US etc.).

[7Wannabe5]

Not to be a stickler, but the function describing the growth always makes use of an exponent.

[classical_Liberal]

I remember when it was the beginning people were saying its just a flu with 5,000 people dead and more people die from other things. But the patterns were what was concerning. Now some people are saying there is ony around 400,000 people dead so its nothing to worry about.

I ran these numbers last night. In my home state in the US, someone under 60 has a 8X higher statistical chance of dying in a motor vehicle accident than of COVID. Yet there is no massive movement to ban all motor vehicle travel. So, you can see how risk adjusted policies seem like the best course under certain circumstances. It's not that it's a not a "big deal", it's just that there are lots of "big deals" to consider. PCR testing shows 0.3% of the state has been infected thus far, but early serology testing indicates greater than 3% have antibodies. Plus, we've had an open economy with basic risk control policies for about six weeks and cases remain flat with a decreasing active case load and 100% contact tracing. While I'm absolutely on board with protecting and helping those at risk who chose to isolate do so, I no longer think COVID risk should be a prevailing motivator for the states, or my personal, policies.

[shemp]

...5 million dead?

CDC says 2,813,503 died in USA in 2017 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm). Probably similar number in 2018 and 2019. Year after year, more people dying than in all US wars combined. Why was no one talking about these mass deaths back in 2017, 2018 and 2019? Where did they stack all the bodies?

I've been away for a while, largely because I didn't want to be exposed to the stupidity of namby-pamby nitwits who outnumber smart people in this forum. But I'll stop in briefly to shed a little light.

Metric of interest is not how many died or will die of covid, but rather how many years of life were lost. Assumimg life expectancy of 80 in USA, then it takes 60 people age 79 dying to equal one person aged 20 dying (20:1 ratio if 60yo, 80:1 if newborn, etc). Life insurance companies do good job of estimating remaining life expectancy for large groups of people based on a few parameters (current age, sex, bmi, pre-existing conditions). So take all the people who died of covid, plug their info into a life insurance calculator to compute expected years of life remaining without covid, then sum up to get total years of life lost to covid, then divide by total US population to get years lost per person to covid. Result is probably under one day.

Better result would take into account loss of life due to lockdowns and other measures taken to protect against covid. Result would likely show that deaths caused trying to protect from covid greatly outweigh deaths caused by covid itself.

I'm aware that cold statistics are no consolation to those who die of covid. But that's true about all sorts of things. Innocent people are run down by careless drivers all the time, but we don't outlaw motor vehicles in response, because cost outweighs benefit, and by cost I mean deaths not just money. No motor vehicles means no motor vehicle ambulances or fire trucks, for example.

[7Wannabe5]

@shemp:

I’m certain Sammy Hagar would agree with your logic. So, there’s that...