The Numbers Dont Work

[oxmixmudd]

The deaths would have been in the thousands in California from among those infected. The real numbers tell the story. You are taking New York numbers and throwing them at California and hoping it will stick. The numbers simply do not work out like you say. California would have to have ten thousand people dying every day in the next week to catch up. If they were sick, they would have gotten to the worst of it by now. If they have not been exposed, we could expose people to a bit more of it. But your modeling numbers just have no plausibility. Why are you falling for this so strongly? Is this the disaster you just hoped would come on the world? I don't understand your view here.

No it wouldn't. There are 17400 known cases and around 430 deaths. That is what 2.5% mortality is.

They added 10% of that today. Adding 10% per day is multiplying each day by 1.1. After 7 days you've doubled the number of cases. You do that fo 10 weeks and you have a little over 17,000,000 cases.

That's how exponential growth works.

[mikewhitney]

Exactly what is oxmixmudd hand-waving away?

The evidence that the virus is not growing in the form that is being promoted.

He says some stuff we should quickly laugh at for its silliness

4) to stop exponential spread other than with isolation, you must act very EARLY and aggressively. We are way past that.

5) The reality has been you can't stop it period without isolation. The only places that have it under control have done lots of generalized testing and extreme social distancing.

How can he say we are past early isolation? We only see a problem in New York and New Jersey. Do we shut down the whole nation for those two States? Hasn't virus spread been essentially supressed by what we have already done? If this wasn't enough, then nothing is enough. This means we should start the economy again -- except maybe with more caution in New York and New Jersey. Nor does isolation make sense in places where people already are isolated -- farming states, Alaska and others.

Then how does he know that isolation is needed? There are normal degrees of isolation that are warranted. I had to avoid being in a room with a dying friend at times because of hazardous materials. But we don't ever have a situation that keep people from working normally. The recommendation for this was based on numbers in far different situations. China and Italy? Now Italy's deaths to COVID-19 have to be diminished to 12% of the original numbers.

He also said we won't know anything until we test enough people. That is ridiculous. It depends again on numbers we only have seen in China and Italy.

The numbers don't work.

[mikewhitney]

No it wouldn't. There are 17400 known cases and around 430 deaths. That is what 2.5% mortality is.

They added 10% of that today. Adding 10% per day is multiplying each day by 1.1. After 7 days you've doubled the number of cases. You do that fo 10 weeks and you have a little over 17,000,000 cases.

That's how exponential growth works.

Exponential growth cannot happen where people are isolated. There are not enough transmission paths to make this possible.

The number of 'cases' is such a useless number. It is more than useless, especially from a scientific perspective.

First, it depends on who feels like doing any testing and how much they want to test. People are having trouble getting tested unless, perhaps, they are deathly sick.

The number of cases includes multitude of doctors and medical groups who simply mark a patient as a COVID-19 infected person based on symptoms rather than testing.

For people who die, the medical people are supposed to list the cause as COVID-19 even if just suspected that the person could have been infected with COVID-19. The other causes -- such as heart failure or diabetes are listed as secondary issues delegated to the 2nd page of the death certificate/record.

The number of deaths, for example in California, do not warrant a shutdown of the economy. We can restart our economy while possibly taking a few more precautions than we did before all this.

[Teallaura]

I suppose the argument would be that the deaths are down because of the quarantines, but there are obviously flaws in that sort of reasoning. It's like arguing that the magic rock I carry in my pocket keeps tigers away. How do I know it's working? Because I don't see any tigers around.

It's a little worse. The tigers started leaving before you got the rock.

[Teallaura]

Yes, you are missing something important. First of all, social distancing is helping. Current thinking is that less of an exposure may be the difference between a mild case and an acute case. Second, the death rate for those who have contracted the disease is extremely high so far.

Mark Twain once famously said (falsely attributing it to Benjamin Disraeli then British PM): "There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damned lies and statistics". I see Meme's and posts that tout the "survival rate" of Covid-19 to be around the 98% mark...or even better. This is a statistic, and...it's a lie...or at least it's currently wrong and misleading. There's no way to accurately calculate the survival rate at this time because this "survival rate" is factoring in ALL cases including those still fighting the virus, versus only the deaths. We don't know how many of those who have it will recover or die...it's like Schrodinger's Cat, you don't know the state of the cat until it's over and you open the box (or at least without a sniff test...). What we DO KNOW is, (according to Worldometers) as of today, April 7, 2020 @ 7 pm CDT, here in the US, there has been 34,464 cases that have resolved themselves...either they lived and got over the virus and are no longer in danger, or they died. Of those 34,464 cases, 12,790 have died. That's an actual survival rate of resolved cases of around 63%. Hopefully more and more of the active cases will survive and this rate will go up, but we don't know that right now. That's why this virus is considered so dangerous. As of this writing, in cases that are considered resolved, it killed 37% of the people who got it.
So, this IS a serious pandemic even if the current number of deaths isn't what the seasonal flu deaths have been the current death rate is FAR higher

The death rate is UNKNOWN. It cannot be calculated without the incidence rate which is UNKNOWN.

Relative to the models, which was Mike's point, the number of deaths is minuscule.

Morphology and transmission are not well understood. That throws a monkey wrench into all the stats. Maybe quarantine / social distancing is having an effect; maybe it really is 50% asymptomatic and is burning itself out at this point; maybe it's the weather and the seasonal shift. NO ONE KNOWS.

Reality is that the models are all crap - despite the very best efforts of the modelers. Too much is unknown, unclear and just flat out wrong. Welcome to novel contagion epidemiology.

Ox is using computations like a three year old - plug the round peg in wherever it fits. That's the curse of mathematicians who think that because they can do the algebra, they can do statistics. In reality, the algebra is the easy part. He's far from alone. But far too little of the data is either available (serology LITERALLY just began!) or meaningful (case definition?? What case definition?) which throws yet another wrench into the mess.

Your numbers are just as bad - worse because you're plugging in the wrong data. There is no incidence rate that has anything to do with reality - we need serology for that, not RNA swabs. And that's not addressing the gigantic disparity between the figures you used and their CDC counterparts. CDC is still counting presumptives (have too, not a bad thing... yet) and getting higher case numbers than yours. Much, much higher.

Transmission is apparently differing in the US - but we're only just beginning to see it so who knows why (my bet is plastic - not kidding). Some speculation that incidence is way higher than estimated (which would be AWESOME NEWS) and that most early cases went undiagnosed - and that arrival was in December. Doctors beginning to suspect modality is misunderstood. And morphology seems to literally evolve weekly. All of which screws over modeling - because it messes with the underlying assumptions.

What we do know is severe presentations are difficult to manage. We know we have no effective treatment - which means no effective disease control.

But the numbers are just indications that require really big grains of salt.

[Littlejoe]

The death rate is UNKNOWN. It cannot be calculated without the incidence rate which is UNKNOWN.

Relative to the models, which was Mike's point, the number of deaths is minuscule.

Morphology and transmission are not well understood. That throws a monkey wrench into all the stats. Maybe quarantine / social distancing is having an effect; maybe it really is 50% asymptomatic and is burning itself out at this point; maybe it's the weather and the seasonal shift. NO ONE KNOWS.

Reality is that the models are all crap - despite the very best efforts of the modelers. Too much is unknown, unclear and just flat out wrong. Welcome to novel contagion epidemiology.

Ox is using computations like a three year old - plug the round peg in wherever it fits. That's the curse of mathematicians who think that because they can do the algebra, they can do statistics. In reality, the algebra is the easy part. He's far from alone. But far too little of the data is either available (serology LITERALLY just began!) or meaningful (case definition?? What case definition?) which throws yet another wrench into the mess.

Your numbers are just as bad - worse because you're plugging in the wrong data. There is no incidence rate that has anything to do with reality - we need serology for that, not RNA swabs. And that's not addressing the gigantic disparity between the figures you used and their CDC counterparts. CDC is still counting presumptives (have too, not a bad thing... yet) and getting higher case numbers than yours. Much, much higher.

Transmission is apparently differing in the US - but we're only just beginning to see it so who knows why (my bet is plastic - not kidding). Some speculation that incidence is way higher than estimated (which would be AWESOME NEWS) and that most early cases went undiagnosed - and that arrival was in December. Doctors beginning to suspect modality is misunderstood. And morphology seems to literally evolve weekly. All of which screws over modeling - because it messes with the underlying assumptions.

What we do know is severe presentations are difficult to manage. We know we have no effective treatment - which means no effective disease control.

But the numbers are just indications that require really big grains of salt.

I know this is your wheel house but I can't help but think you missed something in my numbers. Incidence rate is unknown, yes, but irrelevant to my point. My US death number is not that far off from the CDC number. I'm ignoring the huge number of positive cases that are currently unresolved and focusing ONLY on the cases that are over, (cured or dead). CDC has 12,064 deaths, worldometers has 12,790. I don't see on the CDC site the number of cases that are resolved/patients who survived the disease. If you know that number from the CDC then let me know where to find it. IF the numbers are correct from worldometers, then my numbers stand. If they are not then please provide numbers that you feel are more accurate.

[oxmixmudd]

The death rate is UNKNOWN. It cannot be calculated without the incidence rate which is UNKNOWN.

Relative to the models, which was Mike's point, the number of deaths is minuscule.

Morphology and transmission are not well understood. That throws a monkey wrench into all the stats. Maybe quarantine / social distancing is having an effect; maybe it really is 50% asymptomatic and is burning itself out at this point; maybe it's the weather and the seasonal shift. NO ONE KNOWS.

Reality is that the models are all crap - despite the very best efforts of the modelers. Too much is unknown, unclear and just flat out wrong. Welcome to novel contagion epidemiology.

Ox is using computations like a three year old - plug the round peg in wherever it fits. That's the curse of mathematicians who think that because they can do the algebra, they can do statistics. In reality, the algebra is the easy part. He's far from alone. But far too little of the data is either available (serology LITERALLY just began!) or meaningful (case definition?? What case definition?) which throws yet another wrench into the mess.

Your numbers are just as bad - worse because you're plugging in the wrong data. There is no incidence rate that has anything to do with reality - we need serology for that, not RNA swabs. And that's not addressing the gigantic disparity between the figures you used and their CDC counterparts. CDC is still counting presumptives (have too, not a bad thing... yet) and getting higher case numbers than yours. Much, much higher.

Transmission is apparently differing in the US - but we're only just beginning to see it so who knows why (my bet is plastic - not kidding). Some speculation that incidence is way higher than estimated (which would be AWESOME NEWS) and that most early cases went undiagnosed - and that arrival was in December. Doctors beginning to suspect modality is misunderstood. And morphology seems to literally evolve weekly. All of which screws over modeling - because it messes with the underlying assumptions.

What we do know is severe presentations are difficult to manage. We know we have no effective treatment - which means no effective disease control.

But the numbers are just indications that require really big grains of salt.

This is all just ignoring the fact that people are overwhelming hospital systems and dying. Drs and nurses are working themselves to exhaustion.The flu has a mortality of .1%. The flu is what a .1% mortality looks like.

This is not what the flu looks like. The flu doesn't fill up hospital ICUs to the point wartime triage is necessary. And it doesn't fill morgues to capacity and require additional freezer trucks. You guys are simply deceiving yourselves.

Mortality in nations like germany and s korea that have wide spread testing is stil between 1.5 and 2%.

[mikewhitney]

This is all just ignoring the fact that people are overwhelming hospital systems and dying. Drs and nurses are working themselves to exhaustion.The flu has a mortality of .1%. The flu is what a .1% mortality looks like.

This is not what the flu looks like. The flu doesn't fill up hospital ICUs to the point wartime triage is necessary. And it doesn't fill morgues to capacity and require additional freezer trucks. You guys are simply deceiving yourselves.

Mortality in nations like germany and s korea that have wide spread testing is stil between 1.5 and 2%.

First note that the number of cases is not useful for anything, except maybe it can show that most people in Germany are unaffected by the virus. If they find that 300k people show positive on the test, the death rate drops to 0.6 percent death rate.

I'm not sure what you are looking at in Germany.
I was looking at https://epidemic-stats.com/coronavirus/germany
This showed an average of 95 deaths per day from Mar 18 to April 7. This is well below any extreme concerns. This is out of a population of 83 million.
The deaths since Mar 18 represent 0.002 percent of the population.

This is below the death rate of the flu in the US which can be about 0.008 percent.

Where are your numbers of doctors and nurses across all the hospitals. In the states, some in New York seem busy but in California not really so. California was even donating the use of ventilators to other places.

As to any specified mortality rates for the flu, aren't those numbers based on how many people were at key hospitals with symptoms of the flu. I suspect the mortality rate of the flu is at least lower by a factor of 10 when we anticipate how many had the flu but did not get reported for it.

As to the refridgerated trucks, that is not actually a sign of the death rate. It would only be an indicator of the different fashion that bodies would be handled when there might be many people dying of a dangerous contagion. This does not mean that the virus truly is this dangerous -- but it is assumed to be so.

Calculate the useful numbers. Don't just look for things that are just designed to scare you.

[demi-conservative]

Reality is that the models are all crap - despite the very best efforts of the modelers. Too much is unknown, unclear and just flat out wrong. Welcome to novel contagion epidemiology.

It was obvious from the start that the models are useless. However some people's '''''''''''''''reasoning'''''''''''''' amount to 'math, numbers, statistics, experts!!!! must be correct, must trust'.

[simplicio]

It was obvious from the start that the models are useless. However some people's '''''''''''''''reasoning'''''''''''''' amount to 'math, numbers, statistics, experts!!!! must be correct, must trust'.

Models are useful, they have been used to great effect.

They do not give us a nice pat answer like on a math test.

[demi-conservative]

Models are useful, they have been used to great effect.

Who cares if they are right, they have been used to great effect, as demi already talked about.

The models aren't good for much except to frighten people and this has been a success. Meanwhile demi yawns.

[simplicio]

This is all just ignoring the fact that people are overwhelming hospital systems and dying. Drs and nurses are working themselves to exhaustion.The flu has a mortality of .1%. The flu is what a .1% mortality looks like.

This is not what the flu looks like. The flu doesn't fill up hospital ICUs to the point wartime triage is necessary. And it doesn't fill morgues to capacity and require additional freezer trucks. You guys are simply deceiving yourselves.

Mortality in nations like germany and s korea that have wide spread testing is stil between 1.5 and 2%.

The clearest statistics we have are the hospitalization rates (ICU beds). The irony is that China is lambasted for putting out inaccurate numbers, while the numbers put out by the US are equally bogus.

Other countries are effectively coordinating the testing with combating the disease. The US is still not able to give any reliable information to either health professionals nor citizens. I know some who have recovered from an illness, but do not know if they have been through covid-19. That would be good info to have when deciding which family members to use for babysitting, which family members to do shopping, which family members to work in the family business, etc.

But hey, the MSM just wants to discredit Trump! Big Brother just wants to take away our rights! Big Pharma just wants to get rich!

[mikewhitney]

The clearest statistics we have are the hospitalization rates (ICU beds). The irony is that China is lambasted for putting out inaccurate numbers, while the numbers put out by the US are equally bogus.

Other countries are effectively coordinating the testing with combating the disease. The US is still not able to give any reliable information to either health professionals nor citizens. I know some who have recovered from an illness, but do not know if they have been through covid-19. That would be good info to have when deciding which family members to use for babysitting, which family members to do shopping, which family members to work in the family business, etc.

But hey, the MSM just wants to discredit Trump! Big Brother just wants to take away our rights! Big Pharma just wants to get rich!

I see that you missed the original post. There is not a sufficient death rate to justify the extent of isolation being demanded. You started to sound a bit interesting but you ended on a stupid rant. Too bad that you mess up any sense of logic that you began with.
I'm not surprised that you cannot respond to the logic of the original post. Nor is it a surprise that people cannot be convinced from their irrational beliefs and must replace rational discussion with a stupid slogan at the end -- wishing to suffer harm rather than search out truth.

[simplicio]

I see that you missed the original post. There is not a sufficient death rate to justify the extent of isolation being demanded. You started to sound a bit interesting but you ended on a stupid rant. Too bad that you mess up any sense of logic that you began with.
I'm not surprised that you cannot respond to the logic of the original post. Nor is it a surprise that people cannot be convinced from their irrational beliefs and must replace rational discussion with a stupid slogan at the end -- wishing to suffer harm rather than search out truth.

Do you even understand what the term rate means? I did not miss the post, the post was not based on logic, but an irrational blatherings of a conspiracy minded Christian. G-d gave you an intellect to use, but the intellect needs to be oriented towards truth. Hospital entrances are quiet because the people inside are battling for lives, not to hide truth. Trading truth for lies is something to worry about.

The death rate is at 200 per day in New York City due to Corona virus, in some upstate counties that haven't been hit hard yet is about two dozen. That is a lot of souls. The numbers work

How many need to die before today's isolation policies are appropriate? I will post one comment made on Tweb here:

Not exactly what she said - but she can address that if she likes.

Then you failed to understand it - or you're so used to appeasement that you value the favor of the world over the lives of the babies.
Which is a strike against the movement that has so lost its way that it cares more about appearance than life.

Pro-life is the descriptor of the anti-abortion movement. Anti-death penalty is a separate movement. Stop the spin crap - 46 years and more than 60 million brutally cruel murders - THAT HAS TO STOP. If you don't think so, you are NOT pro-life and you can take your world loving, death worship elsewhere.

The last line of my post summarizes the excuses made here by those vigorously downplaying the reality of covid-19, and form a basis of the denialism here.

[Charles]

The problem with Pro-life is very simple. It is, unfortunately, only pro some forms of life.